Hacks, API, and another grazing widget

While debugging some other Grazr issues, I was surprised to see calls to my API from an unknown source. Following the calls led me to OPod by Rowan Nairn.

I was very impressed with Rowan's hacking of the API to make it work with his web widget. Rowan is obviously a very smart fellow and a good hacker. His OPod widget has a slightly different flavor and one particular interesting feature, the panel 'grows' as items are clicked, leaving a visible history.

OPod has been around a while and it and Grazr share some similar design aspects. This is due to both of us drawing inspiration and direction from James Corbett. There was no direct copying of Rowan's design, and any slight Rowan may have felt was honestly unintentional. James had mentioned Rowan to me earlier but I wasn't building a web panel until a few weeks ago. Regardless, I should have invited him to be a collaborator sooner but coding at 100mph trying to get Grazr working left only so many hours in the day! Sorry Rowan.

With all that being said, I'm happy to announce that OPod is now 'offically' using the Grazr API. Rowan + OPod are now the first third party alpha user of the API. Welcome!

I believe Rowan will be a valuable colleague in driving "grazing", reading lists, and opml forward!