"http" entries

Four short links: 27 July 2011

Four short links: 27 July 2011

Coverflow Javascript, Voice APIs, Liberal Acceptance Ruins Everything, and Mobile HTTP Pipelining

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | +Nat Torkington | July 27, 2011
  1. ContentFlow — Javascript library to provide CoverFlow-like behaviour.
  2. Twilio Client SDK — 1/4 cent/minute API-to-API calls, embeddable in browser apps.
  3. Postel’s Principle Reconsidered (ACM) — The Robustness Principle was formulated in an Internet of cooperators. The world has changed a lot since then. Everything, even services that you may think you control, is suspect. Excellent explanation of how interoperability and security are harder than they should be because of Postel’s Law (“Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.”, RFC 793). (via Mike Olson)
  4. HTTP Pipelining on Mobiles — HTTP pipelining has a much higher adoption amongst mobile browsers. Opera Mini, Opera Mobile and the Android browser all use HTTP pipelining by default. Together they account for about 40% of mobile browsing. If you’re developing a mobile site, your site is experiencing HTTP pipelining daily, and you should understand how it works. (via John Clegg)
Four short links: 13 May 2011

Four short links: 13 May 2011

Bogus Analysis x 2, API Classifications, and Expansive Text

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | +Nat Torkington | May 13, 2011
  1. Mathematical Intimidation: Driven by the Data (PDF) — excellent article from Notices of the American Mathematical Society about the flaws in “value-added modelling”, the latest fad whereby data about students’ results in different classes are analysed to identify the effect of each teacher. People recognize that tests are an imperfect measure of educational success, but when sophisticated mathematics is applied, they believe the imperfections go away by some mathematical magic. But this is not magic. What really happens is that the mathematics is used to disguise the problems and intimidate people into ignoring them—a modern, mathematical version of the Emperor’s New Clothes. A critical instance of Hilary Mason’s Clean data > More Data > Fancy Math. (via Audrey Watters)
  2. Classification of HTTP-based APIs — The classification achieves an explicit differentiation between the various kinds of uses of HTTP and provides a foundation to analyse and describe the system properties induced. (via Brian Mulloy)
  3. Cancer Clusters (BBC) — straightforward demonstration of how naive analysis of random numbers can yield “patterns”.
  4. FitText.js — a jQuery plugin for inflating type.