April 18, 2007

Google's AJAX Feed API

Google's new AJAX Feed API is pretty cool. It provides in-page access to any public RSS feed (handled and cached by their Feedfetcher) while bypassing javascript's same origin policy restriction. It even talks JSON! This service will be helpful to developers who want to creatively mash feeds from different sources without having to set up and host a relay / proxy.

May 11, 2006

Link: How to Use Google Co-op

Philipp Lenssen has posted an excellent overview of Co-op.

May 10, 2006

Google Co-op

My mind is reeling as I look over what Google is offering through the Subscribed Links API. Basically, this is a topic-driven widget that appears at the top of search results. To build one and offer it to the world, it says I need to define a set of xml files for the query patterns, output format, preferred url annotations, and "labels" allowing the results to be further winnowed down.

With the Google Subscribed Links API, you can add your services directly into Google search. This can help make those services more accessible, giving your users another entry-point to them when they're making a related search on Google. Source: Subscribed Links API.

The Topics Developer's Guide delves into the url annotation and the "labels" winnowing:

A label is a mechanism for modifying the Google ranking function. The modifications can range from a hard restrict to a specified set of documents to a subtle twiddling of results. The modifications come in effect when you enter a query and then click on a label. Source: Topics Developer's Guide.

Mmore can be found in the FAQ.

Continuing the "Googlemantic Web" theme from my previous comments, one thing I'd like to know more about is the "Data Object" types. I can define my own, but Google defines special types such as cities, regular expression matches, and dates.

February 14, 2006

Yahoo UI Library and Design Patterns

Kudos to Yahoo! for releasing their javascript library under BSD. The Yahoo! UI Library includes js for animation, xmlhttp connection handling, DOM, drag and drop, events, and complex ui components such as cals and trees.

I recently started to use the Dojo toolkit in an application that we've been building at Boingo Wireless, and it has been great. But YUI is going rocket ahead of Dojo and the others, for the obvious reason that Yahoo has one of the best web services endpoints out there. The fact that they offered JSON so early in the game shows how far they'll stick their necks out to stay ahead of the competition.

Also worth a look is the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library. It contains some great articles explaining use cases, solutions, and rationales for many conventional (or soon-to-be conventional) web application elements.

Spotter (probably from down the hall): Jeremy Zawodny.

November 4, 2005

Artificial, Artificial Intelligence

Amazon has created a distributed human intelligence service:

Amazon Mechanical Turk provides a web services API for computers to integrate "artificial, artificial intelligence" directly into their processing by making requests of humans. Developers use the Amazon Mechanical Turk web services API to submit tasks to the Amazon Mechanical Turk web site, approve completed tasks, and incorporate the answers into their software applications.

To the application, the transaction looks very much like any remote procedure call - the application sends the request, and the service returns the results. In reality, a network of humans fuels this artificial, artificial intelligence by coming to the web site, searching for and completing tasks, and receiving payment for their work.

Source: Amazon Mechanical Turk Overview

Some docs to look at:

• Developer's Guide
• API Reference

Of course, it does not take me very long to also see the potential mis-uses of distributed human intelligence - and I am smiling for two reasons as I write this. For example: automating the interpretation of captchas or of other difficult tasks in order to give the false impression that a bot is a human.

The benefits and hazards that are rapidly coming to mind reflect the power of this idea.

Spotter: Leigh Dodds