Nokia buys Plazes - maybe the Nokia 810 will become interesting after all. But Nokia is evil and I am a MacHead, so it will probably stay with the new iPhone ...
webservices - 17.6.2004 - 23.6.2008
Introducing Gmail Labs - Google keeps showing how to use the platform meaningfully. For example, now in GoogleMail with optionally activatable prerelease features. That's how I imagine it, with centrally operated software!
goosh.org - the unofficial google shell. - nice hack. A shell interface in the web browser for google.
Amazon Web Services Blog: Storage Space, The Final Frontier - it's getting more interesting. Amazon wants to add persistent storage space to EC2 (again paid according to usage).
Prism - is something similar to Fluid, but for more systems (based on Mozilla technology)
Amazon Web Services: SimpleDB - interesting service by Amazon, databases for structured and unstructured data via REST and SOAP. With the typical Amazon payment model for web services. Also interesting is the rumor that it was implemented with Erlang.
Anger about new Flickr filters - "If you use a Yahoo ID from Singapore, Germany, Hong Kong or Korea, you cannot turn off the safe search due to local business conditions. [...]" - it's time for a service that offers the features without this silly idea of censorship. Picasa is not an alternative - the features are just too meager, the interface too brittle.
Google Gears for WebKit - an interesting approach to providing web applications locally. Basically just a smart cache, nothing more. But sometimes these low-tech approaches are simply the most efficient solutions. And nicely, they also have the whole thing ready for WebKit in the source - the downloads are only for the Mozilla family so far (and of course once again nothing for Camino).
Park Place, the Amazon-S3 clone - in Ruby.
Flickr → iPhoto - Import Flickr feeds into iPhoto as a photo stream (via a converting detour). Not a bad idea, even if it might blow up your hard drive.
JSONstore 0.2 - interesting, a mini database for JSON objects. Might be useful for projects with JavaScript on the client side, to give them a simple database.
UseTheSource / Published Code Snippets - social source snippet site.
CouchDb Project Website - hmm. I haven't seen that before. Replicating, document-oriented database. REST API.
Speakeasy - Speed Test - well done, easy to test and provides useful data.
senduit - simple web interface to distribute large files via URLs. The retention time on the server is determined by the uploader. As simple as Google.
Dabble DB Commons - free offering from DabbleDB, the database web application developed in Smalltalk (basically something like Access, only built as a web application). Perhaps interesting for one project or another where the data is to be published anyway.
IMified - Instant Productivity - amazingly practical. Yes, it's quite strange to control things via a jabber client now - but for many small tasks like reminders it's simply easier to type "remind me about this URL in 8 hours" (in English), than to manually enter it in the calendar. And it works from anywhere via internet tablet and quickly, as it's low-traffic.
SCIgen - An Automatic CS Paper Generator - hilarious!
boto - a library for accessing Amazon Webservices. Supported are S3, SQS and EC2 - exactly what I need. Documentation also looks quite useful.
10 Minute Mail - brilliant idea. A 10-minute-valid disposable address with a simple web interface and only the option to reply. So not misusable as a spam cannon, but ideal to register e.g. with these stupid newspaper archives or similar.
Ogoglio - 3D worlds in the browser. Sounds interesting, let's observe.
Geonames - maps names of cities, mountains etc. to geographic information (and vice versa). Plus a web service to use this data. The whole thing as a community project with data content under CC license. Very cool.
Geogen - a funny thing, even if it's quite boring with my common name (ok, at least rank 13 in the ranking!). But with the names of my grandparents, it's already easier ...
Online aerial images of Germany
Ok, I officially admit, I am impressed! Honestly, the idea of simply linking an address to a point on the map is great. Even if our area is only available with rather sparse resolution again. Great web application, big praise to the developers.
Pandora - first experiments
Pandora I had already briefly linked here before, but I only got around to trying it out myself today. Wow. Really brilliantly simple setup. And although I didn't directly expect it - it works. Ok, there is one problem with my music taste: the musicians have done very different things, so it's strongly dependent on the initial piece in which direction the service goes if I only enter one musician. Unfortunately, when searching for titles, there is often a "not found" as an answer (or only titles of the same name by other musicians - Black Moon by ELP, for example). But if the starting point is usable, it really continues very consistently afterwards - and many musicians are brought in whom I had never heard before (ok, from some I also don't want to hear anything in the future).
