api

came across the acronym "api" yesterday not once, but twice, and decided that the gods wanted me to know what that meant and wikipedia (of course) had the answer:

An application programming interface (API) is a particular set of rules and specifications that a software program can follow to access and make use of the services and resources provided by another particular software program that implements that API. It serves as an interface between different software programs and facilitates their interaction, similar to the way the user interface facilitates interaction between humans and computers.

An API can be created for applications, libraries, operating systems, etc, as a way to define their "vocabularies" and resources request conventions (e.g. function-calling conventions). It may include specifications for routines, data structures, object classes, and protocols used to communicate between the consumer program and the implementer program of the API.

So, for example, on this page http://code.google.com/apis/maps/ you can also sign up for an API key.

And if time allowed, there are all sorts of "apis" available for a free download at http://vimeo.com/api/docs/downloads

Perhaps tomorrow . . .