I’ve created my first ever API. I often work with and develop applications around APIs from other providers such as the Twitter API or one of the many APIs provided by Google but this is my first time creating an API that others can use.

Built using CodeIgniter, the API has a simple purpose, to take in a browser agent id string and return whether it thinks the browser agent is a bot or a regular web browser such as Internet Explorer being used by a person browsing the web.

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Amazing high speed robotic hand. (YouTube video)

Some research from Red Cardinal about Malware Stats for Irish Web Hosting Companies.

RefactormyCode.com Gget your code improved  or help others improve their code.

Server2Go, Create a server which runs off a CDROM or USB stick, very handy and very free too.

Use FormIgniter to create forms for use with CodeIgniter. It outputs the neccessary model, view and controll code. A great time saver.

DesignFellow have released CodeIgniter quick reference cheat sheet version 2.0.

A blog post on Why PHP frameworks matter.

Test your app in any browser from the web. Very useful service.

17 Awesome Web Developer Cheat Sheets, some great cheat sheets, PHP, Ruby, mySQL and more.

Earlier in the week, I wrote about differences in the referral address from Google and Google ‘Caffeine’, Googles new search engine algorithm. On the Blackdog SEO blog, Paul compares the two search tools and has created an excellent tool to compare the results from Google and Google Caffeine.

At the start of June, I began collecting email newsletters together to collect information from them. My main interest was in finding answers such as the most common day and time for sending email newsletters, how many links and images do businesses include in their newsletters?

So far, I have collected over 300 emails newsletters from over 50 sources with an average of 9 new email newsletters coming in per day. A summary of all the information collected is on the email newsletter information page.

At first, I wrote a simple PHP script to gather together the information and show it on the page. After receiving a few dozen large newsletters the script began timing out as it took too long for the information to be worked out and displayed. I rewrote the system for collecting the newsletter information and displaying it using CodeIgniter, a PHP framework using the MVC approach.

I used CodeIgniters Active Record class in a Model to retrieve and calculate the summary information to display in a View. Its performance is amazing, the same information that originally took too long to display, resulting in a time-out now displays in a second or more, without Caching. CodeIgniter has fantastic performance.

If you are developing any apps using PHP, I highly recommend taking a look at CodeIgniter, there is a fantastic User guide, Wiki and forum.