November 30th, 2006

The Big Mashup from Sun

Yesterday Sun Microsystems launched a new, media rich site The Big Mashup: How the network is changing entertainment and news gathering in the Participation Age. The Big Mashup will feature a documentary with media and entertainment thought leaders, a community blog discussing the impact of changes brought on by the network, and other related content. A diverse group of people are involved including Andrew Baron and Joanne Colan from Rocketboom, author Douglas Rushkoff, DJ Spooky and Sun’s CTO Web 2.0 and Chief Gaming Officer Chris Melissinos. More at Sun blogs from Paul Lamere, Carolyn Rohrer and their multimedia press release.

It also features a slick new mashup, SnappRadio that dynamically combines Flickr photos with music from Last.fm to a create a song-specific slideshow.

And if you like Last.fm, check all 12 Last.fm mashups here.

Share This

Posted by John Musser as Examples, News at 12:48 AM | 1 Comment »

November 29th, 2006

Best New Mashups: Dating, Biking and Big Media

Picking-up from yesterday’s review of interesting new mashups, here are few use, either for dating, cycling, or media tracking.

• Rendezbook: A crush system for Facebook. Tell the system who you would like to become better friends with, date, or have a fling with, and if they feel the same way, you’ll be sent an e-mail. Facebook account required
• Bicycle Portal: Create and find bicycle routes for your area. Total distance and elevation graph are calculated as you create the route. Live traffic cams, photos from the ground, known routes, topo maps. Weather feeds for selected cities.



• CPI Media Tracker: From the Well Connected project at The Center for Public Integrity, the Media Tracker is an online database that, aside from mapping broadcast towers, provides an array of data on the reach and influence of companies that control the flow of information.



• Adisem: AdWords Management for the rest of us, built using the AdWords API. Automatically monitors and adjusts pricing so that AdWords campaigns have better results, meaning, more sales and lower cost. It runs automatically so that customers do not even need to log in.

Share This

Posted by John Musser as BestMashups, Examples at 12:08 AM | No Comments »

November 28th, 2006

Best New Mashups: PhotoMaps, PM and Translators

This week’s entries for interesting new mashups include a couple using APIs we don’t see used everyday like the the Basecamp API and the the Skype API.

• Fotoland: Although Flickr has their own official Flickr Photo Map built with the Yahoo Maps API, there is still a place for Google Maps + Flickr mashups. The latest one added here is Fotoland, a feature rich implementation that allows users to create tags on the map and then imports photos that are associated with these tags from Flickr.



• Headquarters Basecamp Widget: Basecamp widget for the Yahoo Widget Engine. Manage your Basecamp projects from your Yahoo! desktop.
• Universal Chat Translator for Skype: Allows people to communicate with other Skype users without the need to know their language, translates in real-time, and speaks your chats as well. Supports 38 language pairs. Choose to have the translation window open alongside your normal chat as a way to learn a new language.

You can see all 1294 mashups here.

Share This

Posted by John Musser as BestMashups, Examples at 12:10 AM | 1 Comment »

November 27th, 2006

Salesforce.com Launches ApexConnect

Today Saleforce.com is announcing some notable upgrades to their AppExchange platform. Called ApexConnect these integration-focused enhancements are another step in making previously isolated software as a service (SaaS) solutions into more truly distributed platforms, the kind that can be directly integrated with enterprise IT systems as well as the APIs listed at ProgrammableWeb.

There are three parts to this announcement: ApexConnect, a set of integration/connector services to allow customers’ integrations to legacy applications; ConnectOut, an outbound messaging to allow external applications to be immediately notified of business events in Salesforce; and ConnectOracle for synchronization with Oracle 11i applications (for more on the product details see Dan Farber at ZDNet).

Last week I spoke with Ariel Kelman, Saleforce.com’s Senior Director of Platform Product Marketing and he emphasized just how important APIs are to Salesforce.com’s bottom line: in Q3 of this year, their API transactions surpassed CRM page views on their service for the first time. This means that more the 50% of their 3.7 billion transactions (page views and API calls) were via the API. Which is nearly 2 billion API calls in 3 months. That represents a lot of integration with third-party tools and enterprise applications.

