Global Nerdy

Work these days has been keeping both me and George busy, but the Blogger's Credo (“No posting, no world domination!”) tugs at our souls, telling us to keep blogging. There'll be some of the usual editorializing and smart-ass commnetary later on today, but in the meantime, here are the news tidbits that have caught our interest:

• New York Times – Offline Involuntarily: It used to be that finding a hotel that offered high-speed internet connection in your hotel room was a rare treat. Nowadays, we want WiFi in our rooms. The tech may have changed, but the problem remains the same: how do we get a solid, consistent, reliable connection at our hotels, and what are they doing to make the experience better?
• Top 10 Apps for Laptop-Toting Mac Users: I do most of my work on my trusty 12″ 1.33GHz G4 PowerBook, just like the author of this piece who recommends: Sidetrack, Menufela, Stoplight, Letterbox, Virtue Desktops, QuickSilver, CornerClick, Sidenote, fKeys and Noise.
• Time Declares the PlayStation 3 a Bust: It's incredibly expensive, damned close to unavailable, has very few titles — all of which are “launch titles”, which are notorious for not being terribly representative to the machine's capabilities, and it's been beaten on the “fun” front by the Wii and the “hardcore gamer” front by the XBox 360. Gee, where do I sign up for one?
• Natali Del Conte's Departure from TechCrunch: Was it boorish comments from the boys' club that is high-tech or was she too thin-skinned to play in the blogosphere? Various blogs weign in: Deep Jive Interests, Shelley Powers, Down the Avenue and of course, Valleywag.
• Google's “Site Status” Tool: It's a quick little tool that lets you enter your site's URL: it tells you whether pages from your site are in Google's index and when Google last indexed your site. The results page also tells you that “you could find out more if you used Google Webmaster Tools…”
• Opera's Wii browser: A trial version for the Wii is expected to be available this Friday, and Opera's put out a comic to announce it.

Okay, maybe the joke in the title is “phoned in”, but it's late and I'm tired.

The quick summary: without much fanfare, Google has deprecated its SOAP API for search. The API will still be available to current users, but they've stopped issuing API keys for the SOAP service, and updates to the SOAP API have stopped. They're encouraging developers to switch to their Ajax API, which isn't as flexible in both the technological or terms-of-use senses.

Developers looking for a search engine with a decent API should take a look at Yahoo!'s Search API, which is not only available for use, but also REST based (which is a great deal less painful to code for).

Link

Scienceline answers the question “How do motion-sensing videogame controllers work?” In the case of the Wiimote, it's a combination of accelerometers…

…thinner than a penny, small enough to fit twelve on a postage stamp, and sell for under $6 a piece. They can accurately measure forces more than three times stronger than the pull of gravity in three directions – up and down, side to side, and forward and back. The chips also use gravity to determine the orientation of the controller, whether you’re holding it vertically like a golf club or horizontally like a gun.

…coupled with an infrared sensor placed by the television that determined where on the screen the Wiimote is being pointed.

The article points out that only small motions are necessary to use the Wiimote, but most people like to swing it as if it were a real weapon or sports gear:

Click to see the comic at full size on its original page.

Links:

• Scienceline: How Do Motion-Sensing Video Game Controllers Work?
• Penny Arcade comic on Wiimote playing styles

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.

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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