transit.511.org using google maps api « unruly asides

here’s something else using google maps api. i’m moving this weekend, to a location in the east bay that’s not bart-friendly, so i’m wondering if catching a transbay bus might be a better option to get to work. until i can replace my broken down motorcycle, that is. so i go to transit.511.org, choose the “maps and schedules” option, and ask to see the map for the transbay NL ac transit line, as that’s the transbay bus that seems to have a line closest to my new place. it gives me this map: (150k gif)

it appears that all the stops of the line are marked by the little red google flags, and if that’s the case, that’s pretty darn handy, and a good use of the google maps api. it still needs some help, of course; on the page should be a link to the schedule, and when i click on each flag it should ...

Three Netflix API Apps You Can Build in 24 Hours or Less « A Startup A Day

Speaking of Netflix, I’m receiving word from my inside sources that Netflix is planning to roll out a developer API tomorrow, October 1!  I played around with a bit of the data from their Netflix Prize contest, and they’ve got some good stuff.  And t ...

Recommendation system

Recommender systems form a specific type of information filtering (IF) technique that attempts to present information items (movies, music, books, news, images, web pages, etc.) that are likely of interest to the user. Typically, a recommender system compares the user's profile to some reference characteristics, and seeks to predict the 'rating' that a user would give to an item they had not yet considered. These characteristics may be from the information item (the content-based approach) or the user's social environment (the collaborative filtering approach).

When building the user's profile a distinction is made between explicit and implicit forms of data collection.

Capistrano & EC2 Sitting in a Tree, K I S S I N G « Niblets….Simple. Less.

I am using EC2 to host my soon-to-launch Quizical.net application. Its great.

I use capistrano to manage these EC2 instances. With these tasks, I have automated many sets of EC2 commands into simple rake tasks.

For instance, to launch an instance, I can type…

rake ec2:run id=ami-61a54008

. ..and a minute or two later I have a new instance running.

Then to install my rails app, I type…

cap initial_install

&# ...