The API is all the rage these days, and it seems this trend is not only expanding in the open source realm, but the corporate megalith arena as well.

While shopping on Target.com tonight, I noticed that during checkout users are given the option of either completing their transaction with their target.com account, or their amazon.com account. Seriously: if you buy something from Target online, you can toss in your amazon.com login and password, and you’ll have access to your existing amazon shipping addresses and billing information!

This is genius.

I don’t think I’m alone when I say that one of the barriers to my purchasing goods from online retailers is the often-times arduous process of signing up for yet another account name as well as entering billing and shipping information. So, to begin checking out from a site I’ve never used before and being given the opportunity to simply throw in my big gun, my king of all logins, the one online shopping identity to rule them all, how could I resist?

The process functioned just as one might expect: Target.com pulled over my billing and shipping information automatically, and I was all set: my total time spent in completing my order has to have been cut in half, if it wasn’t reduced even more than that. Granted that it’s sort of scary to think of Amazon as becoming even more popular and therein powerful, but when they make online commerce this easy and rewarding, there just isn’t anything to complain about anymore.

I’ve been meaning to post an entry about this site for some time now. Overheard in the Office is a repository for all those short quips everyone hears on a day to day basis that are either so ridiculous or so unbelievably poignant that they stick with us the whole week. The publisher of the site is self-described as an “easily amused compulsive people watcher” and this is exemplified by the entries listed on Overheard. Check out such classics as:

1PM Lunch
Employee #1: Kinda ridiculous that a George Foreman mini-grill is able to take down power for half of the floor.

Employee #2: Dude, you’re grilling in the office and you’re going to talk about what’s ridiculous?

Submitting something that you have overheard is a snap. Just go to the site and click on Heard Something? to have your overheard comment whisked off to Overheard’s editors. I’m thinking that story about Ryan’s coworker calling him a “Ghetto Snake” would fit in nicely.

Web Development can be a tremendously chaotic environment to work in, anyone in the field won’t argue that point. Because of this reality, many designers don’t get as much time as they’d like to study the best practices being forged in the industry. Enter Bite Size Standards, which describes itself as a “multi-author blogging experiment”.

The essence of their idea: developers busy on any number of important projects don’t always have the time to read detailed design essays and tutorials, but a small dose of best practices each day keeps them engaged in the learning process. It sounds like a great idea to me, I’ll be watching to see if their hypothesis rings true!

1. The Daily Show
2. The Colbert Report
3. Family Guy
4. American Dad
5. The Boondocks