Nicholas Schlueter

I am a developer rather than a writer or great thinker or futurist. But I think it's obvious that JavaScript APIs will give access to more and more data. I was critical of some of Google’s decisions in their AJAX Search API, but despite my nitpicking they are exposing their entire database and it couldn’t be easier to use. Obviously, they couldn’t send you their entire database, instead they send you a small amount of JS to get you started. Then when you ask for more, they happily send what you ask for. But Google wants to make sure you aren’t greedy. By making the API JS it helps them protect their data. It seems counterintuitive at first. A typical REST or SOAP api is very easy to harvest, because once you have the client built you can just writ... (more)