Simon Willison’s Weblog

NginxMemcachedModule. nginx can be set up to directly serve a URL from memcache if the corresponding cache key is set, and fall back to a backend application server otherwise. Application servers can then write directly to memcache when content needs to be cached or goes stale.

# 1:59 am / caching, memcache, memcached, nginx, scaling

ExtInfoWindow 1.0: Ajax powered, CSS customization. Finally, a semi-official way of creating customised info windows for the Google Maps API. You lose the default shadow but gain the ability to style the entire info window using CSS.

# 12:22 pm / ajax, css, extinfowindow, google, google-maps, google-maps-api, javascript

Fire foxes, fire eagles, fire dogs: myth in a new media world (via) Entertaining over-analysis of Fire Eagle, the code name for Yahoo!’s soon-to-be-released geo location broker. It’s actually named after Ze Frank’s Ride The Fire Eagle Danger Day, as any Sports Racer would know.

# 12:25 pm / fireeagle, naming, ridethefireeagledangerday, sportsracer, yahoo, ze-frank

DeWitt Clinton: T-Mobile and Twitter. “If you think the rest of Internet needs net neutrality laws, that’s nothing compared with the backward-facing worldview of the established mobile carriers.”

# 12:26 pm / dewitt-clinton, mobile, mobilecarriers, netneutrality, twitter

Techniques for safely consuming external HTTP on demand? I asked this question on programming.reddit.com yesterday and got some really insightful answers, including Joe Stump from Digg describing how Digg Images uses Danga’s Gearman worker queue.

# 12:29 pm / askreddit, danga, digg, gearman, http, joe-stump, queue, reddit, scaling, workers

AppJet: Instant Web Programming. Another attempt at simple server-side JavaScript application hosting. Worth checking out for the impressive syntax highlighting code editor, which even matches braces.

# 3:37 pm / appjet, hosting, javascript, syntaxhighlighting, y-combinator