Global Nerdy

Here's a LinuxWorld list of Web 2.0 APIs that “you can really use”. APIs that are “are simply formalized interfaces to a user-centric application” — such as the Flickr API — don't count in this list. APIs in this list are supposedly for “real programming problems, either in Web applications or in desktop or server software”.

Well, while this article isn't going to dispel the perception that Linux developers have the same love/hate relationship with their clientele that drug pushers do, the APIs listed are worth looking into. They are:

1. Google Maps API
2. Geonames.org
3. OpenID
4. Amazon S3
5. Amazon EC2
6. Atom API
7. OpenSearch
8. Open Media Profile
9. MediaWiki API
10. JS-Kit

Link

Now for something completely devoid of iPhone commentary. Via Gothamist comes the New York City Journal, a blog chronicling New York within SimCity.

Welcome to the New York City Journal blog! Your source for news and updates about my project of creating a 3D replica of the Big Apple. This recreation goes beyond a static 3D model, this replica actually comes to life in Maxis/Electronic Arts simulation and city-building computer game, SimCity 4. It will include many true to life details of New York all the way down to street level.

The project has been in the works for more than three years and is dedicated to replicating the five boroughs in SimCity. The blog will have features chronicling real news within the city, tourist information/guides, and much more.

The site's author has clearly spent hours painstakingly reproducing Gotham in Sim form, and has used the Journal to take readers on tours of the lesser New York islands (such as Randall's and Ward's Island, Riker's Island, and Governor's Island). Seeing where you live represented in SimCity's quirky perspective proves to be pretty absorbing.

Tags: SimCity, New York City

I was trying for a headline that played on Yakov Smirnoff's old “In Soviet Russia, TV watches you!” schtick from the '80's as a way of pointing to the New York Times' article titled New to Russia, Google Struggles to Find Its Footing. While Google's had difficulty in other countries, such as China, the problem is Russia is one of linguistics rather than politics, as well as the local search companies' ability to receive payment at brick-and-mortar banks since credit cards are still a rare thing there.

Link

If there's a gamer on your Christmas/Chanukah/Chrismukah/Kwanzaa list, you might find Joystiq's Holiday Gift Guide for Gamers helpful. Listed in the gift guide are:

• Wii, PS3, XBox 360 — the pros and cons of each
• DS Lite and PSP — the pros and cons of each
• Must-have games for the Wii, PS3 and XBox 360
• Console peripherals — the good, the bad and the weird
• Gamer-related clothing and jewellery

Link

I saw this story on the local news in Toronto, but it's now caught the attention of the New York Times:

When Detective Sergeant Jorge Lasso of Hamilton, Ontario, wanted to circulate a surveillance video while investigating an apparent murder near a hip-hop club, he thought of his own children, who are in their 20s.

“They get all their news from the Internet,” he said. “I realized if I was going to communicate with this demographic, we were going to have to go that way.”

So rather than just giving the video — which shows two men whom the police want to question entering a nightclub — to local television stations Sgt. Lasso also posted it on YouTube.

Here's the video in question:

As Federated Media puts it: “Another example of crowdsourcing, but then good police work always has been.”

Links:

• New York Times article: Fighting Crime Using Videos on YouTube
• YouTube: Club 77 Hamilton security video

(You might want to see this earlier article, News Flash: Hollywood Depictions of Hacking and Cracking are Not Accurate!)

Although Star Trek often got computer interfaces wrong (remember the monotone voice saying “Working…” whenever the Entriprise's computer got set to a task?), there's a great truth about UI in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

In that movie, Captain Kirk and company must return to Earth in the late 1980's to retrieve a pair of humpback whales. There's a scene in which Mr. Scott asks to use a plexiglass manufacturer's computer — a Mac Plus — with funny results. First he tries speaking to the machine, which has no result. He is then handed a mouse, which he looks at quizzically and then assumes is a microphone for voice commands. Finally, he's told to just use the keyboard, to which he replies “A keyboard? How quaint!”. The odd thing is that he starts types at something resembling 200 words a minute, although it's likely he's only seen a keyboard in the 23rd century equivalent of a history book.

User interface guru Jakob Nielsen points out this nitpicker's detail — “Time travellers can use current designs” — in his top ten list of Hollywood UI bloopers. I've listed his bloopers below, but for details, go visit his site:

1. The Hero Can Immediately Use Any UI
2. Time Travelers Can Use Current Designs
3. The 3D UI
4. Integration is Easy, Data Interoperates
5. Access Denied / Access Granted
6. Big Fonts
7. Star Trek's Talking Computer
8. Remote Manipulators (Waldo Controls)
9. You've Got Mail is Always Good News
10. “This is Unix, It's Easy”

Of course, like the Hollywood depictions of computers that I blogged about earlier, these bloopers exist because they're good storytelling devices. That doesn't stop people from expecting computers to work this way, but then again, everything I know about American jurisprudence I learned from Law and Order…

Link

Steve “Micro Persuasion Rubel” points to a Comscore Media Metrix study that shows that Canada has the largest percentage of blog readers in their online population, followed by Spain, France, the U.K., Netherlands, the U.S., Italy and Germany:

As the Canadian half of Global Nerdy, I'm getting the sudden urge to re-jig my Google Ads layouts. It's Christmas, you know.

Links:

• Steve Rubel's article: Canadians, British Read Blogs More Than Americans Do
• Comscore media Metrix: The Score: Blogs Gain Favor Worldwide