More victims in the Google API Graveyard
Image via Wikipedia
On May 26th, Google announced the deprecation and/or shutdown of many of their most popular and widely developed against APIs, leaving many developers and even Google fanboys feeling dumbfounded, betrayed or at the very least neglected.
According to Google, the following APIs are now deprecated but have no scheduled shutdown date:
- Code Search API
- Diacritize API
- Feedburner APIs
- Finance API
- Power Meter API
- Sidewiki API
- Wave API
- Translate API (v2)
Meanwhile, the following APIs will be both deprecated and shut down (within 6-32 months):
- Blog Search API
- Books Data API
- Books JavaScript API (not new Books API)
- Image Search API
- News Search API
- Patent Search API
- Safe Browsing API (v1 only)
- Language API
- Translate API
- Transliterate API
- Virtual Keyboard API
- Video Search API
- Web Search API (deprecated since Nov.1st, 2010, not in this round)
Since most of the negative comments floating around the web are centered on the shocking loss of Google Translate, here are some possible Google Translate alternatives:
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The Beginning of the next-generation of BCmoney
This is the first post of the new year, and we’ve got some exciting news…
Pledge your support
As promised, we’re continuing development of the BCmoney MobileTV platform and concept, only under a new domain. We can’t give too many specific details, but we can say that we’ll be integrating some of the best open web projects out there into the new platform.
It will be built on the following three core technologies:
- Content Aggregation & Discovery service (ActivityStreams + oEmbed)
- Trusted Recommendation Engine (WebID + OpenRecommender)
- Digital Cash Micropayments (BitCoin + PaySwarm)
One of the most exciting topics on our radar for 2011 is “Crowdfunding“, or the financing of interesting and innovative projects by the community, rather than through a single investment firm or bank loan. Speaking of interesting projects, one content aggregation service we’ll be implementing in the new BCmoney will be OMP3. Also sure to deliver interesting innovations in mobile web application development will be jQuery Mobile.
Stay tuned, its sure to be an exciting year!
Is Google Making It Harder To Run A Successful Business Online?
Google refrigerator (Photo credit: Aray Chen)
Ok, despite similar accusations of monopoly attempts and/or info theft from the likes of Washington Post, NY Times, Reuters, TechCrunch, ZDnet and others; Google-bashing seems like the thing to do. I’m certainly guilty of writing yet another sensationalist and wildly accusing title pitting Google’s ever-encroaching yet seemingly undefined business model, against their supposedly well-defined “don’t be evil” motto.
Seriously though, we’re feeling this one at BCmoney all the way to the bank. Take a look at some of our latest monthly traffic logs from Google’s Index web crawler:
The growth in the size and frequency of visits by the Googlebot spider is starting to possibly interfere with regular traffic, and certainly seems excessive, when technically speaking they shouldn’t have to go much further than visiting the first few kb of any page on the BCmoney site, which has a page-rank of 4.
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What should a Virtual Currency look like?
Image via Wikipedia
Should a “Virtual Currency” be tied to real-world currencies and
available for conversion?
Should it utilize the proven money transfer services such as PayPal or MoneyBookers and existing mainstream banks’ online banking infrastructure, or establish its very own infrastructure more attuned to the real needs of finacial transactions performed via the web?
Transactions which are usually smaller and less frequent than transactions in the so-called “real world”.
Should it learn from the mistakes of the real-world paper currencies
by being backed by real physical assets such as gold or silver?
http://worldcurrencywatch.com/2009/12/22/the-only-“gold-backed”-currency-left/
http://library.thinkquest.org/28718/history.html
Should it be based on a barter or time-exchange system?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-based_currency
In the US, for example, some struggling towns have already started printing their own money to offset the effects of inflation and hopefully avoid the inflationary depression into which the the world financial system seems to be spiraling.
Should it include real-world activities via tracking mechanisms on
mobile devices as in Japan’s Osaifu Ketai (shopping) and Suica, or SONY’s Felica, used in Japanese 携帯 (Mobile devices), is one such paperless digital cash solution, using RFID to register electronic and mobile transactions.
transportation services?
http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/service/convenience/index.html#p01
http://www.jreast.co.jp/suica/
l10n Locales (HTML) select box and data (SQL)
Image via Wikipedia
L10N is an acronym that stands for Localization (coming from the 10 letters in between “L” and “N” in the word Localization). L10N is a combination of software and language targeted to a specific region’s (or more specifically – locale’s) dialect and/or socio-cultural, politically correct, visually appealing representation. The standards and specifications most commonly used to implement or develop support for L10N is ISO 3166.
While a complete list of locales is available on the ISO’s ISO-3166 website, there are no particularly easy-to-use versions of the data except for a zipped XML file. For convenience’s sake, we’re offering an L10N SQL script in an easy-to-use 2-column format, and an HTML select drop-down version below:
L10N code:
BC$ = Behavior, Content, Money
The goal of the BC$ project is to raise awareness and make changes with respect to the three pillars of information freedom - Behavior (pursuit of interests and passions), Content (sharing/exchanging ideas in various formats), Money (fairness and accessibility) - bringing to light the fact that:
1. We regularly hand over our browser histories, search histories and daily online activities to companies that want our money, or, to benefit from our use of their services with lucrative ad deals or sales of personal information.
2. We create and/or consume interesting content on their services, but we aren't adequately rewarded for our creative efforts or loyalty.
3. We pay money to be connected online (and possibly also over mobile), yet we lose both time and money by allowing companies to market to us with unsolicited advertisements, irrelevant product offers and unfairly structured service pricing plans.