The Easter Bunny’s Egg-cellent Adventure / / No Comments This year the Easter Bunny has been on a whirlwind world tour, hopping from continent to continent and hiding eggs in some of the most amazing places on Earth! Take part in the world’s largest egg hunt today by visiting the Tripgeo Global Egg Hunt.Are you ready to undertake a global egg hunt? If so grab your basket and get ready to embark on a virtual adventure of some of the world’s most Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: adventure, Bunny's, Easter, Eggcellent
Using Generative AI to Check for Spam / / No Comments A few days ago I wrote up an exploration I did in Spam APIs, "Spam APIs in 2024". After working on those demos and writing up my findings, I thought it might be interesting to see how a generative AI tool, like Googele’s Gemini would handle such a task. Initial Tests # So – once again – I’m a broken record on this – but I fired up AI Studio first to give it some quick tests. I began with this prompt: Given the following text, rate how much it appears to be spam by giving it a score between 1 and 10, with 10 being the most likely the content is spam. For my first test, I used a ‘bad’ sample (see my last post for a full listing of my sample data): 💪... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: check, Generative, spam, using
Mapping SpaceTime / / No Comments I recently stumbled upon Time Map, an interactive map which attempts to show points of interest around a location by walking time. Enter a location into the Time Map and a venue category (eg pizza restaurants) and the map will display a series of concentric circles around your location, each of which represents a minute of walking time. All the nearby points of interest are overlaid on top Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Mapping, SpaceTime
Automating Blog Post Headers with Firefly Services / / No Comments Yesterday I introduced you to Adobe’s new offering, Firefly Services, and demonstrated a simple example of how to generate images from prompt using the REST APIs. Today I thought I’d share one of the little demos I’ve made with the API, and one specifically built to help out with my blog – generating headers. My usual process for headers is to go to the Firefly website, enter a prompt, let it load, and then promptly change it to landscape and re-generate my prompt again. I always feel bad that the initial, square, images are essentially trashed. It occurred to me I could build a Node.js utility to generate the images at the exact right size and even quickly display them.... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Automating, blog, Firefly, Headers, Post, Services
Spam APIs in 2024 / / No Comments I enjoy building API demos so I generally keep an eye out for interesting APIs to play with. A few weeks ago it occurred to me that I had not seen anyone talking about or sharing information about Spam APIs. I may be showing my age a bit, but it feels like spam was a much larger issue back in the early days. It was something you always heard about and worried about but not so much anymore. Much like nuclear war. I did a bit of digging and it turns out Chris Coyler had similar thoughts 4 years ago: "Spam Detection APIs". I thought I’d check out a few myself and share the results. Here, in no particular order, are the APIs I tried. Test Data # Before I looked into any APIs, I gathered... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: 2024, APIs, spam
The Future for Trees / / No Comments Like many people a few years ago I realized that not only is climate change happening but that human beings as a species are doing next to nothing to prevent its escalation. I do believe that the worst excesses of climate change are still preventable. I just see very little evidence that we are making the changes necessary to stop global heating, or even slow our ever increasing rush towards Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: future, trees
Using PDF Content with Google Gemini / / No Comments Back in February Google announced Gemini 1.5, their latest, most powerful language model, and while access has been open via AI Studio, API access has only been available in the past few days. I thought I’d try out the new model and specifically make use of the larger context window to do prompts on PDF documents. I discussed something similar earlier this year(("Using AI and PDF Services to Automate Document Summaries")[https://www.raymondcamden.com/2024/01/08/using-ai-and-pdf-services-to-automate-document-summaries]) which made use of Diffbot, so I thought it would be interesting to build a similar experience with the Gemini API. At a high level, it’s not too difficult: Begin... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Content, Gemini, Google, using
The Sea Trade Monitor / / No Comments PortWatch is a new platform which monitors disruptions to global maritime trade. The platform uses real-time data on ship traffic and maritime trade to provide an alert system on trade disruptions likely to impact shipping trade routes. Recent attacks by Houthi rebels on ships traversing the Red Sea have helped to highlight how marine trade is vulnerable to geopolitical instability.. Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Monitor, Trade