WebServiceable » electBlake http://webserviceable.com Mashups, APIs, Custom APIs. Information Shared. Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:10:32 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 How to Create Another FTP Account in Plesk http://webserviceable.com/2009/11/23/how-to-create-another-ftp-account-in-plesk/ http://webserviceable.com/2009/11/23/how-to-create-another-ftp-account-in-plesk/#comments Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:10:32 +0000 electBlake http://webserviceable.com/?p=152 Plesk Logo

If your on Mediatemple.net (like WebServiceable.com) you are probably very pleased with the overall performance. Speed, uptime, support response and even copyright infringement accusations (:))

But the worst part about MediaTemple DVs is Plesk. Well that’s not true, plesk is great BUT there are few holes. One of which is being able to create additional ftp clients. I’ve struggled with this for ages and I decided to post the solutions that are available (as of the time of this post)

1. Create FTP Account Manually Through SSH
This process is fairly simple and is actually suggested by Plesk in their knowledge base. With that being said I do prefer the 2nd method i’ve listed after. I’ve summarized both below. (btw, thanks to marc for digging up the original plesk article for me)

NOTE: this method will not show the created ftp accounts in plesk, use the 2nd method below to have ftp users show up in plesk.

This process requires SSH access and (which has to be enabled on mediatemple) and a keyboard.

  1. ssh into your host (using terminal in osx or putty on windows)
  2. add the user with:
    /    usr/sbin/useradd -d /full/server/path/to/users/folder -s /bin/false NEW_FTP_ACCOUNT_USER_NAME
  3. add user to the ftp group “psacln” with:
    usr/sbin/usermod -G psacln NEW_FTP_ACCOUNT_USER_NAME
  4. now make sure permissions are peachy
    chmod     755 /full/server/path/to/users/folder
    chown     NEW_FTP_ACCOUNT_USER_NAME:psacln /full/server/path/to/users/folder
  5. Set password for this new user:
    passwd NEW_FTP_ACCOUNT_USER_NAME


2. Enable FTP Access for a Plesk Web User

This next method MAY create some security hole, which I don’t know about but it is alot cleaner in as it does integrate with plesk. (p.s thanks to updel.com for the original source on this)

  1. Create Web User for your domain
  2. SSH into your site as root
  3. with your favourite editor (pico/nano/vi, I like nano because its easier) open up passwd:
    nano /etc/passwd
  4. Change the uid for your new web user to the uid of default user for your ftp.

    defaultftpuser:x:10001:2524::/var/www/vhosts/domain.com:/bin/false
    newwebuser:x:10002:2524::/var/www/vhosts/domain.com/user/:/bin/false

    becomes:

    defaultftpuser:x:10001:2524::/var/www/vhosts/domain.com:/bin/false
    newwebuser:x:10001:2524::/var/www/vhosts/domain.com/user:/bin/false

    Note: that the path you see is the absolute path that the ftp user will have access to. Change this to the path you want :)

  5. Exit your editor and save.
  6. FTP IN!

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]]> http://webserviceable.com/2009/11/23/how-to-create-another-ftp-account-in-plesk/feed/ 0 Introducing Google Friend Connect API – 15 Tutorials/Resources and AJAX Playground Examples! http://webserviceable.com/2009/03/13/introducing-google-friend-connect-api-15-tutorials-and-ajax-playground-examples/ http://webserviceable.com/2009/03/13/introducing-google-friend-connect-api-15-tutorials-and-ajax-playground-examples/#comments Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:13:41 +0000 electBlake http://webserviceable.com/?p=141 Google Code Labs

Google + OAuth + OpenID = Google Friend Connect.

They’ve done it again, the boys over at google has released a full javascript API for their Friend Connect services. Which uses services like OAuth and OpenID to authenticate users on your website, and then provide all of the social networking features they want!

taken from official homepage:
“Google Friend Connect lets site owners instantly awaken and strengthen the community that visits their web site. Friend Connect:

  • Makes it easy for every site owner to add Friend Connect to their site regardless of their technical capabilities.
  • Uses open standards to let visitors control their own data and freely share it with sites and services as they see fit. Services include OpenID providers like Yahoo, social network providers like Twitter, and update aggregators like Plaxo Pulse.

