Gnip Makes Data Portability ‘Suck Less’
Data portability service Gnip (pronounced guh-nip), announced Tuesday, promises to make our Ajax-filled days even better. Developers have been scurrying for ways to efficiently consolidate and streamline data portability, and Gnip promises to do exactly that.
Web applications have typically relied on requesting data in cycles to get its information. Gnip promises to change the model in favor of one that is more push-oriented. Translation: It means getting “live” data, like email or stock quotes, quicker than ever. Gnip would provide data to clients by hosting as a middle man and providing host data asynchronously.
Even better, the service will complement web developers preferences, providing the data by translating the data polling standard of your choice. For example, RSS, ATOM, REST, XMPP or COMET are all promised to be supported.
Data providers and partners signed up for now include Digg, Flickr, Urban Dictionary, Del.icio.us and Six Apart. Currently, while the data is provided, data polling translation and identification will come later. Gnip has provided libraries for Perl, PHP, Java, Python and Ruby for now.
It’s awesome news for those in the business of making web applications. Retrieving information in the past has been a taxing process for both servers and applications.
