March 30th, 2007

Best New Mashups: Diversions

Friday seems like a good time to review some diversionary mashups. Here are three recent ones of note:

• Flickr Spy: See what gets uploaded to Flickr right now.



• JukeboxTube: A jukebox-like playlist for YouTube videos. No need to listen to your own MP3s when YouTube already has everything online.



• Ficlets: Collaborative short-story writing site using Creative Commons-licensed photos from Flickr as inspiration for stories, OpenID for authentication, and the AOL WIM API for authenticating AOL users. This is the first AOL product to launch using Ruby on Rails, Creative Commons, and to accept OpenID logins.

Share This

Posted by John Musser as BestMashups at 12:23 AM | 1 Comment »

March 28th, 2007

Yahoo Mail API Launches

Ever since the very successful Yahoo! Hack Day last fall there’s been rumors about an API for Yahoo! Mail, the leading web mail service with over a quarter-billion users. And today it’s official: the Yahoo! team announced the Yahoo! Mail API.

You can see our new Yahoo! Mail API profile here.

Earlier today I spoke with Chad Dickerson, Head of the Yahoo! Developer Network, and John Kremer, VP Yahoo! Mail, who point out that they’re leading way here — none of the other major platform vendors offer an official API like this yet. As is often the case with new APIs, they’re looking for developers to innovate in ways they cannot predict: think utility functions like email backup or synchronization, enhanced local desktop client functions, widgets, or more playful applications like the Yahoo! Mail Flickr Postcard.

The API will allow applications to compose and send messages, work with mailboxes, etc. Keep in mind that the amount of functionality available to the API varies by the level of the user account being accessed. So a free account is limited to listing folders and messages while a premium account user has no restrictions. The Mail API leverages other Yahoo! developer services like the Yahoo! BBAuth API to credential the user. The core service is SOAP-based, but conveniently also supports a lighter-weight JSON-RPC implementation. Oh yes, while they make the API as simple as they can, email’s inherently more complex than say bookmarks, thus the API docs PDF is over 100 pages.

This API release also adds another variant to the revenue models for mashup developers: referral commissions. For a trial period Yahoo! Mail is offering a $10 commission for every new Yahoo! Plus Mail account referred by developers.

They’ll be showcasing examples over in the new Mail category over at the Yahoo! Gallery and we’ll be listing them here as well.

Share This

Posted by John Musser as Yahoo at 8:09 PM | 4 Comments »

Twitter Maps and Domain Stats

Here are some mashups that highlight a couple mashup trends. First, that Twitter and the Twitter API are all the rage these days. Second, that mashups aggregating web stats and metrics are increasing popular (a recent TechCrunch post brought down the servers of one stats aggregator).

• Twittervision: Watch twitters in real time with this live map that dynamically updates to show the latest twitterings.



• Domain Info Script: Learn a lot about your web site with this mashup. Check the incoming links, the directories a domain is in, its PageRank, and more with this domain-info script. Uses at least 5 APIs to from del.icio.us to Yahoo! Site Explorer to make this happen.



• AttentionMeter: Compare traffic for up to five domains with this mashup of Alexa, Compete or Quantcast.

Share This

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

March 27th, 2007

400 Web APIs

The rate of new web APIs continues apace with our API directory now hitting an even 400 entries. If you View by Category you can see there are just over 50 categories of APIs now listed. Top 3 categories? Mapping, Reference and Internet.

The 400th entry is the Multimap API. The latest version of this JavaScript API for European and global mapping was just announced and includes new features like a geocoding API, search by radius, routing with ‘travelling salesman’ optimization and route animation, and local points of interest, POI, like schools, transportation, restaurants and bars, ATMs, and car parks.

Share This

Posted by John Musser as APIs, Site News at 12:51 AM | 3 Comments »

March 26th, 2007

9 Places to Use APIs Without Coding

Here’s a trend we’re seeing more of these days: vendor provided interactive API tools. These useful web-based applications let you test drive the methods of a given web API without having to write code. AJAX-style web forms let you choose methods and parameters, press go, and have data immediately returned in another part of the page.

Update: Make that 12 interactive tools, see farther below.

This can be a great way for API providers to let developers kick the tires on their APIs and quickly get up to speed. From Facebook to Google to CNET, these tools are becoming more common and more sophisticated.