Friend Connect APIs enable developers to:

  • Integrate social flows and data directly within a page’s markup, via the OpenSocial standard specification.
  • Integrate existing login systems, registered users, and existing data with new social data and activities.
  • Create social gadgets & services that are embeddable within millions of Friend Connect enabled sites.”

The factsheet, code examples, tutorials, and more after the turn!

Google Friend Connect API Factsheet

Google’s first foray into social networking with their network “Orkut.com” has had mixed reviews. With ups and downs over the years its never been a SMASHING global breakthrough (thats probably because its isolated to one country, heh)

With Friend Connect going API, Google seems to be creating a decentralized social network, using the entire internet as your homepage instead of on tiny and annoying mini-feed on your profile.

Imagine a world where 85% of the sites had Friend Connect on their site, you’d never have to register on a site again, simply type in your google creds and you’d be off to the races. I myself am a little scared of this, in recent years I’ve moved away from the google train – fearing what they will do with my personal information. I’ve been searching for a truly neutral (and yes, trendy) OpenID service that simply provides everything I need w/out tapping into my information.

Google has had many ghost stories over the years – Google Analytics results affecting Adsense Revenues, or Search Engine Optimzation. Even in my gmail I fear that google will figure out I’m Canadian and change my profile to match accordingly.

So with great power, comes great resposibility. And I know I am not going to jump full blown unto the Friend Connect train. I imagine myself registering a simple jailed user on there, to utilize the features, but I am uncomfortable putting my entire life into google’s hands…

Be sure to checkout the original news post at our friendly programmableweb.com
Google Friend Connect API

Google Friend Connect API Plugins, and CMS Related Talk

Google Friend Connect Examples

Google Friend Connect API Tutorials:

OpenSocial Wrappers and Libraries for Google Friend Connect (GFC) Serverside

If you have any specific requests or topics you’d like me to cover let me know! I’m looking for components and libraries for CodeIgniter and CakePHP now, but.. seems like people from those camps are opting to use their own ACL’s for social aspects.

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]]> http://webserviceable.com/2009/03/13/introducing-google-friend-connect-api-15-tutorials-and-ajax-playground-examples/feed/ 4 Doing the Green Thing API – Planting the seed of green into my new venture ideas. http://webserviceable.com/2009/03/01/doing-the-green-thing-api-planting-the-seed-of-green-into-my-new-venture-ideas/ http://webserviceable.com/2009/03/01/doing-the-green-thing-api-planting-the-seed-of-green-into-my-new-venture-ideas/#comments Sun, 01 Mar 2009 21:06:46 +0000 electBlake http://webserviceable.com/?p=135 green thing



Yesterday programmableweb finally made me go signup over at dothegreenthing.com, a website who’s inspirational stories, videos, and simple actions can help anyone live a greener life.

Although I have seen their logo around the net for a little while now, I’ve regretfully never taken the leap into really digging into it. With the announcement of their “Labs” and the API that it provides, green thing officially interests me.

as described at dothegreenthing.com:

“Green Thing is a public service that inspires people to lead a greener life. With the help of brilliant videos and inspiring stories etc. from creative people and community members around the world, Green Thing focuses on seven things you can do – and enjoy doing. Join people from 196 countries doing their green things and making a difference.”

With stories, help, and inspiration around our consumption (gas, heat, electricity, consumer goods, and even food!) – green thing looks to be the homebase for going green, the trendy web 2.0 and now webserviceable way :)

Lets hit a factsheet (after the turn) about green thing and take this time to credit: The programmableweb.com

green thing FactSheet

  • Homepage: dothegreenthing.com
  • API Homepage: dothegreenthing.com/labs/homepage
  • API Access Control: Open for anonymous pulling of data (stories, green actions, etc). You do need to use their user api to authenticate to add stories and manage the various content on site.
  • API Abilities: Get All Content on Site, Comment on Items, Get Lists of Green Actions, Add “Likes” to Content, Manage Stories, Report Content.
  • ProgrammableWeb API Listing

I’ve done my classic research again and found a few little gems that green thing has been doing.

Current green thing mashups and projects

  • green thing facebook app! – yes, its true. I deleted facebook a couple of months ago, so I’m not sure how glorious it is, but if anyone has an inside look, let me know! This is an official app made by dothegreenthing.com and in a reply to a thread on their forums by what looks to be a staffer, it looks like this was the first encarnation of the green thing api (I guess thats why we see v2.dothegreenthing.com in the urls ;) )
  • embedit.me – Video Upload and Mirroring Service. Not really a green thing mashup, but its listed as the first API that the green thing developers made while creating this v2 of greenthing.

