Maybe I’m missing something, but Dave Winer’s ongoing talk about some new app. idea he’s come up with using the Google API really has me scratching my head. Dave said earlier today,
Now that said, I doubt if it has been done before because it combines two things that are relatively new — weblogs and the Google API. It uses the fact that URLs in a weblog have structure. They’re not without meaning. And the Google API returns, among other information, a set of URLs. Sites like Scripting News, with an archive going back to 1997, will have new utility.
Anyway, if this is as popular as I think it’s going to be, I’ll have to ask Google to up the limit on my key, or maybe give them the code to run on their server.
Sounded somewhat interesting, if cryptic, but then he followed up with this post,
An example of a bit of knowledge that’s now easy for me to get: Dave Sifry first appeared on Scripting News on 6/23/02. His second appearance was on 12/10/02.
Maybe I’m just spoiled by the weblogging tool I use, but why in the world would you want to do a Google API call to sort through data that is all local? Why in the world would you want to use a tool that makes it difficult to find out when you first wrote about a given individual? (For example, this URL will quickly lead you to the first time I blogged something about Winer).
I guess I can understand people running blogs for little or no charge who are using free hosting at Blogspot or wherever finding such a tool useful, but otherwise I just don’t understand why you’d need to go outside your blogging application to obtain such rudimentary views of your data.
Winer seems to be saying in a roundabout way that the software he’s using won’t do X, so rather than requests that ability or code it himself, he’ll pass along the problem to Google and use their system to accomplish what he’s looking for. Somehow I don’t think they’ll be jumping at the opportunity.