Now that GBIF is releasing lots of cool web services (thanks to Dave Martin, Tim Robertson, and others) and similar web services can be found in other organizations, ought we consider a www.programmableweb.com knock-off called something like www.programmablebiodiversity.org? This way, we can have a user-driven repository / show-and-tell for useful applications that can be built for the wider biodiversity informatics community. At the very least, this will provide some positive feedback for providers who can then point to examples of how the data can be used, mashed-up, or otherwise repurposed in imaginative ways. Plus, this could be like a communal grab-bag of tricks for organizations like EOL. If anyone wants to take the initiative on this, I’ll most certainly contribute.

The kinds of things I am thinking of are Rod Page’s iSpecies (http://ispecies.org) or my temporary, development knock-off using nothing but JSON (http://ispiders.blogspot.com/2007/09/ispecies-clone.html), or Rod’s bioGUID reference parser and my simple way to tap into this in real-time (http://tinyurl.com/ytqxo6), PygmyBrowse (http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1125451.1125562), etc.

Along the same sort of lines, the TDWG link to its “Biodiversity Projects of the World” is buried under “Activities”. Shouldn’t this be front and center on the TDWG homepage?

Cheers,

David P. Shorthouse

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Department of Biological Sciences

CW-403, Biological Sciences Centre

University of Alberta

Edmonton, AB   T6G 2E9

mailto:dps1@ualberta.ca

http://canadianarachnology.dyndns.org

http://www.spiderwebwatch.org

http://ispiders.blogspot.com

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