Monday, September 28, 2009

2009-09-28 Monday - Hunch.com Developer API

Hunch API

"In 10 questions or less, Hunch will offer you a great solution to your problem, concern or dilemma, on hundreds of topics. Hunch's answers are based on the collective knowledge of the entire Hunch community, narrowed down to people like you, or just enough like you that you might be mistaken for each other in a dark room. Hunch is designed so that every time it's used, it learns something new. That means Hunch's hunches are always getting better."

Hunch allows access to its data and embeddable content through an API. Developers can make use of this API in many ways, such as:

•Putting an embeddable version of a Hunch topic on your web site. For example, if you have a blog about dogs you could embed our "which dog breed is best for me" topic in your sidebar. Note: To embed Hunch on your site, you can also use the widget Hunch provides by copying the Embed code that appears on each result page.

•Porting Hunch to a mobile device or other platform such as SMS, Twitter, IVR etc.

•Querying our "taste database" for correlations, predictive variables, and more. For example, you could ask our taste database for the correlation between people who own guns and the people who like SUVs, or what the most salient personal trait is for predicting whether someone likes the movie Napoleon Dynamite. Over time we hope to provide a complete database of people's aggregated taste preferences. Note that all data provided here is anonymized and aggregated to protect our users' privacy.


The API is free for non-commercial use.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

2009-09-27 Sunday - Recommended Web Design Books

Most of my time is spent working on large-scale problems: designing and leading the development of new systems, planning and implementing the integration of new systems with legacy systems, coaching development teams, leading business and technical analysis discussions, designing the information technology systems to support new business processes, and providing project management oversight. As a fun mental diversion, I've decided to invest some time in enriching my creative visual design skills - and recently added 10 new books to my library:

CSS Web Site Design, by Eric A. Meyer



Eric Meyer on CSS, Master the Language of Web Design



More Eric Meyer on CSS



The Zens of CSS Design, Visual Enlightment for the web, by Dave Shea and Molly E. Holzschalg


Web Design for ROI, Turning Browsers into Buyers & Prospects into Leads, by Lance Loveday & Sandra Niehaus



Web Style Guide, 3rd Edition, Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites, by Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton



CSS Cookbook, Quick Solutions to Common CSS Problems, 2nd Edition, by Christopher Schmitt



Head First Web Design, by Ethan Watrall & Jeff Siarto



Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, by Peter Morville & Louis Rosenfeld



Beginning GIMP, From Novice to Professional, Second Edition, by Akkana Peck

2009-09-27 Sunday - Wine.com RESTful API

wine.com has published a RESTful API
The Wine.com Public API allows client applications to access Wine.com content by making REST requests to three methods. The response will be returned in either JSON or XML format, specified by the request query.


Interestingly, wine.com is using 3scale.net API Management services (see How It Works)

2009-09-27 Sunday - Eclipse SQL Explorer

I installed the Eclipse SQL Explorer plugin today - and like what I see so far.

Friday, September 25, 2009

2009-09-25 Friday

A busy week.

I'm working on growing my consulting practice - and assembling engagement teams to engage more clients simultaneously. I had three conference calls this week with potentially new clients...increasing the number of conversations per week - and thus increase my deal-closure rate.

Started working on a new client assignment today - the high-level design of a Service Oriented Application (SOA) extension to a legacy mainframe application - quickly sketched out the following in about 4 hours - using Sparx System's Enterprise Architect:

  • Requirements List

  • Use Case Diagrams

  • Domain Model


I also started working on the site navigation map and the object class model for a web based user interface for the new functionality that will be created.

This application will be deployed as an ASP.NET application - integrating with a NATURAL / ADABAS backend, leveraging Software AG's webMethod's EntireX - to SOA-enable the legacy application code base.

I happened to come across an interesting company today: CoffeeCup.com - they have an interesting business model - offering a number of products (66?) - at very reasonable prices. I was particularly impressed by the team they have assembled.

Interesting: Organization of Independent Software Vendors (OISV)

Sunday, September 13, 2009

2009-09-13 Sunday - SEO Resources

While doing some research for a non-profit on how to improve their search engine result placement, I came across the following interesting resources:

GetClicky.com - real time web analytics

Woopra.com - web site tracking, statistics and analysis

AlertFox.com - web application monitoring

Pingdom.com - web site monitoring (measure your downtime)

Dave McClure's blog: Master of 500 Hats

Avinash Kaushik's blog: Occam’s Razor

Updated 2009-10-03:
omniture.com

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