So, what’s these two pictures? The one to the left is NRK’s official service for Windows Media Center Online Spotlight. The one to the right is a very unofficial NRK media center plugin for Meedio.
As mentioned in my post about Webshots and Flickr, one of the reasons why Flickr succeed is because they have a powerful open API. I have linked the acronym API to Wikipedia for the people that want to know more. The quick version: API is short for Application Programming Interface. It gives programmers a possibility to build new services on top of the service that provides an API. Google provides an API. In other words: people can build new services on top of Google. An example is the classic google fight.
Even without an API it is fairly easy to build new services on regular web pages. A plugin for Firefox called Greasemonkey puts this into a system with special scripts for adjusting and editing web pages as you visit them. Currently there are more than 400 000 scripts out there. Doing anything from removing the side bars of Slashdot.org to building advanced price comparing capabilities on Amazon.com. Wired magazine has an excellent article on Greasemonkey, explaining the details.
As the internet users get more advanced and the tools and programming languages become easier to use things like these happen. The BBC has experienced a lot of unauthorized remixing of their content and have been running around closing down web sites that is built on top of their news services and programme tables. Not anymore:
Continue reading “Come on. Take it all. Do what you want!”