Publisher Content APIs

While ereaders are taking of in market, it seems only natural that publishers start opening up their content. Content APIs should be an attractive option for many publishers.  And, yet many appear to not avail such an option as part of their revenue model. Almost anything can be turned into a Content API. Content APIs can take many forms and include premium mashups that could be made available over the Apple AppStore or Google Play. Even providing a flat subscription pricing model over access to all ebooks is an attractive option for many readers and potentially an option for publishers too. As publishing for physical books alone is gradually becoming a dwindling business, many look for opening up new avenues for opportunities within their business streams. It is inevitable that publishing companies will need to look for alternatives to explore and widen their reach to survive in the competitive marketplace. Amazon has also made it difficult for many publishing companies to survive. One area where publishing companies are still going strong is in the lucrative education and research market. Ereaders not only need to be able to support many file formats but also multiple platforms. Even types of content needs to be flexible from magazines, comics, maps, to ebooks. Ereaders also need to provide premium features on top of just standard such as touch sensitive interfaces, collaborations and sharing, semantic tagging and annotations, bookmarks, outlines, light viewer, API customizations, audio support, as well as several other options. The drawback to physical books is usually that they go out of date, readers can also lose interest after having read it a few times, and it can cost a lot more as well as require the use of paper. Ebooks are convenient, flexible and as a result have become a phenomenon. However, the area for such ereaders is likely to also evolve into more flexible and rich environments. Publishers need to embrace the change or risk losing valuable business to a competitor that grabs the digital opportunity. 

Hollywood Lackluster Movies

There was a time when Hollywood used to produce some explosive movies for which that name became synonymous and what made several studios a household name. Over the years the movie industry has been trailing undoubtedly lackluster movies making many wonder where all the good stories have gone. It seems the end is near for Hollywood if they do not get their act together and start producing better movies. Consumers have also become financially conscious. While the movie business ignores the consumer market and wonders on a one track mind towards making money, we can almost see the regrettable emerging in our mist as quality deteriorates in front of our very eyes.  It is funny how far the movie business has come, perhaps the industry has become all too arrogant and egotistic to rapture within its own aura of the past successes. One can witness the same results of actors and actresses, as soon as they win an Oscar they become more and more selective to the point that we do not see them anymore where they are almost reduced to obscurity. Entertainment is a very competitive business and the consumer market is aware and unforgiving. The constant changes in trends and tastes should provide creative minds the room to grow. Yet, the entertainment industry is non the wiser when it comes to the unknown and challenging the status quo. We often find ourselves sitting in front of the TV switching channels as there is rarely ever anything good on. On other occasions it is just repeats and an awful lot of adverts to infuse and confuse our minds. Quality stories and manuscripts are left in translation while people push and shove for the only way they know of making it big with hard cash. Creativity is challenged on a regular basis and often marginalized for many in a narrow road of opportunity. The web is rapidly growing in steam, on a daily basis, as entertainment continues to diverge towards the bountiful internet with its vibrant and ever growing room of opportunity for all. Even the options to watch videos have taken on many facades from the web of connectedness. Hollywood is still struggling to brace itself in an endless play for catchup to embrace technology. There are people now producing quality content on their own without the help of big production houses. Striking it big has taken many forms. Over time the forms that entertainment takes and the way it relates to garnish our emotions will also explode in a diverse spectrum of our creative imaginations. The human mind has no limits when it comes to creativity as long as there is a way to collaborate, share, and grow. Perhaps, it can be argued that content in whatever form it takes should be freely available so people could share and openly capitalize on it. Hollywood may just fade out in time into the ether of the ever growing forms of entertainment on the web like the ghost towns of Detroit.

Rundeck

A potential devops contender is Rundeck which provides for a multitude of functionality for operational automation of applications. A minimalist user interface is all that is really needed for a hands-on developer and comes with batteries included from access control, to job scheduling, as well as defining entire workflows of commands and scripts that can work across nodes. Rundeck could facilitate the point of automation as a link between continuous integration and deployment. The platform even comes with an API and a diverse set of useful plugins. Finally, the services are free for use which is another mouth watering feature. 

Top Python Web Frameworks

Python has emerged to be a major contender for mainstream web applications in the large. The language provides flexibility of libraries on both fronts from web application development to big data analytics. It is also an amazingly good integration language. For large applications, python can provide for reduction in maintenance nightmare in comparison to languages like Ruby, Perl, and even bloated Java code bases. The following web frameworks are quite popular and useful for a multitude of real-world application domains where performance, scalability, and flexibility of use are often the deciding factors.

