4 ms·

- US & State Government tax information. The tax code is amazingly complex. It would be good if you could figure out the tax implications of various events.

by dlg 17y ago

- US & State Government tax information. The tax code is amazingly complex. It would be good if you could figure out the tax implications of various events. Better if they simplified the tax code to where this was possible. Moreover, data.gov so far is a disappointment. Maybe they'll improve it. But I'd love to dig in to purchasing and personnel costs for every branch of government. - Good stock market historical tick data (and streaming data). Opentick tried for a time, but mostly you need to contact expensive services. This makes it hard to mess around. - A good local event API. Lots of companies have tried, few have good results. - LinkedIn: They've been promising an open contact book API since 2007, but have kept it closed. If they had an open API (that lets you actually store data/invite), it would mean a lot of sites would be building on them. - My dream: The big scientific journals would require everyone publishing a paper to upload all relevant datasets to a central repository which could be queried. - Anyone you have an account with (Financial firms, banks, vendors) would have a standard commerce API. Sure, today you can export stuff in Quicken, etc formats, but Mint had to do a big deal with Yodlee to get the data in a uniform, queryable way. And, mad props to Microsoft for opening the Bing API with pretty good terms. Google used to have a search API and it had horrible terms. Then they decommissioned it. Who would have guessed that MS would be more developer-friendly than G?

camccann 17y ago
Who would have guessed that MS would be more developer-friendly than G? Anyone who's done Microsoft-based development? MS is incredibly developer-friendly compared to many platform vendors. It's a point of business strategy for them (if memory serves me, that's what Ballmer's infamous "developers, developers, developers, developers" thing was about in context). Just don't try and mix in any technology from one of MS's competitors and you'll be fine.
- fauigerzigerk 17y ago
  True, they are developer friendly. .NET is a good platform. It's extensive and well documented. There is innovation in C# as well. But the purpose of all that goodness is to make you sell their licenses. Where Oracle has their salesforce, Microsoft has their developers to do the selling for them. Unfortunately their licensing is from an era that has come and gone. Building software that uses things like Windows Server, SQL Server, SharePoint or Office means to limit your scale to what they call "Micro ISV". You provide that package to your client and 95% of your revenues go straight to Microsoft. You can build on their stuff but you won't scale and you won't grow, not because their technology doesn't scale, but because their licensing doesn't scale.
  - dmoney 17y ago
    You can build on their stuff but you won't scale and you won't grow, not because their technology doesn't scale, but because their licensing doesn't scale. What about their licensing for Azure? Does that scale or is it more of the same?
    - fauigerzigerk 17y ago
      I don't think it's entirely clear yet what direction Azure will take. The base offering using only .NET and Windows with simple storage is priced almost exactly the same as google app engine. It's difficult to compare to Amazon because the architecture is so different. Google and Azure (I believe) won't let you do any serious computation in memory whereas Amazon does support that very well. However, look at SQL Azure. Microsoft thinks that their SQL offering is worth paying 66 times what you pay for google's database (or Azure BLOBs&Tables) and that's just for storage alone ($1 per GB, maxing out at 10GB right now). Add data transfer and you may get to 100 times. Yes SQL Server has vastly more features than google's db, but does it make me 100 times more productive or profitable? I don't think so. If I need more SQL features I could run Postgres on Amazon or use Amazon's MySQL service for roughly 10% of what SQL Azure costs. So if SQL Azure is the model of what's to come then I think it's indeed more of the same.
jimbokun 17y ago
"My dream: The big scientific journals would require everyone publishing a paper to upload all relevant datasets to a central repository which could be queried." I work on a site that's trying to do that for the learning sciences. http://pslcdatashop.web.cmu.edu/ http://pslcdatashop.web.cmu.edu/ Most of the data so far is from various studies in the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center, because the head of the PSLC can tell the researchers to put their data in there, but we'd like to convince others to share, too. I also happen to be working on a web services API to this data at work right now.
nl 17y ago
"Google used to have a search API and it had horrible terms. Then they decommissioned it" It always surprises me when people say this. Apparently it's not widely known that Google do make their search API available: http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/documentation/#fonje http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/documentation/#fonje (Before anyone says "that's just the AJAX API", please READ THE LINK, and scroll down to see the Java & PHP samples)
- Tichy 17y ago
  What quotas do they have, though? I remember people reporting to be blocked from Google for "looking like a bot". So I thought the search API will only work if the requests come from lots of different IP addresses, as would be the case for use in AJAX applications.
leif 17y ago
Tax information would be HUGE. I would also like to see an API for general government records. For example, if we had voting records, we could finally stop hearing all this "but you voted on -----" "no I didn't go back and check the record" "no look you voted on ----- which is basically the same" "shut up I served in the war" "yay war" stuff every election. We could just look it up and say "hey look you did". The Times "Congress API" is on its way to this, but last I checked, all it had was the attendance records.

