Scripting News for 7/4/2007

It’s the API 

Nik Cubrilovic: Twitter v Pownce: It’s The API, Stupid.

The API is why Twitter is a coral reef, and Pownce is just a shipwreck.

Twitter, to me, is a very thin app, on top of a bare-bones identity system with a clean and simple API, very lightweight (and therefore not very secure, not suitable for banking applications, for example). And for not very much more complexity it’s also a pub-sub system (not IM, though many people confuse it with IM).

It’s one of the 25 most interesting pieces of software I’ve ever seen, not because of its technical prowess, rather because it is not technically impressive. You can master it as a platform in a matter of days. With good sample code (which I didn’t have) probably in hours.

Doing my part 

Don Park, who I know to be a reasonable and fair person to do business with (I have experience), had a terrible experience with Magnussen’s Toyota of Palo Alto.

Part of the power of blogs is that we get to share our experiences, so we can avoid businesses that take their customers for granted. There are lots of Toyota dealers, and many of them are a pleasure to work with; again I speak from experience.

I drive a Toyota myself, purchased at Lighthouse Toyota in St Augustine, FL (turn down the volume before clicking that link). I’m sure I paid more than I had to, and there were problems with the deal, but they took care of them, and in the end I felt good about the purchase.

There’s a big Toyota dealer in Berkeley, I’ve had to bring my car in for service there, and likewise, they’ve done a good job, and treated me with professional care. I managed to blow out all four of my tires (they’re run-flat tires, a terrible design, imho), and they replaced them at no charge. I wasn’t even their customer. How about that!

If Apple had *really* wanted to be revolutionary 

They would have made a wifi-only cell phone.

I wrote about this earlier this year. As I talk with people from home on my iPhone it seems so silly. The place is saturated with wifi bandwidth, and the device uses it, for everything but telephone calls.

6/15/07: “You gotta wonder why Apple went with such old, expensive, customer-hostile and likely obsolete technology.”

And then I read this article by David Pogue in today’s Times saying that T-Mobile introduced a phone last week, in the middle of all the iPhone euphoria, that routes phone calls over wifi if a signal is present.

Seems the iPhone should be doing that.

Good morning everybody! 

Happy July 4.

Got some great tunes on the iPod, ready to rock.

First song this morning is an old fave.

Baba O’Reilly by The Who.

It’s the song you think should be called Teenage Wasteland.

And the last line is “We’re all wasted!”

Pretty funny.

Then there’s the famous Bob Dylan song.

Subterranean Homesick Blues.

Ever notice there are lots of parking meters on Scripting News? There’s a reason why.

Except I had forgotten what it is.

A friend asked if it wasn’t the Beatles song.

Lovely Rita Meter Maid.

I said sure, if you want.

But that wasn’t it.

It was the line in Dylan’s song.

Don’t follow leaders…

You know the rest. 🙂