Tuesday, April 27, 2010

On a Blogger's Meetup.

Blogging is an activity that has gotten well fostered, thanks to the web. I had an opportunity to participate in a meetup conducted by Bill Belew, for bloggers. In addition of course to Bill, I met bloggers who focused in a wide variety of interests:
  1. Different kinds of chocolates
  2. Writing about Writing
  3. What you sow, so you reap, a healthy approach to living
  4. IT Tutoring
  5. Individual Approach to Financial Management
  6. Promotion of English among Chinese
  7. Boomer Grandparents
  8. Raw Foods
  9. Fierce Planet, on Earthquakes and Other Natural Disasters
  10. A new blogger who is focused on art
It is quite refreshing to see that blogging as an activity is not only very mainstream, but can be harnessed to generate some side income as well.

An interesting factoid: Nearly everyone else in the meetup used Wordpress; I was the only Blogger user.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Scripting for the Google Web

Not too long ago, Google announced the availability of scripting for the web for Google Apps Standard Edition customers too. If you play with a little bit, you will begin to see the power of JavaScript in its ability to provide meaningful automating capability to web documents, particularly as it is being promoted by Google.

A very interesting application in automating — screenscraping as it is called by the author, Tony Hirst — can be studied here:
Screenscraping With Google Spreadsheets App Script and the =importHTML() Formula.
The author illustrates how council elections results of the town of Lichfield, UK, can be analyzed using Google App Script.

While the Internet is well known to be a great equalizer, it is also true that it also a great personalizer, thanks to scripting everywhere -- at the [browser] client and in the [server in the] cloud.