New York Times’ Derek Gottfrid and NPR’s Dan Jacobson Discuss APIs

New York Times’ Derek Gottfrid and NPR’s Dan Jacobson Discuss APIs

By webmonkeyJuly 25, 2008 Categories: Platforms & APIs

Derek Gottfrid Speaking at OSCON Thursday. Photo Courtesy James Duncan Davidson/O’Reilly Media

Is the future of news in the hands of internet developers? News organizationsNew York Times and National Public Radio (NPR) think so.

O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) this week offers the opportune time for NPR and New York Timesprogrammers to discuss the release of their news source Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

NPR’s announcement came earlier in the week. NPR’s API introduces the ability to write applications surrounding public radio’s text and audio from most radio programs dating back to 1995. It was only a matter of days before Phoenix programmer John Tynan exemplified what one can do with the API by mashing up NPR headlines with a Simile Timeline visualization.

Likewise, New York Times programmer Derek Gottfrid is excited about his API. Officially on the menu: public-ready releases of some of the APIs they’ve used internally. First out of the gate later this year will be read-only APIs in distinct content segments, like movie reviews, restaurant reviews and wedding announcements.

Both APIs follow Reuter’s lead: The news agency released its API in May. If the APIs take off, soon all major global news organizations will be offering audiences ways to craft their own presentations of what the news is and what it looks like on the Web.

Wired.com took Dan Jacobson and Derek Gottfrid from NPR to a Portland restaurant to talk about their company’s news APIs...

Wordpress Adds Turbo Button Using Google Gears

By Scott Loganbill

 Wednesday is Wordpress’ five year anniversary since its original 0.7 release, and the online content management system prepared for it by going “turbo.” The online version of WordPress added a link which turns on Gears and makes your administrative dashboard faster.

Google’s recently open-sourced Gears is an add-on for Firefox 2 and 3 and Internet Explorer 6 and 7 browsers used primarily for downloading, or synchronizing, files for use locally and/or offline. When you click on the turbo link, WordPress uses Gears to download up to 200 files which speed up WordPress functions. The effect combines WordPress’ online capabilities with desktop application power by running JavaScript in the background and utilizing a local database of synchronized data.

Gears is increasingly growing more common since MySpace demonstrated Gears’ ability to speed up search and sort functions on its messaging system. MySpace and WordPress show Gears can be used for more than just offline web storage. Gears is also similar to advancements promised in web standards such as HTML 5.0, which is slowly being tuned into modern browser features. Both Gears and HTML 5.0 are a good indication of where rich internet applications of web 2.0 (3.0?) are headed.