• I’ve swapped back to DuckDuckGo this week after hearing news that its traffic is sky-rocketing. I used to like it but gradually drifted back to Google; it’ll be interesting to see how I get on now with the new UI and refinements to search.
• Fez has a release date! I’ve mentioned Fez before and I’m super-excited for April 13th.
• Dump.ly (a private photo sharing site) posted an interesting article on their blog about using IO streams in Node.JS to improve performance. They use IO streams to allow them to start sending a client Zip files before they have finished creating them, improving response time from 10-30 seconds to just a second or two. Plus if the user cancels the download there’s no wasted bandwidth. I’ve been using Node.JS a lot at work recently and it definitely has its place in situations such as this.
• This week I helped release Shaed, a reverse request-based proxy specifically made for routing third-party API requests and masking parameters or private services behind a public URL. Specifically it solves problems like:
  • Caching requests to the Twitter API so you don’t hit API limits.
  • Hiding API keys.
  • Limiting access to a third-party API in a public web app.
  • Reducing load on your own API services.

  If that sounds useful for you give it a try, and help us improve it!

And finally, this weekend @antoniamoreno and I went to see The Hunger Games at the cinema. I’ve read the books, but Toni hasn’t. I thought they did a good job and all the events certainly happened in the right order with very few changes, but I felt like the film didn’t convey the level of hunger in District 12 (why does Gale distract Katniss from shooting a deer? They’re starving!). I can see why the books are number one on Amazon right now; without reading them first you are definitely left wanting to know more.