Here’s a rundown of 9 places you can try now:

• Facebook Test Console: If you have a Facebook login you can use the Facebook Test Console. Test over a dozen methods and get responses in XML, JSON, and Facebook PHP Client.
• Interactive Google Base: As they describe “This demo page provides you with a simple mechanism for using the API and learning how it works. Each Google Base data API operation has an equivalent HTTP method, so you can try out the HTTP GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE methods as you invoke the operations below.”
• CNET API Dashboard: As we reported last month CNET’s new shopping API includes this handy tool. Use it to test getting review, shopping and download data.
• Flickr API Explorer: Try-out methods of the popular Flickr API with this tool. And since you may find yourself looking at an interactive API tool but not have any meaningful data to feed into it - like when it asks you for a “photo_id” - Flickr goes one step farther by offering a list of “Useful Values” on the side of the page including photo IDs and Group IDs. Very helpful feature.
• Virtual Earth Interactive SDK: Choose from dozens of “I Want To” actions like “Show map” or “Get a route and directions”, see the adjacent map perform that action, then click on the Source Code tab to grab that exact JavaScript, or the Reference tab to get the manual page for the relevant method.
• FollowTheMoney.org: There are a lot of good implementation details in the API for this non-profit, one of which is this AJAX example with download-able source code. For more on FollowTheMoney, see our earlier coverage here.
• Amazon AWS Zone: Test drive eight different Amazon APIs. As they say “Amazon Web Services made simple.” Includes code samples, a code generator, REST and SOAP scratch pads.
• Interfax Fax Web Service Demo: Doesn’t allow you to try the whole API but gives access to the main SendCharFax method so you can send faxes. ID required.
• MetaCarta JSON API Explorer: Lets you use their mapping data API and get results back in JSON and KML.

As expected, we’ve heard from readers with more tools for this list:

• Google AJAX Search API Wizards: A set of useful wizards that help you quickly integrate Google’s AJAX Search into your site. Wizards for Maps, Video Bar, Video Search, News Bar, Blog Bar, and Book Bar. A form for each walks you through three steps: Customize it, Tell us your site, Generate code.
• Demo Tool for Google SAML Single Sign-On: While not a full-featured tool, this interactive demo of the Security Assertion Markup Language single sign-on service for Google Hosted Services walks you through each step of the reasonably complex process illustrate each step of the SAML workflow between Google and the Partner.
• Here are a pair of Google-provided mapping “playgrounds” where you can use forms to interact with the Google Maps API: GMarkerOptions Playground and GMarkerEvents Playground

If you’re aware of others that are not on this list you can share them in the comments.

Share This

Posted by John Musser as PopularAllTime, Tools at 12:09 AM | 4 Comments »

March 23rd, 2007

Google Launches Picasa GData API

If you have ever wanted to create photo mashups using Google’s Picasa, now you can. As Sven Mawson of Picasa Web Albums Team announced there is now a GData API for Picasa. Media mashups are hot: as we noted in our piece on 200 Photo Mashups, photography-related mashups are one of the most popular genres.

You can see our new Picasa API listing here. For more on the API, the post from Sven notes:

Now you can access your albums, photos, comments and tags through a common GData API. Have a great idea for integrating your photos and tags into a semantic network? Want to add a slide show of your favorite photos to your homepage and include user comments? How about autotagging your photos based on image analysis or photo description or title? Or allowing users to pick a Picasa Web Albums photo from inside your application? The possibilities are endless.

We have also added the first of what will certainly be many mashups using this API: Picnik that allows you to edit photos in your browser and integrates with Picasa.

Share This

Posted by John Musser as Google, photo at 12:38 AM | No Comments »

March 22nd, 2007

WADL and Google REST Compile

Awhile back over at the Yahoo! Developer Network there was this interesting post on WADL highlighting yet another acronym, but something potentially quite useful here. What’s WADL? It stands for Web Application Description Language, a project being managed over at Java.net, with homepage here. Sun’s Marc Hadley describes it concisely in this article:

WADL is designed to provide a simple alternative to WSDL for use with XML/HTTP Web applications. To date such applications have been mainly described using a combination of textual description and XML schema, WADL aims to provide a machine process-able description of such applications in a simpler format than is possible using WSDL.