Now, I did say that this has sparked a few ideas. Right now, the first things that come to mind are services in a support capacity to the greenthing site itself. I’ll run through some now.

  • green thing life stream - your going to hear more about it, and I’m trying to figure out how I want to get into this myself, but life streams are basically an aggregation of your life online. Generally they take your last.fm favourites, flickr photos, youtube favourites, twitter posts etc (whatever services you use to express yourself) and put them into a little stream of events that make up your online life. (freiendfeed is an early adopter of this)

    For green thing, I imagine a very simple system that you insert your green thing id, and your twitter id and it cross-posts. Using a common tag like #greenlife (as can be seen with #tcamp09)

  • green thing badges – its bound to happen from the official site, but if your quick you can jump on this now. Give basic updates from your green thing profile with links to stories, comments, etc.etc.etc.
  • green thing + kiva.org? – thats right, I posted abunch about Kiva.org’s Person-to-Person lending API last month and I think its about time we bring it back. A marriage between these services could be the final installment to a long road of activism. Poverty + Green Living. Having a site that lent money to people who were making a real attempt to lower their carbon footprint and live a greener life seems like a juste cause.

    What if a small business signed up on green thing and got indivual funding by people who supported their green goals in the business world? Hrrrrrrm….

  • green thing + green.cbc.ca – Here in Canada we have had a national program called “One Million Acts of Green”, a website and program whose goal was to accumulate one million acts of green. It is currently at 1.2 million acts of green with a greenhouse gas savings of: 70 MILLLION Kg.

    So how about a marriage of greenthing’s api and a custom api for green.cbc.ca to report a group or a challenges’ stories and progress.

I hinted at the begining of this post that although I do recycle, I am not incredibly involved in the green movement. That being said, and truth being told, I was really into it as a child – I actually went to “Environmental Camp” while my friends were at Hockey Camp. (Yes, I played hockey too, but I sucked)

I know there are tons of people who ARE very green and who live their lives by many of the goals of green thing. Please comment and fill me (and you readers out there) in on what we’re missing. I’ll leave you with some links.

Follow green thing in the socialsphere (some of the ways, they have them all)

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]]> http://webserviceable.com/2009/03/01/doing-the-green-thing-api-planting-the-seed-of-green-into-my-new-venture-ideas/feed/ 0 How to Create a GreaseMonkey Script using JQuery and SelectorGadget http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/27/how-to-create-a-greasemonkey-script-using-jquery-and-selectorgadget/ http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/27/how-to-create-a-greasemonkey-script-using-jquery-and-selectorgadget/#comments Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:16:13 +0000 electBlake http://webserviceable.com/?p=109 Hello Hello,

I am here again, only an hour after I originally posted about this great new tool to give you a tutorial I quickly wrapped up about using the SelectorGadget Bookmarklet Tool and JQuery to create a simple GreaseMonkey userscript.

SelectorGadget Background

SelectorGadget is a great new bookmarklet tool that you can use on any website to select html elements on the page dynamically! The real power of SelectorGadget is that is that it automatically selects similar elements! So as you select what you want and don’t want, it will work towards selecting the exact elements on the page you want, for example the titles of blog posts! (I’ll give a tutorial below)

The Official Description is (lifted from the official homepage)

“SelectorGadget is an open source bookmarklet that makes CSS selector generation and discovery on complicated sites a breeze. Just drag the bookmarklet to your bookmark bar, then go to any page and press it. A box will open in the bottom right of the website. Click on a page element that you would like your selector to match (it will turn green). SelectorGadget will then generate a minimal CSS selector for that element, and will highlight (yellow) everything that is matched by the selector.”

If you go to the SelectorGadget Homepage you can see a great tutorial video on the basics on using SelectorGadget, I’ll quickly run through the minimal installation process to save you click around until you want to do your additional research :)

How to Install SelectorGadget

  1. Go to the SelectorGadget Homepage
  2. Scroll to the bottom of the page and find the  link “Drag this link to your bookmark bar: SelectorGadget“
    note: you can drag the link above into your toolbar, but it is highly recommended you go to the official website to get the latest version.
  3. Drag the link “SelectGadget” into your toolbar.
  4. You should now see a link that looks like: SelectorGadget Bookmarklet in Toolbar
  5. Your good to go!