One mashup-style Salesforce.com application is this one that’s based on their acquisition of Kieden. It allows Salesforce.com customers to manage the entire Google AdWords process from creating ads, placing bids, through to tracking ROI.

If you want to start learning about how to develop Salesforce.com applications, a great place to start is the new series by Tony Stubblebine over on the O’Reilly Network. The first installment of is now up: “An Introduction to Salesforce.com’s AppExchangeâ€?.

As more and more enterprises start adopting mashup-style practices and SOA begins to look like just another form of mashup development (or vice-versa), ProgrammableWeb will cover more of these developments. Look for the /enterprise section of this site coming early next year.

Share This

Posted by John Musser as Enterprise, Money at 12:33 AM | 4 Comments »

November 24th, 2006

Mashup Development Tool Beta

Often in the mashup space you’ll hear people say that at some point we’ll start seeing development tools that will simplify creation of applications using multiple online web services so that mashups can reach new levels of sophistication. Earlier this week I had a demo with a company building an intriguing new development system for mashup style applications. If you happen to be in the Seattle area next week, on Tuesday November 28th there will be a free training and focus group session for this development system. Participants will receive training on how to use the tools, the chance to provide direct feedback, meet the development team, and get the opportunity to qualify for free application hosting for all or part of 2007. If you are interested in attending, or would like additional information email: bradhintze@gmail.com.

Share This

Posted by John Musser as Tools at 1:34 PM | 4 Comments »

November 23rd, 2006

42 Food and Drink Mashups

Since today is our Thanksgiving Holiday here in the US, just a quick post in honor of the feast-like tradition of today: food and drink. As of now, there are 42 mashups tagged with “food”. This tends to include ones related to drink as well, so where to find a bar in your neighborhood is also here. One of the most popular food-related mashups is the somewhat un-Thanksgiving Fast Food Maps, shown below, that lets you find over 49,000 fast food restaurants across the US. Might come in handy after the leftovers are gone.

In addition, there are 2 APIs tagged “food”.

Share This

Posted by John Musser as Examples at 12:05 AM | 1 Comment »

November 22nd, 2006

New APIs: Gambling, GeoSpatial, and To-Do

So what’s new on the API front here at Programmable Web? 28 new APIs added over the past 30 days is the current measure. Been averaging close to one-per-day added for a couple of months now. Some are of the type we’ve seen before, but with new variations, such as the Widget APIs, Mapping APIs and Reference Services. Some of others, like these three, cover different ground:

• TradeSports API: A development platform for gamblers. What is it? As they describe:
  

  TradeSports.com is a person-to-person trading “Exchange”. It allows you to trade in the most innovative, transparent and exciting way on financial, sporting, current events, entertainment and many similar events. TradeSports members trade directly with each other, bypassing the middle-man. When you trade on TradeSports you are pitting your wits against other members of TradeSports. TradeSports provides the platform whereby members can trade between themselves without paying a Sportsbook margin or vig. The winning member will receive the profits, the losing member pays the loss. TEN’s API is constructed to allow eligible members interface their own trading application or even an excel program directly with the exchange.

  Not surprisingly, TradeSports is located outside the US borders — in Ireland. See below for a screenshot of yesterday’s exchange bids and offers on American politics, including rates on presidential candidates.



• Where2GetIt Geospatial API: For developers of geospatial applications, Where2GetIt offers its REST API, for the development of non-mapping geospatial applications. “Tap into our REST API for any non-mapping geospatial application, including but not limited to wireless navigation, interactive voice response (IVR), fleet management solutions, business analytics, site selection and global positioning system (GPS) tracking applications.”
• Toodledo: A new startup focused on to-do list management. They have a long feature list and this new REST API.