Django - a full stack web framework providing fluid pragmatic designs

Flask - a minimalist and flexible microframework especially for restful applications

Twisted - an event-driven networking engine for low-level engineered applications

Tornado - a web framework and server with an asynchronous library for non-blocking IO

Cyclone - a framework built in concert with twisted and tornado for web applications

Pyramid - a plugin friendly web framework that tries to ease the development of web applications

A Walk Among The Tombstones

A Walk Among The Tombstones is yet another movie of the magnanimous Liam Neeson. However, viewers should be advised not to hold high expectations from the Taken actor. Although, Neeson is seen steering in a similar direction to rescuing a hapless woman, he lacks much anticipatory rigor of an action and combatant hero as we come to expect of his movies. The movie also mirrors some gruesome portrayals of violence against women, leaving one speechless in certain scenes, while cringing in others. Although, the movie starts in the right direction, it fails to capture the viewer in a half-hearted and almost miserable climax development, not to mention the seemingly unconvincing presence of the Neeson's character.

Miss America 2014

This marks another barrier breaking moment in American history when an Indian wins the Miss America 2014 contest. Or, atleast that is how so many Americans viewed it on social media. It also ear marks the fact that bigotry is still alive and well in America even after so many years. For whatever reasons, people seem to automatically assume that if the person is non-white then they must be both muslim, foreign, arab, and possibly even terrorists. This is also the typical manner in which non-whites are profiled in America. Americans in the mainstream often appear to enjoy their stereotypes and still class themselves as one of the most progressive. Enjoying one's freedom does not mean to trample over other peoples' right to the same ideals. Most people forget that almost every American had an ancestry that were migrants to the country.  To be an American, often being born there or being nationalized should be enough as the country has always been a melting pot of backgrounds and traditions. One should also question what exactly are American values? Only an American Indian can be classed as a native to the land. What right does anyone else have claim to the land? When the whites invaded America they not only brought hatred against the American Indians and reduced their land ownership but they also reigned in decades of slavery. The American history is not very idyllic and filled with hatred for non-whites from the very beginning of the first settlers. In fact, the history is riddled with embarrassment in the eyes of many Americans that would rather forget and move on. Aside from fact, that the Miss America 2014 winner was born in America, should one really be left with any doubt. Do non-whites not have a right to winning international contests or even the right to live in America? Is being an American only skin deep? Perhaps, one should ask an American Indian such a question.

Apple iPhone

The iPhone has become one of the most revolutionary mobile technologies of today with an endearing and impenetrable mark on the mobile industry. It has not only changed completely the way we view mobile phones but also added a new dimension to visual aesthetics combined with simple functional features. Sleek and intuitive functional designs as part of feature rich smart phones are now the main stay of the mobile industry. As it marks the introduction of the iPhone 6 we can reflect on the history and embark on a joy ride into the past. For many, it is a solemn experience when owning an iPhone, not only has it become a symbol of coolness but also has a premium value in the second hand market.  In past, it used to be the iPhone reshaping consumer experiences of a smart phone. However, many new players have also entered the market to compete. The iOS also competes against Android. In time, it has emerged into consumers reshaping and challenging iPhone experiences with their developed tastes and demands for features and functionality. If the iPhone is to continue its successes of the past, it will need to satisfy consumers from all new releases of today. One major obstacle in path of Apple would be of making sure releases are properly quality assured. Bad publicity could not only effect sales against competitors but threaten the established confidence, loyalty, and regard that consumers hold for Apple products. The mobile industry is a competitive market. It seems the one natural step for iPhones of the future is to transition from a smart phone into more intelligent, visually appealing, versatile, and ubiquitous devices. While, Semantic Web could hold the key to making all those things possible in context. 

History of the iPhone
Apples iPhone a history in pictures
apple iphone design history
iphone history pictures
iPhone Infographics

API Design

API designs have emerged into formal data model approaches. They may formally define the APIs using markdown or JSON, allowing one to describe the interfaces and models. In this manner, it facilitates communication, provides a way to mock API designs, test a specification, as well as have a maintainable documentation. In a semantic web scenario, JSON-LD may even provide a more formal approach for understanding linked resources in a flexible manner. A few popular API design approaches are mentioned below.