Ok, now that you have the bookmarklet installed, lets take a look at a tutorial to get your started.

SelectorGadget + JQuery Tutorial to Create a GreaseMonkey Script

GreaseMonkey is a platform for installing little javascript applications to change the websites you view. GreaseMonkey can all links to download files located on a page, and can even pre-load information or load widget from other sites entirely!

If your curious about GreaseMonkey you can read about what it is here or just install the firefox plugin here

Tutorial Goal

In this tutorial we are going to add google search icons to each post listed on TechCrunch.com

The TechCrunch Improved View GreaseMonkey Tutorial

  1. Browse to TechCrunch.com and Click on the SelectorGadget Bookmarklet

    You should see the SelectorGadget widget on your screen like so: SelectGadget Widget

  2. Now Click on the title of a news post, and you should see it turn green to indicate it’s been selected.

    You will also see yellow highlights on the screen, these are the elements that SelectorGadget’s engine believes you want to select also:

    picture-12

  3. We only want the titles for this tutorial so lets hover over one of the highlighten areas and click to remove them.

    You’ll notice that it turns orange to show that it will be taken out of the SelectorGadget selection and the engine should re-adjust its auto-selection to meet your needs:

    picture-13

  4. Now you should have only the titles selected!

    picture-14

  5. Now you have a clean CSS Selector you can use.

    The SelectorGadget Widget now gives a very clean CSS Selector you can use in ANY of you applications, ours is:
    .excerpt_header a

    picture-15

    In my original post I explained some of the uses I could imagine for SelectorGadget, feel free to check those out now :)

  6. This tutorials goal focused on the Widget itself, so I won’t go into ALOT of depth with the GreaseMonkey widget, but I’ll explain how this selector is used in a userscript :)

    I promised JQuery for this tutorial, so I am going to use the following simple integration I found here: http://internetducttape.com/2008/05/08/greasemonkey-ninja-jquery/

  7. The Template for this Userscript can be found in: jquery-template.js

    The important section (and the only section we really need to change is):

    // All your GM code must be inside this function
    function letsJQuery() {

    // CODE GOES HERE

    }

  8. Now lets grab the titles of the page using jquery:

    titles = $(’.excerpt_header a’);

  9. Now that we have an array of the titles in JQuery, we can add a link!

    First we pull the text from the title of the news post, and then add a little google icon which links to the google search for that news post:

    $(titles).each(function(i) {
    title_text = $(this).attr(’innerHTML’);
    $(this).after(’<a style=”margin:5px;” target=”_blank” href=”http://google.com/search?q=’+title_text+’”><img src=”http://www.mindzilla.com/grabicon.cgi/google.png?uri=google.com&format=png” alt=”Search on Google.com” /></a>’);
    }

    (you’ll notice I use a webservice to grab google’s icon, I’m lazy and I think for this tutorial its fine, this script is not ment for production use)

  10. Now, if you install this user script, you can see that it adds google links to all of the titles at TechCrunch.com!

  11. You can install this tutorials userscript by browsing to: webserviceable.com/dev/techcrunch_improved_view.user.js

    You’ll know see little google icons on every post at techcrunch.com!

    SelectorGadget + JQuery + GreaseMonkey on TechCrunch.com!

  12. Oops! If you were following the tutorial exactly, you’ll have noticed that the script doens’t work on the post view.

    We can fix that in a snap! Simply repeat the steps above but on any of the post pages at TechCrunch.com, and you will be given a css selector for the title on post pages that looks like this:

    picture-17

  13. Now we add this selector into our script in the exact same way we did before and we have a working script!

Ok, so thats it! Enjoy the tutorial, and leave any comments if you want some clarification. Be sure to checkout the final version of the userscript techcrunch_improved_view.user.js

as a round-up I’ll make a nice list of the technologies mentioned and the links to learn about them.

SelectorGadget

An innovating and intelligent HTML selecting engine for generating dynamic css selectors

JQuery

Very popular javascript framework

GreaseMonkey

A very cool javascript plugin engine for your browser that allows you to add functionality/information to any website.