In any case, it's really more than just a toy - it's really fun to just let the station run. And as a registered user (optionally free with ads or paid without ads) you can configure up to 100 stations and build your own mood radio.
Development « Akismet - the Akismet API
Apples WebObjects with new licensing terms
Apple has clarified the licensing issues with WebObjects - Deployment on Linux boxes is now also completely allowed. Thus, the XCode environment with WebObjects is now completely free from development to deployment.
sproutliner is a fun web application with which you can edit an outline over the web. Naturally heavily based on Ajax.
Multimap - nice toy
Found at Call it YASBLOG: Multimap allows zooming into a map down to a scale of 1:5000 - you can see where I live at the link, in case someone wants to nuke me from orbit
Ok, not as technically cool as Google Maps, but it works with German addresses. Very practical when you want to give someone an exact location - just set a link to the map.
However, I'm not sure if linking is allowed. Their terms of use state the following:
The reproduction, copying, downloading, storage, recording, broadcasting, retransmission and distribution of any of the maps and digital data shown on this site is not permitted without prior written consent of Multimap.com.
Hmm. Links are also digital data and therefore I should not use the link that was generated for me below the map without written permission ...
I like that the Charivari Puppet Theater is included in the map - few Münster residents know about it ...
Tags from Terms
Jonathan Luster has released his Y! Terms Extraction Plugin for WordPress. It uses the Yahoo services to extract relevant keywords from a posting text and presents them as Technorati tags in the post. If anyone tries this out: I would be interested to know how well it works with German texts.
By the way, I would also be interested to know when blogg.de offers an API. I mean, it's about time to catch up with the features of Technorati and Yahoo, right?
Usable XMLHttpRequest in Practice is an interesting little article that explains the use of XMLHttpRequest using an example and discusses usability aspects.
A Call to Action in OASIS
A Call to Action in OASIS is an open letter from a whole range of Open Source big names against the latest OASIS framework conditions. OASIS deals with the standardization of data formats and web services, and in the latest framework conditions, standards should also allow those based on patented techniques - and thus ultimately give companies the means to exclude Open Source programs with these standards. In principle, a rehash of the same stupid idea from the W3C - which then withdrew this idea in response to the protests.
Check PageRank Authenticity
Check PageRank Authenticity - a nice little online tool for checking PageRank with simultaneous assessment of the authenticity of the PageRank.
What absolutely fascinates me about it: I actually have a PageRank of 6 with my weblog and a PageRank of 7 with the PyDS homepage. Wow.
Audioscrobbler :: Development - Last.fm Streaming API - an API to access your last.fm station.
Seekbot Seitentest - Tool for analyzing the search engine friendliness of a page
Dowser - Meta search engine for the desktop in Python
Pasta: text pasting service for del.icio.us - Convert text via copy-and-paste into a website and automatically post to del.icio.us
OkayRpcProtocol - YAML Implementors Site - RPC mechanism for YAML - interesting for TooFPy?
gmail atom feed - Address of the Google Mail Atom Feed - unfortunately only Atom, no RSS
lisp tools for xml - Yet another XML parser - this one is very comprehensive, supporting common models. It also includes a SOAP parser.
S-XML-RPC - XML-RPC for client and server in Common Lisp
Flickr Services - Flickr API documentation
ITMS Link Maker - Creating HTML links in the iTunes - unfortunately not a real API, but a web wizard
Linda and Service Oriented Architectures - Description of TupleSpaces - PDF Version
XHTML Validator to RSS : Ben Hammersley - Script for converting validator messages into an RSS feed
XchemeRPC - New homepage for the XMLRPC client/server for DrScheme
Satine for Python - XML Binding for Python - transparent use of XML data via native Python data structures
iTunes Music Store RSS Generator - RSS Feeds for iTunes new releases