Wednesday, November 5. 2008Amarok & NPR :: 13 Years of News Media Now Available at Your FingertipsEarlier this summer I had noticed that National Public Radio (NPR) launched a brand new open API based on open source technologies. My initial reaction was at best skeptical. I assumed any sort of “API” released by a major media outlet would turn out to be nothing more than a few customizable RSS feeds. If the company was particularly progressive the RSS feeds might include full articles, rather than the neutered one-sentence teasers you find in all the big name’s syndicated content. I couldn’t have been more mistaken. NPR’s API is no small potatoes. Just take a look at the comprehensive Query Generator to get an inkling of the types of complex queries you can create. Looking at the Query Generator also sheds some light on the content you can retrieve using the API. The API’s main page says the API exposes the entire NPR archive of content starting from the launch of the NPR website in 1995. Just how big is this archive? Over 250,000 stories including text, images, video, and audio! This quote from the article announcing the API caught my eye immediately:
This isn’t the first open media API. BBC was the first to offer a public open access API, however BBC’s API is restricted to the content from the past 7-days. Seven days! That’s nothing compared to the (approx.) 4748 days - and counting - that NPR’s API offers. NPR and the BBC are two large companies leading the technological shift towards open and free information. But that’s only half the story. After discovering this fantastic API I had to do something with it, and the new service architecture in Amarok 2 provided the perfect platform to build a NPR mashup. That was several months ago, and at the time the scripting API in Amarok was still being flesh out (Thanks to Peter). On Monday I noticed the BBC scriptable service Nikolaj had created for Amarok 2. I happened to have several hours of free time, so I cooked up a similar service for NPR: You can get it at kde-apps or via the “Get More Scripts” button in Amarok 2’s Script Manager. There is definitely room for improvement and in fact here are a few things I plan to do with it:
Major props and thanks go out to the entire NPR technical team and all the contributors who made API a reality. Wednesday, November 5. 2008Amarok NPR :: 13 Years of News Media Now Available at Your FingertipsEarlier this summer I had noticed that National Public Radio (NPR) launched a brand new open API based on open source technologies. My initial reaction was at best skeptical. I assumed any sort of “API” released by a major media outlet would turn out to be nothing more than a few customizable RSS feeds. If the company was particularly progressive the RSS feeds might include full articles, rather than the neutered one-sentence teasers you find in all the big name’s syndicated content. I couldn’t have been more mistaken. NPR’s API is no small potatoes. Just take a look at the comprehensive Query Generator to get an inkling of the types of complex queries you can create. Looking at the Query Generator also sheds some light on the content you can retrieve using the API. The API’s main page says the API exposes the entire NPR archive of content starting from the launch of the NPR website in 1995. Just how big is this archive? Over 250,000 stories including text, images, video, and audio! This quote from the article announcing the API caught my eye immediately:
This isn’t the first open media API. BBC was the first to offer a public open access API, however BBC’s API is restricted to the content from the past 7-days. Seven days! That’s nothing compared to the (approx.) 4748 days - and counting - that NPR’s API offers. NPR and the BBC are two large companies leading the technological shift towards open and free information. But that’s only half the story. After discovering this fantastic API I had to do something with it, and the new service architecture in Amarok 2 provided the perfect platform to build a NPR mashup. That was several months ago, and at the time the scripting API in Amarok was still being flesh out (Thanks to Peter). On Monday I noticed the BBC scriptable service Nikolaj had created for Amarok 2. I happened to have several hours of free time, so I cooked up a similar service for NPR: You can get it at kde-apps or via the “Get More Scripts” button in Amarok 2’s Script Manager. There is definitely room for improvement and in fact here are a few things I plan to do with it:
Major props and thanks go out to the entire NPR technical team and all the contributors who made API a reality. Wednesday, November 5. 2008Delete Multiple Files
Again, school keeps me busy and away from solving issues, but here's the most recent thing I've been working on.
  (Yes, the dialog isn't at all final, I just put it there as a placeholder)A few collections like the MP3Tunes service, and the local collection, are actually able to delete tracks already! They just... have no GUI to make it all happen. Devices like iPods and MTP devices can delete too, but only one track at a time (far from optimal). So I'm working to bring this ability to all collections alike. Actually getting this working isn't too hard, but making the code nice, understandable and maintainable is a bit of a trick. Luckily I've got a pretty good idea now of how I want it done. Beta 3 is out =D but still so much left to be done on my end: - fix MTP track playing, so that the next track properly loads/plays - add orphaned/stale track checking for iPods - enhance the Media Devices Applet, and add interface to root item of TreeView for connect/disconnect - fix cover-related things on iPods (and _possibly implement it for MTP devices, by popoular request) The list goes on, but that's already enough. More manpower for any of these jobs is MORE than welcome. Do apply =) |
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