Mozilla debuts a mashup engine for the rest of us

The trick with mashing up with the web is that it's actually not very easy or very intuitive. That's why people like Adrian Holovaty are so brilliant: they make it look so easy.

The lack of ease-of-use has, however, created a gulf between those that get it (those fluent in dozens of different APIs) and the rest of us. Well Mozilla (that's the Firefox people) just built a bridge across that gulf:


Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Will this do to the programmable web what Blogger and Wordpress did to publishing--finally democratize it and make it ubiquitous? Clearly, when you name a piece of software "Ubiquity" you hope the answer is a resounding YES.

Holy Balls! Chicago Tribune prototype floated

I'm speechless.

nicely done: NY Times Medal Count

The team that churns out the NYTimes interactive graphics, always a good crew, did a fantastic job with a visual representation of Olympic medal counts among nations from the 1890s to today. As with much of their best work, I'm sure it's pretty great on hallucinogens too.

PS. Back from a very chaotic summer. Finally planted in once place for the long haul. More soon, promise.