As mentioned in a previous entry, I’ve opened up my mashup application to the public. From the application page:

Enter a topic, and Chirpmap will highlight the locations that are tweeting about it. In real time.

Keep in mind that the app is still a prototype, and hasn’t been tested in an environment with many simultaneous users.

I’m not sure if I’ve posted this before, but Thomas Frank’s JSON editor is an absolute lifesaver. Enter your JSON code and the editor visualizes it as a tree, complete with features to add & delete nodes.

Available as a download as well as a web app. Absolutely fantastic stuff.

The best news I’ve heard all week.

This project comes from one of my favorite Simpsons episodes which has a scene where Mr. Burns brings Homer to his mansion. One of his rooms has a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters. One of the monkeys writes a slightly incorrect line from Charles Dickens “It was the best of times, it was blurst of times.”  The joke is a play on the theory that a million monkeys sitting at a million typewriters will eventually produce Shakespeare.  And that is what I did.  I created millions of monkeys on Amazon EC2 (then my home computer) and put them at virtual typewriters (aka Infinite Monkey Theorem).

So far, Jesse’s virtual monkeys and typewriters have randomly created The Tempest, The Winters Tale, The Merchant of Venice and many more. I  recommend bookmarking his post so you can follow the progress. (via Ars Technica)

In case you missed it, you can watch the entire keynote here.

From the BUILD conference. Very in-depth, with lots of information on how the revamped Start menu and overall Metro UI work.

But even in this early state, Windows 8 is unambiguously a first-class tablet operating system.

Update: you can read the press release from the Build Windows event on Microsoft’s website.