Kirkwall is the largest town and capital of Orkney, off the coast of northern mainland Scotland. The town is first mentioned in Orkneyinga saga in the year 1046. It was established as the settlement of Rögnvald II, Earl of Orkney, who was killed by his successor, Thorfinn. In 1486, King James III of Scotland elevated Kirkwall to the status of a royal burgh; modern roadsigns still indicate "The City and Royal Burgh of Kirkwall".

The name Kirkwall is derived from the Norse name Kirkjuvagr (Church Bay), which was later corrupted to Kirkvoe, then Kirkwaa. English cartographers mistook the latter part waa as the Scots wa (meaning wall); hence the town became Kirkwall.

The Mainland is the main island of Orkney, Scotland. Both of Orkney's burghs, Kirkwall and Stromness, lie on the island, which is also the heart of Orkney's ferry and air connections.

Seventy-five per cent of Orkney's population live on the island, which is more densely populated than the other islands of the archipelago. The lengthy history of the island's occupation has provided numerous important archaeological sites and the sandstone bedrock provides a platform for fertile farmland. There is an abundance of wildlife, especially seabirds.

Rendall (Old Norse: Rennudalr or Rennadal) is a parish in Mainland, Orkney.
It is in the north west of the island and lies east of the parishes of Birsay and Evie and north east of Harray. T
he island of Gairsay is also in the parish.

Rendall was later merged with Evie.

The term "Open API" has been recently in use by recent trends in social media and Web 2.0. It is currently a heavily sought after solution to interconnect websites in a more fluid user-friendly manner. Social networking sites like MySpace and Bebo currently do not have any open API's but with the growing trend and demand for social network aggregator websites like PeopleAggregator, Spokeo and SocialURL there will become more prevalent for these social networks to start considering the opportunities to take a leadership role in this endeavor. Open API also applies to collaborative services environments where managed service providers can also outsource specific services to other providers via systems integration. For example, companies like Level Platforms provide an open API to adapt to any business offering within the managed service environment.

With the advent of the Facebook Platform, launched June 1st 2007, Facebook incorporated an open api into its business model

OpenSocial is currently being developed by Google in conjunction with MySpace and other social networks including Bebo.com Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING. The ultimate goal is for any social website to be able to implement the APIs and host third party social applications.

"Open API" is also becoming very popular among technical software, for collaboration between different trades such as architects and engineers. Since there is different software for designing structures, buildings, these trades find a way to use each others work through "Open API". For example, an architect can draw in CAD software and engineers can implement these plans into their software.