Is it on?

Pretty funny day today. It all started with Christian Heilmann posting this on Twitter:

Another simple, but very useful and needed web site: http://ismycomputeron.com

And Dion Almaer who runs Ajaxian.com followed up with the question we all had:

We just need a JSON version and then we are all set!

Of course Heilmann wrote a JSON API for this really useful service using YQL and posted it on Twitter.

@dalmaer that what YQL is for. Finally ismycomputeron.com as a jsonp api: http://is.gd/eXyo §

I figured we had to add another level of abstraction to this beast so I wrote a really simple plugin using jQuery making it easy to integrate into your web apps and posted it on Twitter.

@codepo8 Now as a jQuery-plugin http: //jsbin.com/ofiwi

After that Christian felt he had to let the world know about the R&D being done in different parts of the world on the topic “is it on”, so he blogged and tweeted about it.

But I know my script was actually not that good, it was not unobtrusive, and my fellow tweeter icaaq told me friendly but respectfully that:

@hising not the most unobtrusive script I’ve seen though

Even though my feelings were a little bit hurt, I took the time to rewrite the script in order to be more unobtrusive, and now you can find the new version here http://frontendbook.com/sandbox/is-it-on/

What to expect next in the evolution of is-it-on?

  • Widget for blogs
  • Mobile version (an iphone is not a computer right?)
  • Adding configurable options to the script (uppercase, lowercase etc)
  • Adding error handling to script

Whatever, it was good fun. More of that.