Google Chart API Revisited published on Dec 7, 2007

A comment on my previous post prompted me to do a little digging on what Google’s Chart API is and isn’t capable of, and what I found gives me reason to worry.

I’ll preface the remainder of this post with a disclaimer: I do realize that Google is a corporation, and its ultimate goal is to make money. I’m not disputing that, nor do I find it offensive in any way. It’s the type of …

Google Chart API published on Dec 7, 2007

So, I was surprised to see my news this morning, when information aesthetics spread the news of the new Google Chart API. Looks like they’ve been reading my blog, and they decided to save me the trouble of installing matplotlib or anything.

It’s not interactive, which still makes Dojo charting a very useful alternative, but it’s good to have a quick, easy API for just embedded charts for simple data. As an example, here’s a chart …

Ohloh’s KudoRank published on Nov 8, 2007

Jonathan Buchanan recently joined Ohloh and gave me a Kudo and I noticed something fascinating: my KudoRank jumped about 88% all at once. Needless to say, that struck me as a little … odd.

So I checked their documentation, and checked it against the situation. Their rules line up as follows:

1. The more Kudos you receive, the higher your KudoRank becomes.

   This was my first Kudo, so clearly this didn’t come into play.

2. Your influence increases as your KudoRank improves …