Love from (and for) Wordnik
In the process of creating my first Twitter bot, I learned about an extremely cool site called Wordnik, a really amazing online dictionary with an equally amazing developer API.
I learned about Wordnik through Sarah Kuehnle’s tutorials on creating a Twitter bot, and ended up tapping into the API for my own Twitter bot.
One mind-blowing thing I discovered is that through Wordnik, I can now send along words from a Twitter post… and find out which words from that message are nouns. This is a huge thing that I didn’t realize was even possible, and provides so many more ways to play around with language. I’m using the API in an incredibly basic way right now (is this word a noun or not), but I’m really looking forward to digging in and coming up with new ways to leverage the data available from Wordnik’s.
When I first tried to get my developer API key, I ended up emailing the site to check on the status. Turns out, there was a small issue with the process that emails out the keys… and I got a nice note from the site’s founder, Erin McKean. Not only did I get my API key, but I also ended up getting some fantastic swag in the mail several days later!
Here’s a great TED talk by McKean, that showcases her love of words (and also served as the spark for what would eventually turn into Wordnik):
Swing on by, and check out the words on Wordnik. All the words.
Related:
Desire Bot: A Twitter Bot That Re-Posts What the World Wants
And whaddya know – I adopted the word “blog” today.
Prepare for more Twitter bots, people. They’re a-comin’!
avoision (February 10, 2015 at 8:14 pm)