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]]> http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/27/how-to-create-a-greasemonkey-script-using-jquery-and-selectorgadget/feed/ 4 Introducing SelectorGadget – Dapper Style DOM Selection for JQuery, Javascript, and beyond http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/27/introducing-selectorgadget-dapper-style-dom-selection-for-jquery-javascript-and-beyond/ http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/27/introducing-selectorgadget-dapper-style-dom-selection-for-jquery-javascript-and-beyond/#comments Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:30:57 +0000 electBlake http://webserviceable.com/?p=105 InspectorGadget+ JQuery = ?

I caught a jquery tweet today that linked me to an interesting little helper bookmarklet called “SelectorGadget”.

“SelectorGadget is an open source bookmarklet that makes CSS selector generation and discovery on complicated sites a breeze.”

SelectorGadget, is a very easy to use bookmarklet that can be used on any website of your choosing (Although someone in the comments DID have a problem with scraping a site that is NTFW ;) )

To get started with SelectorGadget, head over to their humble website, and install the bookmarklet and watch the video. Anyone with experience in Data Extraction (Hpricot or Beautiful Soup – as the website suggests), will immedately see the benefits of this little application.

With apparent support from JQuery, and its open-source repository over at github, I think SelectorGadget will be able to spawn alot of interest within the various Javascript and DOM Selection/Extraction camp’s around the internet.

Some ideas for you guys to dig your teeth into after the fold.

My Forseeable Uses for SelectorGadget and its Algorythms:

  1. Speed up creation of GreaseMonkey userscripts(.org) for those of us who rely on JQuery for our javascript prowess.
  2. Make DOM Selection in your own Javascript Applications (jquery included), MUCH MUCH easier
  3. Dynamic JQuery plugins for data extraction – Make more versitile plugins to manage dynamic datasets.
    • For Example:
      • Creation a plugin that adds dom to specific element types of a page (mp3 player to mp3 links)
      • Generalize the selection of the mp3 links
      • Drop in mp3 player plugin to any page w/out any need to initilize
  4. Creation of your own Dapper Engine????????
    • For instance if you could (hypothetically) get jaxer running this javascript selection engine. Then maybe… you could be running a serverside DOM Selector engine with native ajax-scraping abilities…Hrrmm…
  5. Quick Ruby Data Extraction & Screen Scraping
    • Hpricot, or better yet scrubyt, OR even better still skimr (the re-factored scrubyt for those of you who have been paying attention)
  6. SelectorGadget to phpQuery ? – phpQuery is a dom selector engine for php designed to be a port of JQuery to php. Its pretty good but a little slow for my liking.

The Death of PHP in Data Extraction

Yes, I am calling it. This is not breaking news as Ruby’s scrubyt (and its driving forces WWW:Mechanize and Hpricot), have been dominating the “custom api creation” process for awhile now. Still, php is so common and easy to get up and running its hard for me drop it all together.

Software like SelectorGadget gives me even more reason to move away from php and work on my Ruby development more. As an interim solution (in the interest of time) I imagine myself using Ruby for my data and php for my presentation.

OR, if I can finally get a solid native jaxer server running I could simply use my javascript skills to properly deploy my data extraction javascript applications. (If your a jaxer master, please message me, I’ve tried numerous times with limited success)

Until I am a ruby master (which might take time as I’m learning far too many languages atm), I am going to see what I can hack out of the SelectorGadget engine. Its algorithms might unlock a very cool selector engine for php (aka an improved or refactored phpQuery ;) )


Anyway, I think SelectorGadget has ALOT of promise and I see this accomplishment echoing through a lot of different technologies and software. I know I am going to dig into it and see what I can do. I’ll be sure to report all of my findings to you good people.

Happy api’ing.

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]]> http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/27/introducing-selectorgadget-dapper-style-dom-selection-for-jquery-javascript-and-beyond/feed/ 3 Drop.io for PHP, iPhone, Ruby and Additional Tutorials / Resources http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/14/dropio-for-php-iphone-ruby-and-additional-tutorials-resources/ http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/14/dropio-for-php-iphone-ruby-and-additional-tutorials-resources/#comments Sat, 14 Feb 2009 15:16:21 +0000 electBlake http://webserviceable.com/?p=87 Drop.io

I was doing some follow-up on my old posts (the 6 of them, heh) and I realized I didn’t post any good tutorials or resources for the drop.io post, I’ll organize them into languages and you can take it from there.

