Amazon Payment System

I was looking at the Amazon Flexible Payment System service API and it's a whopping big set of docs. Unfortunately, I was sorely disappointed to see the operations in the HTTP based API (called a REST Request) seem to all be GET requests with an Action= query term. Ugh.
The documentation doesn't even mention what HTTP method to use, what content-type to submit or expect as a return, etc. I'm pretty sure that they simply don't know the difference. Sad but true. At least there are docs.

I suppose they didn't have the time to make it simple.

NASA Tech Briefs

A long time ago I used to subscribe to NASA Tech Briefs - a slim monthly magazine full of hard-core engineering articles and light scientific reporting.
A few months ago a friend had an issue and I decided to see what kind of online presence they have now - and they have a good one. No Atom feed, but still lots of techno-bits!

NASA Tech Briefs

Metaplace: open DIY virtual worlds

This I have to check out... it sounds very much like what I've wanted to build for the past ten years or so.

Metaplace: open DIY virtual worlds for everyone

Facebook - the end is near

Ah, yes. Facebook is on the decline already - when I logged in this week, I got a an ad for Zwinky. Animated, colorful, annoying. Completely not me. Except the annoying part.

CouchDB: Thinking beyond the RDBMS

From Assaf at labnotes,
CouchDB: Thinking beyond the RDBMS

It stores document in a flat space.

There are no schemas. But you do store (and retrieve) JSON objects. Cool kids rejoice.

And all this happens using Real REST (you know, the one with PUT, DELETE and no envelopes to hide stuff), so it doesn’t matter that CouchDB is implemented in Erlang. (In fact, Erlang is a feature)

Here’s where it gets interesting. There are no indexes. So your first option is knowing the name of the document you want to retrieve. The second is referencing it from another document. And remember, it’s JSON in/JSON out, with REST access all around, so relative URLs and you’re fine.

Hmm, Erlang. Hmm, no schemas. Hmm, no write consistency. Sounds perfect.