• API Blueprint - life cycle documentation of APIs with plenty of tooling
• Swagger - A specification framework for producing, describing, consuming, and visualizing services with active documentation.
• RAML - a modeling language for RESTful services for describing APIs in a formal way for reuse, discovery, sharing, as well as utilizing extensible best practices.
• HAL - easy way to hyperlink between resources in APIs using hypermedia

api documentation
rest vs soap apis

Big Data Graph Processing

The web with its many hyperlinked documents is a massive graph network for interlinks. Such links provide big data complexities for processing. There are many use cases for where graph processing becomes essential from contextual ads to social network analysis to even linked data. Processing such graphs in the large still remains a challenge even with its many data forms. However, graph processing from standard graph theory and network science has provided many advances for Big Data. The functional programming approaches have also facilitated more robust solutions. In OLTP, it is about the processing low-latency of workloads for accessing small portions of graphs. In OLAP, it is about batch processing workloads for accessing large portions of graphs. A graph can be stored in a specific graph database or even a column store such as Accumulo or Cassandra. They can even be stored on the HDFS. Real-time processing of graphs is also a challenge. In general, standard NoSQL stores will be able to cope with limited lookups and small number of traversals at scale. For complex traversals over the Web of Data, it would require alternative and even combined approaches for scalable batch processing in a distributed way. The below provide some options for frameworks in the big data graph processing.

Giraph
Cassovary
Drill
Impala
JUNG
SNAP
Shark
Hama
GraphX
Titan / Faunas
GraphLab / GraphChi

RethinkDB

An alternative distributed document store is RethinkDB which is slowly emerging in the mainstream NoSQL environment. However, it is still very much in its infancy for it to be viable as a stable database for any production use. The general trend in NoSQL approaches is towards providing amalgamation of features and tools, big data integration as well as management simplicity for scalability requirements. Restrictive license often also poses a hurdle for many businesses who are looking to scale out of relational database schema. It seems the door into NoSQL implementation is getting wider and wider with a growing plethora of options, features, and language bindings. But, with such a vast options becomes all the more critical in selecting the right database.  RethinkDB is an approach to bind all the good things between Cassandra and CouchDB into one database implementation. It is questionable as to what really one classes as positives for CouchDB. One reason why CouchDB was forked into Couchbase was as a way of harnessing a more stable approach with utilization of Memcache. More often than not, businesses will opt for a MongoDB solution over CouchDB. RethinkDB in time could offer an alternative over MongoDB. There is still a lot that appears to be needed with RethinkDB in terms of native Java support for it to be endorsed into production grade deployments. Also, more use cases of production ready deployments would provide for more community and industry driven insights. RethinkDB, as the name suggests, is a rethink in all things related to document store design philosophy of today and what it can be in the future, without compromising on the good parts.

a comparison of mongodb and rethinkdb with patent data
comparing mongodb and rethinkdb bulk insert performance
rethinkdb vs mongodb
rethinkdb a qualitative review
findthebest

Rubbish And Senseless People

Some people have strange ways. Why is it when there is literally a bin close by that some feel the need to leave their rubbish right next to it rather than actually putting it in the bin. It is alarming the way some people display their lack of sense. Even in public people feel the need to litter on the ground when there are plenty of litter bins around. One would imagine that in a western society people would have more sense. And, yet in residential accommodations there is always someone that feels the need to take their rubbish and leave it right on ground next to the bin as if to invite rodents. On other occasions we find a total lack of sense with the types of things people seem to want to throw away in rubbish bags. One can find the odd student in city disposing of ice in a rubbish bag and it is times like those when one feels education truly does not work on some individuals. Perhaps, it is time that we started enforcing stricter penalties for littering in public. There are plenty of public cameras about. Why not do it like Singapore and raise the bar to a penalty fine for public littering. On weekends one can find empty bottles everywhere. Is it any wonder why rodents love being around people and living in cities as there is just so much rubbish. Even the collection of rubbish is so inefficient that it is usually the time when almost everyone displays their immense refuge outside their house. Maybe, councils and districts should demand houses start having their own disposable methods. It is a strange effect that towns breed close knit neighborhoods while cities breed distant and more individualism among people. There needs to be better waste management in place in our communities that allows us a way to reuse our refuge for fuel. There is also so much of rubbish that can be given to shelters and charities where people are struggling to make ends meet and do not even have the luxury to throw things away. Cities often times breed selfish uncaring human instincts, which is a direct result of the capitalist ideals. Science is failing waste disposal as a renewable resource.