More than one and a half year after I released the first version of the site, I reckon now would be a decent time to actually announce it to the public.

Though I am a Dane, preciously little of what I read is in Danish, and little of it applies to Danes. This means – among many other things, but for this post this is the interesting point – that currencies mentioned are not the Danish Krone, which is still the currency my mental references stem from.

I thought that, while the Danish Krone is probably not a currency many non-Danes come by on a regular basis, there is still a good deal of mental currency conversion going on in the heads of people. This could be helped.

Most currency conversion tools convert from one currency to another, and put a great deal of focus on the developments in currency rates; that’s fine, they seem intended for professionals who need this sort of information.

I, on the other hand, don’t. I am interested in seeing what a thing someone is writing about is worth in my mental currency. So I came up with an idea for a slightly alternative currency viewer. Instead of focusing on these economical data, it would simply show what a currency is worth, in currency or currencies the user is interested in.

The result is currencies.dk. The site is made with a principle in mind that I deemed crucial, and that I have found very helpful using the site: hackable URIs. This means that by formulating the quite simple URI http://currencies.dk/{amount}/{currency}/ (amount is a number, currency is the three-lettered code for the currency), one could get the list.

Now, that is one side of the coin, being a utility for people to use on their own. It might be a little more convenient to use than most of the competition (I at least feel so), but the real reason for this simple API is to allow blogging applications to use it.

Thus I have also made a WordPress Plugin, intended to simply make it a bit easier for people to turn their mentioning of a currency into links so people can see how much that is worth in the currency they care about.

It is possible to create a user on currencies.dk, which allows one to filter which currency one would like to see. (I have little interest in the worth of a Bulgarian lev, as I realise many people won’t care about the Danish krone.)

So there it is, I have finally told the world about currencies.dk. If you have any questions about or ideas for the site, please let me know at info@currencies.dk.