[Techtalk] The Internet is my functional programming language

[Andrea Schweer]

Hi,

<zitiere wer="Kelly Jones">
> For example, can I get the following information in machine readable
> format?:
>
>  % Current right ascension/declination of Mars.
>
>  % Image (map) representing given latitude/longitude coordinates.
>
>  % The mathematical constant Gamma to 10 decimal places.
>
>  % The current temperature in Alice Springs, Australia.
>
>  % The value of the US dollar vs the British pound.
>
>  % Numerical approximations to the solutions for x^5+x+1=0
>
> and so on.
>
> I know much of this information is available in human-readable format
> (Horizons, TIGER map, MathWorld, Weather Underground, OandA, etc), but is
> it
> available in consistent, machine-readable format?

Consistent, maybe not.
Machine-readable, have a look here: http://www.programmableweb.com/apis --
there is a big bunch of services out there. You might want to read up on
web services (eg start at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_service); have
a look at WSDL, SOAP and UDDI.

I think it's not so much the case of "nobody has thought of doing this"
but rather, you need to know which terms to use to look for it.

I hope this helps.

cheers,
Andrea