This is a sampling of the APIs added recently. Since not all get noted here in blog, you can keep up with the latest by following this link to subscribe to our API RSS feed. That will get you all the new APIs as soon as they’re listed.

Share This

Posted by John Musser as APIs at 12:07 AM | 2 Comments »

November 21st, 2006

Mashup Camp 3 at MIT

If you want to meet with the key players in the mashup space — the API providers, the developers, the investors, and a host of others — your next chance is in about eight weeks. Where? At Mash Camp 3 taking place January 17 and 18th at MIT. Registration is now open, as is the wiki for posting discussion ideas. The cost is still a very affordable price of free. Organizers David Berlind and Doug Gold did a fantastic job with the first two camps and this one looks just as promising.

A highlight of both past events has been the mashup competition including the speed geeking sessions and the big final announcements (see Camp 1 and Camp 2 summaries). The inaugural winner was the innovative Podbop, a mashup that combines band event data from Eventful with MP3 tracks — type in a city, get MP3s, discover a band you like, and go see them.

The winner in the last event was the richly detailed and useful Weatherbonk, a mashup that was recently upgraded with a lot of good new features (it’s the type of mashup with a lot of thoughtful details, a bit like a movie where you discover more on the second viewing).

In the two days prior to the Camp itself, on the 15th and 16th, there will be the second Mashup University where you can dig deep into mashup development techniques, tools and APIs. The first one, held in July just prior to the last camp, was a success and now thanks to ZDNet’s broadband group you can see some videos from those sessions online. Back in September I blogged about the release of the first video and just yesterday David Berlind discussed the latest videos in his column Interested in learning how to develop mashups? Welcome to Mashup U. Online. David will be posting more about these in a series of posts over at ZDNet.

As with Mashup Camp 1 and Mashup Camp 2, it will probably sell-out fast, so if you’re interested you’ll want to sign-up soon.

Share This

Posted by John Musser as BestMashups, Contests, Events, News at 12:05 AM | 2 Comments »

November 20th, 2006

E-Commerce Guide: The Lowdown on Mashups

Quick pointer to the story on mashups by Jennifer Schiff over at E-Commerce Guide, “The Lowdown on Mash-Ups”. The article takes a very commerce-centric view of mashups, looking at where money is, or isn’t, being made in mashups. It includes interviews with me, analyst Freeman Evans over at Jupiter Research, and Robert Yeager, the developer of eBay mashup Cooqy. Jupiter’s Evans points-out that for many shopping mashup developers “You’re basically a traffic arbitrageur or you’re a new search experience that lets people discover products and then you may get a cut of the revenue, but you’re really an affiliate then.” Given that most shopping-related mashups use the Amazon API, eBay API or Shopping.com API, this rings true.

Holiday shopping to do? Shopping mashups continue to be quite popular, there are now 145 shopping mashups listed here.

Share This

Posted by John Musser as Examples, Press at 12:04 AM | No Comments »

November 17th, 2006

Best New Mashups: Utility vs Leisure

Continuing from Wednesday’s review of new mashup highlights, the first couple here fall into the category of “utility mashups” and the next four are more about leisure than function.

• Gmaps Pedometer: Exact distance pedometer using Google Maps, built by a marathon runner.



• Airport Parking: Good utility mashup that gives nearly everything you need when rushing to the airport and need parking. Find out which airport parking facility is closest to you or to the airport, which is cheapest. See also Lifehacker.
• Google Maps to Browse Warcraft Cards: Google map mashup with cards from the World of Warcraft card game. Browse around the screen, zoom in, and explore all the Heroes of Azeroth cards.
• HotOrNot Live Gadget: View random profiles by gender from HotOrNot.com with this Windows Live gadget.



• Pickdee: Sports prediction game. Uses the Facebook API to group affiliated users together in games prediction college football and NFL results.
• Continue the sentence: This is an online game. Visitors add words to the sentence which is to be continued. The words added can be clicked and tag search results from Flickr and YouTube are shown.

Share This

Posted by John Musser as BestMashups, Examples at 12:05 AM | No Comments »