Just this month Thomas Steiner started working on Google REST Compile and REST Describe. REST Compile will read a WADL description and output code in a variety of languages and REST Describe will be a tool for creating WADL based on text documentation. Below is Thomas’ diagram showing the REST Compile flow. [via]

With hundreds of REST-based APIs listed here there might be a role for WADL or similar standards and tools.

Share This

Posted by John Musser as Tools at 12:11 AM | 3 Comments »

March 21st, 2007

Mashup Links and News

Just a quick rundown of some notable mashup-related links and news:

• In Read/Write Web’s Web 3.0: When Web Sites Become Web Services, Alex Iskold gives another good analysis of trends in the API and mashup space. In particular he looks at the strategic value of web sites becoming web services, but notes that until more than just a few hundred sites offer APIs, techniques like screen-scraping will continue to be popular mashup techniques.
• Userplane just released their Instant Community product, a turn-key way to quickly add community and communication to any site including voice and text IM, chat rooms, userlists and games. This is related to the mashup trend we’re seeing where besides just offering APIs, providers are also offer higher-level component services like widgets and other simple script components, often via JavaScript and Flash. This can help address multiple audiences but still building off the same provider platform. Userplane is a ProgrammableWeb sponsor.
• On the enterprise mashup front there’s this report on how IBM Goes Goo-Goo for Gadgets. Apparently IBM and Google announced a deal that will integrate Google Gadgets into the WebSphere portal server to give corporate customers access to the 4000+ gadgets in an IT sanctioned way. The story points out that this continues the ‘consumerization of IT’ and that the deal helps earn Google more credibility as they move further into the enterprise.
• And over at IBM’s developerWorks, Elliotte Rusty Harold last month gave his Ten predictions for XML in 2007. Many of these items have implications here including increased adoption of the Atom Publishing Protocol - see Google’s GData APIs for evidence - and the “XML Backlash” we see via increased adoption of simpler data formats like JSON. [via]

Share This

Posted by John Musser as News at 12:07 AM | 1 Comment »

March 20th, 2007

New APIs: Projects, Contacts, and Forms

Our latest set of interesting new APIs are an office-centric group, with APIs for online project management, online contact management, and for web-based forms. Overall there are now 13 APIs tagged “office” and 3 tagged “pm”. Here’s more on the latest entries:

• Goplan: This brand new online project management service from Fred Oliveira and the team at WeBreakStuff offers a SOAP-based API that gives you access and control for managing projects, tasks, calendars and other project details.
• Wufoo: A useful service that takes the tedium out of creating online forms is now beta testing this REST-based API that lets you submit data, query data, and access reports. Created by the sharp team behind Particletree with seed funding from Y Combinator.
• Big Contacts: Full featured online contact management product with a REST-based API for querying and updating contacts.

Share This

Posted by John Musser as APIs at 12:05 AM | No Comments »

March 19th, 2007

Microsoft Takes-on Google Mashups

In Microsoft seeks mashups for Live Search in bid to best Google, Computerworld reporter Eric Lai looks at how Microsoft is using their 2007 MVP Global Summit to actively invite a core constituency to write mashup applications on their Live platform APIs. In particular using their Live Search API. (See our collection of 11 Microsoft platform APIs here).

The story includes quotes from Bill Gates and from Jonathan Pincus, GM of their Online Services Group:

Besides wooing developers, Microsoft is investing heavily in its core search technology and in extra services, such as one that would give users rebates from merchants that they find through the Live Search engine, Gates said. “Believe me, we are putting brilliant, brilliant people into search,” he added.

Pincus firmly believes that Google’s lead on mashups remains tenuous. Google doesn’t actively reach out to developers, he claimed, saying that he doesn’t expect it to start doing so for another year or two, no matter what Microsoft does.

But to make real headway on mashups, Microsoft can’t just replicate the tactics that it uses to woo developers of conventional Windows applications. For one thing, Microsoft needs to give its full blessing to developers that want to create mashups combining Microsoft’s technology with a competitor’s.

“In terms of geocoding, Yahoo has a very accessible API,” Pincus said. “People could easily combine that with Virtual Earth, because the essence of Web services is that things should be able to play well together.” He added that Microsoft needs to “get out of our comfort zone and overcome our fear of looking stupid.”

Share This

Posted by John Musser as Microsoft at 12:05 AM | No Comments »