Curated

News

These are news items I've curated in my Google Reader, Twitter and bookmarking using Pinboard. Sometimes I add a little commentary to each post.

I use many of these curated links in my research and writing. If you are interested in receivig data feeds of all my curated, please let me know.

Unification of Text and Binary File APIs

www.codeproject.com on 05/03/2013

Excerpt: For C/C++ programmers, the standard way to write and read files are through the C file API and C++ file streams. Because of its cryptic and unintuitive class and function names, I have always found C++ file streams 'too difficult' to use whereas C file API are not type-safe. In this article, I am going to introduce my own type-safe file library, which is based on C file API, unifies the text file and binary file APIs in an almost seamless way. There are still some difference between the text and binary APIs where it makes absolute no sense to make them similar. The library is meant to write and read structured data, meaning to say write and read integers, boolean, floats, strings and so on.... read the full post.

Tags: , API-Evangelist, API-Stack

We’re halfway toward artificially intelligent robotic bees

feedproxy.google.com on 05/03/2013

Excerpt: Summary: Harvard researchers have created a working prototype of a robotic bee, although the next steps of making it wireless and giving it a powerful brain could prove challenging. Remember those artificially intelligent robotic bees I wrote about in October? Well, it turns out they’re already on a good pace toward being reality: The RoboBees project at Harvard has been flying prototype bees for months, and the next step is equipping them with brains. That the bees, which are described as being half the size of a paperclip and weighing less than a tenth of a gram, can fly at all is an engineering marvel in its own right given their minute size.... read the full post.

Tags: , API-Evangelist, API-Stack, Robotics

What To Learn From 1 Million Payments On Android?

blog.fortumo.com on 05/03/2013

Excerpt: Fortumo processes hundreds of thousands of payments each day. In order to help developers using Fortumo maximize their revenue, we recently extracted one million payments conducted on Android randomly from our database. Some of the more interesting findings from this data is presented on the infographic to the right – click on it to see a full version. As the infographic does not tell the full story, here are the key takeaways to consider when planning for payments on Android: Android OS is fragmented: 27. 7% of users make payments on Android Gingerbread (2. 3. 6) – a version of the operating system launched in September 2011. An additional 18% use an even older version of Android.... read the full post.

Tags: , Android, API-Evangelist, API-Stack, Mobile, Payments, Story

White House Releases We the People API to the Public

blog.programmableweb.com on 05/03/2013

Excerpt: Back in February, ProgrammableWeb reported that The White House had released a new We the People API to a select group of developers at the February 2013 White House Open Data Day Hackathon. The White House has now announced that the read-only version of the We the People API has been released to the public. We the People Petition Mapper App – Screenshot of Live Demo The read-only version of the We the People API allows developers access to the data on all publicly-available petitions (petitions that pass the 150 signature threshold requirement become publicly-available on the We The People site). There is also a bulk data download (SQL dump) available for developers who do not need real-time petition data.... read the full post.

Tags: , API-Evangelist, API-Stack, Federal Government, Petitions

Amazon Web Services evangelist Jeff Barr embarking on cloud-powered cross-country road trip

thenextweb.com on 05/02/2013

Excerpt: Amazon Web Services principal evangelist Jeff Barr is embarking on an AWS Road Trip that involves driving across the country to promote the cloud platform. The trip will kick off on May 12 in Boston, with Barr working his way back west across the continental US to arrive back in Amazon’s backyard of Seattle. Barr outed the trip on the AWS blog back in March. The finalized schedule is now up at AWSroadtrip. com. Here’s his itinerary: Week 1 Monday, May 13 – Boston, MA Boston AWS Meetup. Tuesday, May 14 – Philadelphia, PA – Philly Stop (Philly DevOps and PhillyAWS. Wednesday, May 15 – Pittsburgh, PA – Pittsburgh AWS Meetup. Thursday, May 16 – Roanoke, Virginia – Roanoke Valley. NET User Group.... read the full post.

Tags: , API-Evangelist, API-Stack, AWS, Cloud Computing

Article Search API: Version 2

open.blogs.nytimes.com on 05/02/2013

Excerpt:... read the full post.

Tags: , API-Evangelist, API-Stack, Articles, News, Newspaper

BlackBerry 10: The HTML5 Scorecard

www.sencha.com on 05/02/2013

Excerpt: In our last HTML5 scorecard, we took a look at the Microsoft Surface vs. the iPad gen4 and gave our nod to the iPad as the best HTML5 platform on tablets. This time, we’re putting the just launched BlackBerry Z10 running the new BlackBerry 10 OS through the test wringer. Going in, we were expecting very good things from the Z10. Last year, we gave a thumbs up to the Playbook OS2 HTML5 experience, and had good experiences with pre-release versions of the Z10 when developing Sencha Touch 2. 2. So, prejudices firmly in mind, we headed out to a Best Buy and got ourselves a Z10 for scorecard testing.... read the full post.

Tags: , API-Evangelist, API-Stack, BaaS, Blackberry, Mobile

eBay Joining Google, Facebook, and Amazon in Race to Become Next Major Ad Network

www.hasoffers.com on 05/02/2013

Excerpt: eBay recently announced it will follow Google, Amazon, and Facebook’s lead and allow third-party marketers to access eBay’s user data for targeted advertising outside of the eBay ecosystem (i. e. on the third-party’s website). Previously, eBay only used its data for advertising on its own sites. This is a strong signal that eBay views itself as a major player in the lucrative advertising game. The company is positioning itself to extend beyond its role as a premier publisher and transform into a major ad network. It’s a natural step for eBay and its competitors, and one with dollar signs written all over it.... read the full post.

Tags: , Advertising, Amazon, API-Evangelist, API-Stack, Ebay, Facebook, Google

Fixing bus routes using mobile data

flowingdata.com on 05/02/2013

Excerpt: In parts of the world where there are few smartphones and GPS-enabled devices, transportation architecture has to be designed based on less granular resources, such as surveys, which can result in rough estimates. IBM researchers are looking into how data from simple cell phones can be used instead to see how people move. The IBM work centered on Abidjan, where 539 large buses are supplemented by 5,000 mini-buses and 11,000 shared taxis. The IBM researchers studied call records from about 500,000 phones with data relevant to the commuting question. While the data is rough—and of course not everyone on a bus has a phone or is using it—routes can be gleaned by noting the sequence of connections.... read the full post.

Tags: , API-Evangelist, API-Stack, Civic, Mobile, Story

GreenButton Releases Updated SDK and New Management API Allowing Compute-Intensive Applications to be Scaled Out in the Cloud

blog.programmableweb.com on 05/02/2013

Excerpt: GreenButton, a New Zealand based company that helps software vendors transition applications to the cloud, has announced the release of the new and improved GreenButton SDK that includes a brand new REST Management API. Image Credit: GreenButton GreenButton is a platform that makes it possible for compute-intensive applications to be scaled out in the cloud. Examples of such applications include traditional High Performance Computing (HPC) applications, large scale Big Data analytics, and high computational bespoke enterprise workloads. Using the GreenButton platform, large scale, compute intensive applications can be ran in the cloud without the need to invest in a data center or additional infrastructure.... read the full post.

Tags: , API-Evangelist, API-Stack, Cloud Computing