The resources after the fold :)

PHP Drop.io Libraries and Resources

iPhone aka Objective-C Drop.io Libraries and Resources

  • DropKit – Objective-C or iPhone Drop.io API Wrapper and Library via drop.io/DropKit

  • Droppler - The first iPhone drop.io app!

Ruby Drop.io Libraries and Resources

  • Drop.io Ruby Gem – I believe this is the official repository as I did read on the google group that drop.io dev team would be releasing a ruby library @ rubyforge.net

Other

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]]> http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/14/dropio-for-php-iphone-ruby-and-additional-tutorials-resources/feed/ 1 Facebook + GMail, Xoopit’s Updated Plugin http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/13/facebook-gmail-xoopits-updated-plugin/ http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/13/facebook-gmail-xoopits-updated-plugin/#comments Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:30:56 +0000 electBlake http://webserviceable.com/?p=81 Xoopit

Just announced and covered by readwriteweb.com, Xoopit – a firefox plugin that allows integration of Youtube, Flickr, Picasa (and more) into GMail – just announced in their recent update to their plugin, they now allow users to set/update facebook status’, browse friend status’ and photos – right from gmail.

Pretty cool mixture right? For those of us who spend alot of time on http://mail.google.com and probably have it permenantly open and love facebook (I don’t, I deleted it. Its a weird wiretap on my life), Xoopit’s plugin looks to be a perfect fit!

It looks like they are wrangling support for yahoo mail as well, so fear not you yahoosters.

Read the full story at readwriteweb.com or browse the plugin page

The feature set of xoopit is as follows:

Search and Browse Attachments and Media

Xoopit allows you to earch your stuff, not your messages. Xoopit upgrades Gmail search to show you the photos, videos and files that match what you are looking for. Browse photos and videos from YouTube, Flickr, Shutterfly, Kodak and Picasa. Links sent to you are automatically collected, saving you the hassle of going to these sites. Get out of Attachment Hell…easily find and access your files in Gmail. Never misplace an attachment again. All of these files and photos can be easily shared with friends, posted to your blog or shared on Facebook.

Compose a Mail by Searching

Quickly search for web links, maps and videos on the web and add them to the mail you are composing. For example, just type in the name of the restaurant you want to go to. Select the Maps feature and add a map and link to Google driving directions directly into your mail.

Your Email Social Graph Revealed

Xoopit exposes information about all the senders on a thread. See their profile pics, recent conversations and all the attachments and media they have sent you.

Under the Covers

Xoopit’s innovations deliver the next generation of search, productivity, and social media applications to Internet users. Our passion is in building smart, simple applications that work for you. We’ve all grown tired of fussing with applications to get things done. Xoopit was founded to solve some of the most basic Internet application problems we face everyday.


Facebook chat from within gmail? maybe. Just wait and see – you’re almost there.

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]]> http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/13/facebook-gmail-xoopits-updated-plugin/feed/ 0 Yahoo BOSS Goes Commercial + SearchMonkey – Get Started Now – PHP/JS/Ruby API Wrappers and Tutorials! http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/13/yahoo-boss-goes-commercial-searchmonkey-get-started-now-phpjsruby-api-wrappers-and-tutorials/ http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/13/yahoo-boss-goes-commercial-searchmonkey-get-started-now-phpjsruby-api-wrappers-and-tutorials/#comments Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:47:15 +0000 electBlake http://webserviceable.com/?p=78 Yahoo BOSS - Build Your Own Search ServiceYahoo SearchMonkey Yahoo

In an indepth preview and announcement by Yahoo, we see a big move in the tiered pay/free API ecosystem. No doubt fueled by the current economic climate and the fight for Yahoo to make a comeback, Yahoo’s BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service) will go paid in Q2 of this year.

Not all is lost, there are open pricing schemes and from what I can see up to 10k requests a day will still be free, so – you can still get your Kiva.org search engine going for free, but if it actually works out, you’re going to need to pay for it.

There is even more good news,
I swear I heard about this earlier this week (very shortly after the Kiva announcement) but I can’t find the post, but anyway… Yahoo will offer SearchMonkey integration into BOSS! This is very cool, and my mind has been flying through ideas since this annoucement. SearchMonkey is basically a service for “enhancing” yahoo search results with additional metadata. Ex. a search for a movie showing showtimes and rottentomatoe links right in the search!

