Alexa announcement

["Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

This is a VERY important development:

http://websearch.alexa.com/welcome.html;jsessionid=C113C7838EBC40D4F32113475A5FBF0DAlexa

is making its entire service available to third-party developers.  The 
Alexa Web "crawl" will thus be available to anyone who wants to build 
services on top of it.  For members of this list that could include 
comprehensive Open Access databases and innovative manipulations of the 
content of such databases (data mining, etc.).  Presumably this is what 
Stevan Harnad envisioned when he first postulated "scholarly skywriting" 
some years ago, though I am not aware that Professor Harnad ever proposed 
specific examples.  An interesting parlor game would be to predict how 
many new services will come on board within three years as a result of the 
Alexa announcement, what their strategic implications are, and what legacy 
services are thus superseded.  Joe Esposito