Ever tried to sell something on the Internet and hoped that the process was simpler than what it currently is? What if selling an item on the Internet was as simple as sharing the item for sale with your friends on the social web? Gumroad, a San Francisco based startup has adopted that philosophy and wants to take the pain out of selling an item on the web and it also provides the Gumroad API for its core features.
With respect to Web APIs, the industry has clearly and emphatically landed on REST as the standard way to implement these services. And for good reason… REST, which is generally implemented as a one-size-fits-all solution, is an excellent choice for a most companies who wish to expose their content to third parties, mobile app developers, partners, internal teams, etc. There are many tomes about what REST is and how best to implement it, so I won’t go into detail here. But if I were to sum up the value proposition to these companies of the traditional REST solution, I would describe it as:
Factual Inc, a company founded by ex-Googler Gil Elbaz that is creating a collaborative data platform, announced extensions to its Factual APIs today that are aimed at improving the ability to target advertising and provide other geo-based capabilities in mobile applications. The three new APIs, Geopulse, Reverse Geocoder, and World Geographies, fill gaps and extend the scope of Factual’s API portfolio. But the way that Factual thinks about its APIs also holds lessons for anyone who is mapping out an API strategy of their own.
Our API directory now includes 45 coupons APIs. The newest is the Wishpot Coupon API. The most popular, in terms of mashups, is the Groupon API. We list 10 Groupon mashups. Below you’ll find some more stats from the directory, including the entire list of coupons APIs.
Gecko Landmarks is working on an easier way of giving directions. The theory behind their madness is that “everyone thinks in landmarks”. They took this idea and ran with it. In fact they have run all over the world with this idea. They have now collected landmark data for every country in the world. Most of this data is now available in the Gecko Landmarks API.
This week we had 71 new APIs added to our API directory including a social eCommerce platform, optical character recognition service, location information services, web marketing services and a mobile printing app. In addition we covered Involver’s launch of a groundbreaking social advertising optimization API. Below are more details on each of these new APIs.
This past week 9 new mashups were added to our mashup directory and 16 different APIs were used to build them. Some of the newer or less frequently seen APIs include 500px, Direct Textbook, Google Street View Image and HasOffers. The most often used APIs this week are Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. And the most commonly used types of APIs were Photos (3 APIs, 4 mashups), Social (3 APIs, 8 mashups) and Internet (2 APIs, 3 mashups). The list below shows which APIs were used by which mashups:
Often we like to highlight mashups that offer useful features such as searching for a new house, planning a vacation or saving on energy costs. Sometimes though, it’s nice to use a mashup for no other reason than it is fun. Today we’ll look at several gaming mashups that allow users to take a quiz, conduct a treasure hunt and even modify Minecraft.
Wishpot typically brings “lists” to mind. With Wishpot’s original service, users could create a single wish list from multiple sites. The service eliminated the need for a new list for every site in which a shopper was interested. Wishpot has now expanded the wish list experience into a full shopping experience with a new API framework that provides true social commerce (shopping/browsing through checkout from the same platform).
The Google App Engine team has been consistently rolling out a new release every month recently. They have become so consistent in doing so, that new releases probably do not make that much of a splash. However, the team has pleasantly surprised everyone by delivering on one of the most requested features that developers had asked from their PaaS platform: Search. Yes, you read that right.
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