Using Web APIs for Research

Recently we launched our new product at Strutta, a 'create your own contest site' web service. In each contest, users submit and vote on each other's videos, pictures, songs or writings.

As part of the research we did for the development, we wanted to examine our competition. So, I dove into YouTube to try and figure out some of their ideas and algorithms. For me, this wasn't entirely new: when I posted my Line Rider videos to YouTube, I followed up each video with manual statistics tracking and gained some insight into how a video becomes popular on YouTube. However, that only gave me a very narrow view of the community and its dynamics.

Since then though, things have changed a lot. YouTube now has a public API as well as pre-made libraries to use. With these, it becomes very easy to collect statistics and perform your own analysis. So, armed with Python, I set out to investigate YouTube's ubiquitous 'related videos' feature.

I found it interesting to analyse a big site through their own API rather than screen scraping. Traditionally, one first tries to collect as much data as possible, but the resulting data set can become very unwieldy. In this case, I already had full access and I could focus on exactly which queries I wanted to run, how to aggregate my data, and which measures to focus on.

The results revealed some interesting conclusions. My big write-up can be found on the Strutta Blog, aptly titled Six Degrees of YouTube.

Stargate Atlantis meets Line Rider – Go Rodney!

I'm a big fan of sci-fi, and lately Stargate Atlantis has been holding my interest. So when I stumbled upon a YouTube contest for best Stargate Atlantis fan video, a light bulb went off in my head: Line Rider + YouTube = Magic!

I present to you Go Rodney!, a Stargate Atlantis themed Line Rider track, set to the SGA theme song:

Just like in my previous tracks, I've tried to maintain the principle that all solid lines are part of the scenery. I drew the track in function of the theme song, with much planning ahead, and tried to synchronize the tricks as much as possible. I've also tried to maintain better perspective throughout.

A higher quality version can be found on Rapidshare (DivX + MP3, 17MB and no contest ad). I've also uploaded a view of the entire track (with line types indicated). There are 5945 separate lines.

Line Rider - Urban Run

I had some fun today with the new Line Rider game and created a nifty track.

I wanted to do better than my last track and do the whole thing in 3D perspective. I think it came out great :).

The music was suggested by Adrian. It's from the Katamari Damacy soundtrack.

A high quality version (DivX) is on RapidShare. By popular request, I also have a snapshot of the whole track (and Jagged Peak as well).

Digg this story (Digg Video).

On a lighter note

Update: posted a new track.

My friend Boštjan Čadež is the genius behind the latest internet phenomenon Line Rider. I had some fun with a development version the last few days and made a rather wicked track. And yes, I do get some work done in between playing with Line Rider :P.