“fortuitous is written by Matthew Haughey (wikipedia) and was created in spring of 2007, after an epiphany at SXSW… I’m a hobbyist turned designer turned developer who eventually got to quit my day job and support myself with my projects. Along the way, my business life has gotten increasingly complicated and I’ve had to spend hours researching accounting, the law, and usage patterns on my sites. I intend to post a new essay about some aspect of my experiences every Monday.”

“Amazon and Google have recently shattered a common misconception: that free APIs are a commons of goodies to be built on top of for fun and profit, like open source software. If you think that, then here are six things you need to know about free APIs: 1. Free APIs are not a god-given right. Businesses offer them for their own self-interested reasons. If you build on top of the API but aren’t delivering the value for the business that provides the API, your use of the API will probably go away.”