by dlg 17y ago

camccann 17y ago

Who would have guessed that MS would be more developer-friendly than G? Anyone who's done Microsoft-based development? MS is incredibly developer-friendly compared to many platform vendors. It's a point of business strategy for them (if memory serves me, that's what Ballmer's infamous "developers, developers, developers, developers" thing was about in context). Just don't try and mix in any technology from one of MS's competitors and you'll be fine.

fauigerzigerk 17y ago
True, they are developer friendly. .NET is a good platform. It's extensive and well documented. There is innovation in C# as well. But the purpose of all that goodness is to make you sell their licenses. Where Oracle has their salesforce, Microsoft has their developers to do the selling for them. Unfortunately their licensing is from an era that has come and gone. Building software that uses things like Windows Server, SQL Server, SharePoint or Office means to limit your scale to what they call "Micro ISV". You provide that package to your client and 95% of your revenues go straight to Microsoft. You can build on their stuff but you won't scale and you won't grow, not because their technology doesn't scale, but because their licensing doesn't scale.
- dmoney 17y ago
  You can build on their stuff but you won't scale and you won't grow, not because their technology doesn't scale, but because their licensing doesn't scale. What about their licensing for Azure? Does that scale or is it more of the same?
  - fauigerzigerk 17y ago
    I don't think it's entirely clear yet what direction Azure will take. The base offering using only .NET and Windows with simple storage is priced almost exactly the same as google app engine. It's difficult to compare to Amazon because the architecture is so different. Google and Azure (I believe) won't let you do any serious computation in memory whereas Amazon does support that very well. However, look at SQL Azure. Microsoft thinks that their SQL offering is worth paying 66 times what you pay for google's database (or Azure BLOBs&Tables) and that's just for storage alone ($1 per GB, maxing out at 10GB right now). Add data transfer and you may get to 100 times. Yes SQL Server has vastly more features than google's db, but does it make me 100 times more productive or profitable? I don't think so. If I need more SQL features I could run Postgres on Amazon or use Amazon's MySQL service for roughly 10% of what SQL Azure costs. So if SQL Azure is the model of what's to come then I think it's indeed more of the same.

jimbokun 17y ago

"My dream: The big scientific journals would require everyone publishing a paper to upload all relevant datasets to a central repository which could be queried." I work on a site that's trying to do that for the learning sciences. http://pslcdatashop.web.cmu.edu/ http://pslcdatashop.web.cmu.edu/ Most of the data so far is from various studies in the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center, because the head of the PSLC can tell the researchers to put their data in there, but we'd like to convince others to share, too. I also happen to be working on a web services API to this data at work right now.

nl 17y ago

"Google used to have a search API and it had horrible terms. Then they decommissioned it" It always surprises me when people say this. Apparently it's not widely known that Google do make their search API available: http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/documentation/#fonje http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/documentation/#fonje (Before anyone says "that's just the AJAX API", please READ THE LINK, and scroll down to see the Java & PHP samples)

Tichy 17y ago
What quotas do they have, though? I remember people reporting to be blocked from Google for "looking like a bot". So I thought the search API will only work if the requests come from lots of different IP addresses, as would be the case for use in AJAX applications.

leif 17y ago

Tax information would be HUGE. I would also like to see an API for general government records. For example, if we had voting records, we could finally stop hearing all this "but you voted on -----" "no I didn't go back and check the record" "no look you voted on ----- which is basically the same" "shut up I served in the war" "yay war" stuff every election. We could just look it up and say "hey look you did". The Times "Congress API" is on its way to this, but last I checked, all it had was the attendance records.