Juice Analytics has a Python class that uses Yahoo’s geocoding API. All you need is a Yahoo Application ID, and you can do up to 50,000 lookups per day. Cool stuff.

Unfortunately, not everyone can actually be at PyCon 2006. So for those of us who are following along at home, Ted Leung has daily reports up from Day 1 and Day 2. And Eugene Lazutkin has two sets of pictures up with a lot more in his Flickr photoset.

Andrew is wondering wither PyCon 2006 on the web? The comments attached to his post include a lot of good places to check.

Atul Varma posted to the ChiPy list that his company uses a tool called SCons. It claims to be the “next generation build tool” and a cross-platform, Python-based, replacement for make with autoconf functionality.

Quoth Atul:

So far everyone at work is in love with this package; constructing our build system is now as much fun as coding in Python now because, well, SCons lets us use Python to create our build system instead of a clunky shell-scripting mutant language (Make) or any of the alternatives we’ve seen so far, like Ant.

I don’t think I personally have a use for it, but it sounds like it could be interesting if you are a real software developer.

Quoth Paul in Why I Promote Python at O’Reilly:

Personally, I cannot stand this design aesthetic, because it divides the world into “programmers” and “non-programmers”. My dream is a world wherein all but the very lowest levels and tightest loops of programs are written in a language that is so simple that it can be taught in primary school as a first language; where every word-processor user who can write a macro can at least try to dive into their word processor’s source code to fix a bug, because the macro language is also the implementation language.

The article as a whole is, perhaps, a little on the Python fanatic side. But it’s worth reading in full.

Update: Some related thoughts at Piece of Mind.

Quoth Adrian on the Django weblog:

As we announced at PyCon today, lead Django devs Jacob and Adrian are working on a Django book! We’ve been working on it for the past couple of months and already have (the first drafts of) a couple of chapters done at this point.

Apress is the publisher. We’re excited to be in the fine company of Dive Into Python and the Joel on Software book. Both are fantastic reads, by the way.

As I’ve mentioned before, I my experience with Apress books has been very positive. I’ll be looking forward to this one with anticipation!

Today is February 24th, so you can now register for PyWeek 2! The challenge is to write a game from scratch in one week. See the challenge rules for details.

Although I’ve thought about it, I just don’t think I’m comfortable enough with PyGame to enter this time around. Maybe I’ll try PyWeek 3 if they have one.

Ben has a lengthy post up about the ingredients to the Pylons Python Web Framework. He really makes it sound quite appealing. With a new release in the works, I hope people give it a try.

Also, PylonsHQ has been redesigned since I last checked it out. It’s extremely slick. Take a look.

Pyinotify is a wrapper for the inotify feature of the 2.6.13+ Linux kernel. It will help you detect any file or directory changes made on a filesystem. The project homepage includes a nice tutorial to get you started.

Obviously this only works under Linux. If you want something for Windows, you might want to check out the directory watching recipe at the ASPN Python Cookbook.

Graham Dumpleton has a really nice beginner’s guide to mod_python. He starts with getting it loaded into Apache, and covers basic content handlers, global configuration, error logs, and where to go next.