Posted June 30, 2009 at 1:45 pm by Akshay
Did you know that Google has an officially supported JSON feed of search results? Google half-way cancelled their SOAP API a while ago, but they now offer a parametrized URL that returns a JSON data set. Google says this REST approach is useful for “Flash developers, and those developers that have a need to access the AJAX Search API from other Non-Javascript environments.” This may be even simpler to use than the SOAP API. Here’s an example query:
http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/web?v=1.0&q=Paris%20Hilton
This URL format can also be adjusted to grab results from video search, book search and so on. While the URL has the word AJAX in the string and this is officially part of the Google AJAX Search API, this has nothing to do with AJAX per se, as the URL can be called from other environments, including the server side. All you need is a JSON library to parse the results (JSON means JavaScript Object Notation, though it also doesn’t require JavaScript). The Yahoo Search API already utilizes a similar approach, though it can return XML as well. The complete documentation of this Search API can be found on the Developer’s Guide of Google AJAX Search API hosted on Google Code
Posted June 24, 2009 at 7:56 pm by Akshay
Stock Exchanges around the world currently publish datafeeds in CSV format. This is quite portable and easy to implement, however it cannot be directly used in your web applications without server side code. Also these official feeds are generally very expensive and affordable only by enterprise level developers. Thats where Stock Market Data (SMD) API comes in place. This simple HTTP webservice presents a snapshot of the latest stock market data in various Web 2.0 formats such as JSON, RSS, ATOM, MDDL (Market Data Definition Language – XML for Market Data) or a good old CSV. Currently SMDAPI supports NASDAQ Stock Exchange, New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and National Stock Exchange, India (NSE) but we are actively working on supporting others soon.
Please note that SMD API is currently released as Beta and is quite unstable in nature. I am still experimenting with everything from the domain name of this service (smdapi.co.cc which is a temperory one) to the API structure itself. I am also very much open to ideas which I can incorporate in this project before it officially released.
Posted June 12, 2009 at 6:51 pm by Akshay
At first there was good old email with petty 5 Mb inboxes. Then we moved to crowded chat rooms on Yahoo. All that seemed as stone age, when came a host of interactive web applications like Blogs and Social Networking applications. Initially Orkut, then Facebook and then micro blogging thru Twitter. Have you ever wondered what could be the next big Web 2.0 trend?
The answer is ‘Collaboration’. Yes, collaboration not only in its own sense, but also a collaboration of all the trends and technologies mentioned above. I know the word ‘collaboration’ sounds too ‘enterprise’ and not at all ‘social’, but as always web has once again taken us by surprise here. What I am referring is not too far fetched. Big boys like Google and Yahoo have already stepped in this domain and grand releases have already been done. Yes, check out Google Wave and Zimbra (by Yahoo, but not much talked about yet) to understand what am pointing at. Google Wave is a new tool for real-time communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year. An official 90 minute video demo is already out for a sneak peak into this new wonderland. Don’t have 90 minutes? Have a look at my detailed post on Devil’s Workshop with 30-60 second clips highlighting the best parts of Google Wave.
Posted June 8, 2009 at 6:05 pm by Akshay
This is probably a major milestone in the lifecycle of WP Web Scraper WordPress plugin. Technically speaking, the plugin gets in own ‘module architecture’ to incorporate unlimited extensions without touching the core codebase. Speaking non-technically, this opens WP Web Scraper to a non-techie WordPress user. To startoff, this mod extends the plugin with a specific shortcode to get stock market data from NSE and NASDAQ (to start off with, more exchanges soon to come). The data is scraped with a cache interval of a minute (which can be further increased as per your requirement) and includes data types such as Open, High, Low, Last Price, Previous Close, Change, Change Percentage and Volume information for all active symbols on these exchanges.
The plugin API will provides a simple shortcode. For example – [wpws_market_data market="nse" symbol="acc" datatype="last"] or [wpws_market_data market="nasdaq" symbol="csco" datatype="open"]. NSE data is currently scraped from nseindia.com and NASDAQ data is scraped from reuters.com. The immediate plan is to implement all major stock markets in this API. Later, I plan to extend this modular architecture to other categories of scraps such as Weather, Sports scores etc too.
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Hi, My name is Akshay Raje. I am a self taught freelance web designer and developer. I love travel and am a great movie buff too. This blog is about my projects and experiments with web technologies. 
