I’ve been writing about this new world of mix-and-match web services for some time now so it’s great to see the concept begin to be written up by the popular press.
The next step is to boil down these API transactions to the lowest common denominator of the web, the hyperlink. The average person can then bring together their favorite services into weblog posts to add context to the results generated by each of these links. You heard it here first, the weblog is more than just a place to publish your views and point to interesting websites, it’s a lightweight development platform for us non-programmers to pull together the results of database views and add context around them.
Click to see:
– San Francisco Gas Prices
– read about Gas Prices in the San Francisco Chronicle
Each of these links are dynamic which means that the results today will be different from a month from now. The example above is basic but as you add more variables to your search these links carry with them an intelligence that can be shared and improved upon in a way that is quite powerful. No longer are you just pointing to static webpages, with these dynamic links you are pointing to dynamic views of data that are your unique view of something.
I’ve been collecting scenarios that help illustrate the power of this new world.
- Create a simple form that accepts input of your flight number >
- Submit and look up arrival city and time >
- Submit results and look up Chinese restaurants rated 3 star and above within 10 miles of airport >
- Display results
Do you have any similar scenarios?
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