UsefulConcept

Alexa is opening up its system to allow outside developers to use it in various ways to build new applications, or integrate into existing ones. 

There is a price for this opportunity.  But it is relatively inexpensive.  $1 per cpu hour, $1 / GB storage / Year,  $1 / 50 GB processed, $1 / GB downloaded, or $1 for 4000 user service requests.

The opportunities are really boundless.  Not so much with the tool as it is offered now, but how this changes the relationship between a search engine platform and everyone else.  It will be interesting to see how the other big players respond. 

Future Examples:

What would be fantastic is someone to make a tool for end users to connect to the system.  Those end users could then do something like  "deliver videocast of mpg,mov,etc files relating to [topic] as stream to this device".   So if you were having a party and wanted to play cool music videos in the background on your computer you could run some sort of query and poof, instant streaming videocast.  Just have to get the media owners in on it so they can charge a minor fee for it. 

Download Video Files - (full length) From Alexa Where Series = 'Family Guy' Order By DateCreated.  = stream of family guy tv shows (not trailers or snippets) shown in order.

Download Video Files - (trailer) From Alexa Where Topic = "zombies" and DateCreated > 10/1/2005 = stream of trailers for movies involving zombies made in the past few months.

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