Publishing Open Data - Do you really need an API?

As open data is gaining momentum an increasing number of organizations are thinking about ways to make their data available for others to use. Here are some thought on how to approach design issues when making open government data available. TL;DR See if it is possible to publish your open data as file dumps instead of building advanced API:s that force entrepreneurs to integrate their apps with your infrastructure. A fictional background It was supposed to be a regular day for John at the server facility at the government weather agency....

March 19, 2012 · Peter Krantz

Integrating Yahoo Search in a Django site in 5 easy steps

I have been experimenting with various search options for the eutveckling.se site for a while. Google Custom Search is nice and very fast, but the number of ads appearing in the search result page makes it difficult for users to separate result items from ads. (Update: I am sticking with Google Custom Search until I figure out how to get Yahoo search to present proper excerpts). I am a fast reader which comes with the tradeoff of missing important information sometimes....

December 18, 2008 · Peter Krantz

Building your own Twitter client with Fluid and jQuery

Like many before me, I was searching (unsuccessfully) for a decent twitter client. There are many, but most seem to be ad sponsored or based on a rather hefty framework like AIR (which by now, I guess, has been silently installed on my computer anyhow). Update: This project is now deprecated and Twitter has removed basic authentication. Custom apps have major implications for usability so I decided to roll my own....

July 31, 2008 · Peter Krantz