Collect Twitter Data for UCI/Netdraw

To collect data from Twitter for pictures like the one from the demission of mubarak (see the video @ http://www.youtube.com/user/panisson ) you can start here http://dev.twitter.com/pages/api_overview, but it does not look like something very handy, its a developer thing, or does someone now the easy way?

A short abstract:Start here to go further, API means "Aplication Programmer's Interface"
"The Twitter API consists of three parts: two REST APIs and a Streaming API. The two distinct REST APIs are entirely due to history. Summize, Inc. was originally an independent company that provided search capability for Twitter data. Summize was later acquired and rebranded as Twitter Search. Rebranding the site was easy, fully integrating Twitter Search and its API into the Twitter codebase is more difficult. It is in our pipeline to unify the APIs, but until resources allow the REST API and Search API will remain as separate entities. The Streaming API is distinct from the two REST APIs as Streaming supports long-lived connections on a different architecture."