I love the web. The web should allow anyone to access any experience that they need without the need for native install or content walled garden.
I've updated my AJAX Tagger to Version 2! This release adds a simple but useful feature: you can now manually add your own tags in the tag list panel. This is really helpful when the Yahoo Developer Term Extraction API isn't sufficient for tagging, like when you need specific tags such as "C#" and ".Net".
I'm exploring how to improve the relevance of Yahoo Term Extraction API results. My initial question to Yahoo revealed that their system uses a semantic network to relate words and phrases. I'm experimenting with a two-step process: first, extract terms without a query to identify the most relevant term, and second, use that term as a query in a second extraction to refine the results. This might improve relevance, though it doubles the number of API calls. I plan to test this in my DeliTag and AjaxTag applications.
MSN is launching APIs on Tuesday, September 13th, allowing developers to access their search results. More information will be available on the MSN developer site. I plan to explore these APIs and discuss my findings on this blog and on tagger.kinlan.co.uk. I hope they offer innovative features beyond basic search result access, similar to Yahoo's related searches, contextual searches, and term extraction.
I've just finished creating a proxy script that allows access to the Yahoo Content Analysis API Term Extraction service from any browser, bypassing cross-site scripting issues. It works by taking a POST request, forwarding it to Yahoo, and returning the XML response. The code (Perl) is included in the post, and I've successfully tested it with IE6, IE7, and Firefox. Feel free to email me if you have any questions.
In this third part of my series on my first AJAX application, I'm diving into the power of the Yahoo! API. It's been a learning experience, and I'm incredibly impressed with how much it offers compared to Google's. I've been exploring the Term Extraction and Related Searches APIs, and I'm starting to think about how to use the Contextual Search API. The Term Extraction API is great for pulling out keywords, while the Related Searches API helps me find relevant search queries. My app combines these to analyze blog posts and generate related searches. I'm hoping to use the Contextual Search API to add targeted search results. Future versions will incorporate more APIs, possibly from Technorati, to enhance functionality. Stay tuned!