Quick note on an app I threw together using the Mendeley API that I discussed in the previous post. This app is crude, and given that the Mendeley API is rate-limited and in flux it might not work for you. The basic idea is to embellish make the list of literature cited in an article with information that might help a reader decide whether a given citation is worth reading. One clue might be how many people on Mendeley are reading that article.

Menedeley's API has been publicly launched at http://dev.mendeley.com/, accompanied by various announcements such as: All good fun to be sure, but it's a pity more effort has been spent on Easter eggs than on documenting and testing the API. If you visit the API development site there's precious little in the way of documentation, and few examples.

Mendeley have called for proposals to use their forthcoming API. The API will publicly available soon, but in a clever move Mendeley will provide early access to developers with cool ideas.

Interesting conversation yesterday on Twitter with Evgeniy Meyke of EarthCape prompted in part by my last post. We started talking about what a Friendfeed replacement might look like and how it might integrate more directly into scientific data. Is it possible to build something general or will it always need to be domain specific. Might this in fact be an advantage?