Simon Willison’s Weblog

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Tuesday, 4th March 2008

Google Maps Without the Scripting. Google Maps has finally added a simple API for retrieving static map images. # 11:54 pm

WhatDoTheyKnow (via) New from mySociety: a site for submitting and publically tracking Freedom of Information requests to the UK government. # 11:38 pm

Making bridges talk. Tom Armitage hooked Tower Bridge up to Twitter: “I am closing after the MV Dixie Queen has passed Upstream”. # 11:07 pm

Table-Based Layout Is The Next Big Thing. Kevin Yank points out that the inclusion of display:table in IE 8 will finally open up a powerful tool for creating CSS layouts that has so far been mostly ignored. # 11:01 pm

Principles and Legality. Eric Meyer notes that language about legality in Microsoft’s recent IE announcement suggests that Opera’s much criticised EU threat may have helped positively influence the result. # 7:45 pm

ExpanDrive. Looks like this SFTP mounting application for OS X fixes the problems I’ve had with sshfs (which tends to freeze things up if you lose your network connection while using it). # 7:32 pm

Two data streams for a happy website. Useful architectural concept for scaling: keep user-specific and generic data separate from the start, in recognition of their different caching and partitioning constraints. # 4:40 am

The real reason Google’s clicks are flat. Rich Skrenta explains that Google’s recent reduction of the clicable area in Adsense ads, while reducing click-throughs by 60%, will eventually balance out due to non-accidental click-throughs being worth more to advertisers. # 4:34 am

We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can. This decision is a change from what we’ve posted previously.

IEBlog # 3 am

2008 » March

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