Yesterday was a really exciting day at SXSW. We saw some movie stars, AOL won a prestigious web award, and we took on a bunch of other geeks in a ho-down at the bowling alley. A few years ago, Arrested Development was my favorite show on TV (old episodes can be found on hulu.com), and without a doubt that show launched the career of Michael Cera from Superbad and Juno, and it also reinforced the fact that Jeffery Tambour was one of the best comedic actors around. Today he was at SXSW and it was very cool to meet him.
This evening, Kevin Lawver’s Ficlets which was nominated for two web awards at SXSW, won the award for site with best CSS. Congrats to Kevin and all the folks who worked on it. For those who do not know, Ficlets is a community short story fiction writing site where stories can be strung together and shared with others.
As the web awards were going on, the Open AIM group here attending the conference went to Bowling For Geeks. In a competition between 50 teams bowling two games each, we came in toward the bottom, but had a lot of fun. The folks here in Austin have been awesome this year in getting out and supporting a lot of causes and organizations (of course free food and drinks never hurt).
admin Open AIM, SXSW bowlinggeeks, ficlets, geeksforbowling, Open AIM, SXSW, sxsw2008, web awards
API releases are becoming the norm these days from AOL and today we continued the trend with our friends at Mapquest. The Mapquest platform offers free and flexible APIs that allow developers to build rich multi-media applications using a variety of supported programming languages and environments, including JS, AS3, Flash under JS and XML (FUJAX), Java, C++, .net. Here are a few more details, and make sure to check out the Mapquest development blog for updates:
- A Rich Mapping Interface for creating Rich Internet Applications with our JavaScript, AS3, or FUJAX APIs:
- Aerial Imagery and Hybrid Views – Satellite imagery and aerial photography.
- Smart Rollovers – Rollover windows that adapt their size and positioning on the map based on the content placed in the window.
- Smooth Zoom – Animated transitions between zoom levels.
- Globe View – A map of the world presented as an interactive globe.
- “Flickable” Maps – Maps that continue to pan based on speed and friction settings.
- Advanced Shape Overlays – Build apps that allow users to create and interact with a variety of overlays on maps.
- Advanced Map Marker Features – With “declutter mode,” automatically move collided markers (POIs) to alternate positions on the map with a customizable leader line pointing back to their original location.
- Unlimited Maps – Worldwide: Standard or Tiled.
- Unlimited Geocoding – Multi-line and Single-line Geocoding, Real-time Batch Geocoding, Reverse Geocoding, Postal Code and Town Geocoding.
- Unlimited Routing – Point-to-Point, Multi-point or Optimized.
- Simplified Data Management – MapQuest offers access to simple tools to upload and manage location information to help keep websites accurate and relevant.
After using the Mapquest APIs for a couple of years now with out location services in AIM, I am thrilled by this announcement. Congrats to all the great engineers and product folks at Mapquest that released the most flexible mapping APIs out there.
admin AIM, Mapquest, Open AIM AIM Location Services, APIs, Mapquest, Open AIM, Open AIM 2.0