Now that you’ve herd all about news with these API Services from Yahoo lets throw down some factsheets, explanations, api classes, and tutorials to help out some of the non-know’rs after the turn.

Yahoo BOSS - Build Your Own Search Service

What is Yahoo BOSS

“BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) is Yahoo!’s open search web services platform. The goal of BOSS is simple: to foster innovation in the search industry. Developers, start-ups, and large Internet companies can use BOSS to build and launch web-scale search products that utilize the entire Yahoo! Search index. BOSS gives you access to Yahoo!’s investments in crawling and indexing, ranking and relevancy algorithms, and powerful infrastructure.”
basically, you can build your own search engine using yahoo’s resources

Yahoo BOSS Factsheet

  • Also Known As: Yahoo Build Your Own Search Service
  • What is it: Yahoo has offered for awhile now the ability for users to create their own search engines, giving the ability to tap into the Yahoo Index’ed pages based on your own Keyword search.
  • API Home: http://developer.yahoo.com/search/boss
  • API Signup: developer.yahoo.com/wsregapp/
  • API Requirements: YahooID
  • Pricing: First 10k Requests Free, Tiered pricing based on search category + peek hours etc. This is new with the annoucement preferenced at the top of the page. With each unit costing 10 cents, we can see the pricing chart below taken from the Yahoo BOSS Pricing page

read full coverage here on Yahoo BOSS announcement here, or grab php,ruby,js wrappers and tutorials below!

Yahoo BOSS Programming Wrappers, Tutorials, Resources and Links!

What is Yahoo Search Monkey?

Originally developed as an add-on to the yahoo.com search results, SearchMonkey is now available to BOSS! Which means that you can create a SearchMonkey and then use it on your own site and offer it to the public doing searches on yahoo.com. A play on “GreaseMonkey” (which is designed to rock your work by offering javascript plugins for your browser, I reccomend it heavily! userscripts.org), SearchMonkey writes plugins for your Yahoo Search.

“Using SearchMonkey, developers and site owners can use structured data to make Yahoo! Search results more useful and visually appealing, and drive more relevant traffic to their sites.

How does it work?
The SearchMonkey developer tool helps you find and construct data services that you can use to build apps. Once you’ve built your app, you can use it yourself and share it with others.”

Yahoo Search Monkey Factsheet

Yahoo SearchMonkey Tutorials, Resources, Links

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]]> http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/13/yahoo-boss-goes-commercial-searchmonkey-get-started-now-phpjsruby-api-wrappers-and-tutorials/feed/ 0 The Kiva.org Update – KivaCloud Webapp & Ruby Kiva API Wrapper? http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/11/kivacloud-view-kivaorg-datasets/ http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/11/kivacloud-view-kivaorg-datasets/#comments Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:42:57 +0000 electBlake http://webserviceable.com/?p=64 Kiva.org
Thats right, I just posted about its launch yesterday, and already Kiva.org developers are hawt to trawt. I’ve been following the Kiva.org Google Group and I found that one dedicated and altruistic developer is creating a Ruby Wrapper for Kiva! (you can find it at the almighty github)

Now, thats not is, another developer created a “KivaCloud”, designed to show and navigate through the Kiva.org datasets. A great little webapp created by smoovej on the build.kiva.org google group

viewable at: http://www.frazao.org/kivacloud/

viewable at: http://www.frazao.org/kivacloud/

Not bad for a days work right? People are really jumping on Kiva.org! I look forward to what happens next!

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]]> http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/11/kivacloud-view-kivaorg-datasets/feed/ 0 Kiva – Person to Person Lending (now API) http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/11/kiva-person-to-person-lending-now-api/ http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/11/kiva-person-to-person-lending-now-api/#comments Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:36:30 +0000 electBlake http://webserviceable.com/?p=61

Kiva.org is the worlds first person-to-person lending services who’s goal is to alleviate poverty. Nice huh? Recently covered and added to the programmableweb directory, Kiva’s will allow developers some great access to their site and services allowing normal joes and janes (such as yourself) to help build a socially concious application!

Introducing its developer blog, and developer homepage, Kiva looks to support its developers with a wiki, great documentation and more!

There have already been 2 visualizations of the Kiva network, check them out below!

Factsheet

Kiva Tutorials, Resources, and Links!


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]]> http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/11/kiva-person-to-person-lending-now-api/feed/ 0