Four short links: 8 September 2009

Mobile jQuery, API to Google Book Search, Open Learning, Popularity Algorithms

1. jQTouch -- jQuery library for mobile web app development. (via brian on Delicious)
2. GData API to Google Book Search -- search full text, get back metadata, modify "my library" collections, etc.
3. Open and Free Courses at the CMU Open Learning Initiative -- rather than just a lecture and handout dump, it has interactive exercises and questions to help you practice and figure out whether you've learned the subject. (via timoreilly on Twitter)
4. How to Build a Popularity Algorithm You Can Be Proud Of -- description and brief analysis for the popularity algorithms in Hacker News, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Delicious, and Linkibol. A basic collective intelligence technique that's not obvious. (via Simon Willison)

OSCON: Programmer Insecurity and the Genius Myth

Two of my favorite presenters, Ben Collins-Sussman and Brian Fitzpatrick, did an OSCON session on "Programmer Insecurity and the Genius Myth." Brian and Ben talked about how programmers' insecurities cause all manner of troubles in programming projects, and then presented a number of tips for how to avoid these problems. They also asserted that there are very few genius "lone ranger"programmers in the real world -- most highly successful and productive programmers work smart and collaborate well.

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