Song of the day: "I've been across this country, from Denver to the ocean. And I never met girls who could sing so sweet as the angels that live in Houston." 

To me there's nothing better than driving across the Great Plains of the United States.  

It's like a meditation. What's left of the Rockies at one end, rolling hills and farmland in the east.  

While I was driving yesterday, Twitter announced two new APIs that I haven't had a look at yet, but am excited to when this eastward movement draws to an abrupt close when I hit the Atlantic Ocean. Which seems will happen on Saturday. 

The first new API gives us the Payloads I've been asking for since 2007. Awesome! 

I was pretty sure it was coming this week when I wrote this piece last Friday. 

Basically all the features of RSS attached to a tweet, with the same ability for ad hoc expansion. Very interesting computer science with, imho and if there are no brick walls, and if it performs reasonably well, infinite possibility for new apps. Once again, something worth getting excited about in TwitterLand. First time in a long time. 

That's the good news. The bad news is that it doesn't exist yet. They haven't even released preliminary docs. Oy.  

I was afraid of this. "The scary part is if Twitter announces the metadata capability but doesn't ship it. And you know what -- I bet they do that too. There's zero cost to them to announce it if they don't have to ship it immediately. In fact, they never have to ship it. But it has the effect of forestalling a similar effort by client developers, which I would get ready to do, no matter what Twitter does this week." 

The second new feature is a stream-oriented API. I haven't had a look yet -- but this is the feature that made the FriendFeed API so nice. Let's hope the Twitter guys did it as simply. 

Anyway, I have mixed feelings about announcing the payloads API without a hint of specification. If it's good there will be lots of fertile ground for meedia hackers like myself. Announcements like this, in the tech business, tend to take a long time to come to fruition, if they ever do. Let's hope this is for real.  

Something to talk about at the 140conf next Tues in NYC. 

Gotta hit the road. I'm headed toward Ann Arbor, Michigan tonight. In the Eastern Time Zone! ">