the brief wondrous life of json

November 29, 2018 8:08 AM

What are some examples of surprising/strange/weird/subversive/powerful use cases of public APIs? Especially interested in ways that an API may be used in a way the facilitators of the API would not have anticipated, and/or just exceptionally clever uses.

I'm working on a storytelling project that centers around different concepts in data science/programming/webdev, and I'd love to tackle public APIs! I'm aware of this fantastic list but not a similar list of use cases, and I'd like to find more anecdotes/good stories if at all possible.

Thank you!

posted by elephantsvanish to Technology (8 answers total)

stacksort uses the Stack Overflow API to... sort lists.
posted by BungaDunga at 8:32 AM on November 29, 2018

There's a guy in my area who leverages the API for our state DOT to emit road incident data into an amateur radio format called APRS, which is a packet-radio format used for a variety of nerdy things.

The APRS data is, in turn, collected and displayed on GoogleMaps by aprs.fi, where's also aggregated with ship telemetry for a neato map of ham-related information. Here is the view of Nashville, my home city. I don't see any road incidents at the moment (which is good!) but they show up tagged with TMVA in the names. If you look up at the river, you can see barge traffic.
posted by jquinby at 8:51 AM on November 29, 2018

Ah, found an incident near Chattanooga. Took a screencap for posterity.
posted by jquinby at 8:55 AM on November 29, 2018

There's a guy in my area who leverages the API for our state DOT to emit road incident data into an amateur radio format called APRS

I would love the hell out of this if i could get semi-realtime traffic incident data via APRS in portland. what's their call?
posted by Dr. Twist at 10:45 AM on November 29, 2018

not certain if this is what you mean, but hatnote? it gets info about wikipedia edits and turns it into music.
posted by Cozybee at 11:07 AM on November 29, 2018

I don't know about unexpected so much as very, very diverse - the Global Biodiversity Information Facility - gbif framework gives open access to millions of biological/ecological datasets.

Looking in my Wordpress there's a very wide range of examples, including public health, citizen science, disease...
posted by unearthed at 11:35 AM on November 29, 2018

I would love the hell out of this if i could get semi-realtime traffic incident data via APRS in portland. what's their call?

You've got mefi mail!
posted by jquinby at 12:56 PM on November 29, 2018

re: Wikipedia logs, there's also @congressedits (suspended recently, I just found out) and the seemingly now-dormant @oiledits.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:22 PM on November 29, 2018