links for 2009-02-03

"The API gives you access to 4 classes of data: Member, Committee, Legislative, and Documents. Typical operations include member.get, bill.get, and committee.members. At the moment it doesn’t appear that there are any mashups built with this API, but with apps like the one we wrote about earlier today, it probably won’t be long until we see this API put to use. More good material for the upcoming Transparency Camp later this month."

"Deep-sea explorers say they have solved "one of the greatest mysteries in naval history" with the discovery of what was "the world's mightiest and most technically advanced warship" when it sank in 1744.
The HMS Victory — the predecessor to a historic British flagship of the same name — was found "far from where history says it was lost," Odyssey Marine Exploration said in a news release Monday. "

"Although videos are available on the web via sites like youtube [sic], they don’t share the same democratized characteristics that have made the web vibrant and distributed. And it shows. That centralization has created some interesting problems that have symptoms like censorship via abuse of the DMCA and an overly-concentrated audience on a few sites that have the resources and technology to host video. I believe that problems like the ones we see with youtube are a symptom of the larger problem of the lack of decentralization and competition in video technology – very different than where the rest of the web is today."