May 31st, 2007

Google Developer Day Makes News

Lots of interesting API and mashup news from Google as part of their global Developer Day: new APIs, new tools, tutorials, and more. Over 5,000 developers in 10 cities. Two very interesting highlights:

• Most noteworthy is the announcement of the Google Gears API. What is it? “Google Gears is an open source browser extension that lets developers create web applications that can run offline. Google Gears consists of three modules that address the core challenges in making web applications work offline. LocalServer: Cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.) locally. Database: Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database. WorkerPool: Make your web applications more responsive by performing resource-intensive operations asynchronously.” And yes, we’ve got a brand new Google Gears API ProgrammableWeb Profile on the site.
• Next up is the Google Mashup Editor. Represents Google’s entry into the general mashup tools space (the recent My Maps was an map-centric tool for non-programmers). This nicely straightforward web-based Ajax-y Editor lets you mix resources like feeds and APIs, debug them and deploy them using a common UI. The supporting environment includes the editor, a testing sandbox, source code control, and application hosting. A JavaScript API allows you direct access to extend the tool. And again, we’ve got a new Mashup Editor API Profile up here.

You can get more details at their Developer Day site and code.google.com.

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Posted by John Musser as Events, Google, Tools at 3:37 AM | 9 Comments »

May 30th, 2007

44 Mapping APIs

So in keeping with this week’s mapping theme, if you look at APIs sorted by type on ProgrammableWeb you can see there are now 44 APIs in the mapping category. That’s a lot of mapping-related APIs and constitutes nearly 10% of all the APIs listed at ProgrammableWeb. They may not all be what you expect. Here’s a breakdown for you:

• The big players: The ones you expect. Google Maps API, Yahoo! Maps API, Microsoft Virtual Earth API, AOL MapQuest API (and not to forget GIS encumbent ESRI ArcWeb).
• Commercial competitors: Pushpin is a an enterprise-friendly licensed offering with advanced GIS features such as custom layers along with Google API compatibility. The BigTribe API provides a service for location-based advertising. The deCarta API, formerly Telcontar, offers many features of interest to commercial applications like routing. The Where2GetIt SlippyMap API offers a JavaScript-free way to code maps. GlobeExplorer offers this API with access to the world’s largest database of aerial and satellite imagery.
• Specialized startups: Use the GeoIQ API for rich data visualization that builds on top of Google Maps. The HopStop API lets you integrate mass-transit and walking directions into your own website. For neo-geographic, social community mapping there’s the Platial API or the WayFaring API. If you want maps that understand neighborhoods you could use the Urban Mapping API. Share your location and discover others nearby with the Plazes API. Get 3D mapping capabilities with the Poly9 FreeEarth API. Or, a bit more unusual is the Where’s Tim API that let’s you track the location of Tim Hibbard 24×7.
• Open Source tools: OpenLayers open source JavaScript mapping library initially developed by MetaCarta. If you want to write a single set of code that spans multiple mapping APIs you might want to try Mapstraction, a JavaScript library that provides a common API to Google, Yahoo! and others.
• Geocoding services: to turn addresses into latitude and longitude: geocoder.us, geocoder.ca, Ontok and Yahoo! Geocoding (note that Google and others now offer geocoding within their own mapping APIs).
• Government sponsored: This includes APIs like the USGS Elevation Query Service from the Geological Survey returns the elevation in feet or meters for a specific latitude-longitude point. NASA provides mapping images via their satellite image API.
• Regionally focused: The European mapping leader is the Multimap, down under in Australia and New Zealand there’s the Whereis API and ZoomIn API, and in Korea you’ll want to use the Naver Maps API. There’s also the Nearby.co.uk geocoding API and also for the UK is the iShareMaps On Demand API that geocodes UK addresses to a postcode level.

There are many thousands of maps mashups out there and we’re now up to a catalog of 1100+ map mashups listed here.

Geo-anything is clearly a hot segment of the online web services space.

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Posted by John Musser as APIs, Mapping, Site News at 3:02 PM | 10 Comments »

May 29th, 2007

API News from Where 2.0

With O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 Conference in full swing this week there’s been no shortage of online mapping-related news. Highlights range from the Google Maps with Street Views to the launch of the very cool GeoCommons from FortiousOne, the folks behind the GeoIQ API.

API related announcements include:

• MapQuest’s new ActionScript API for Adobe Flex and Flash.
• Meta Lens API from National Geographic.
• Google Mapplets: Small embeddable widgets like Google Gadgets that can be dynamically integrated with Google Maps. Try it out on the mapplet preview page.

For more on Mapplets, here are some specifics from their site:

Mapplets enables third party developers to create mini applications that can be displayed on Google Maps, much like Google Gadgets are displayed on iGoogle. These Mapplets contain a variety of information, from housing listings to crime data, and tools like distance measurement. Users can select from a wide range of Google and third party Mapplets to display on the Map, essentially creating their own “mashup of mashups” directly on the Google Maps site, while still enjoying the built-in functionality of Google Maps, such as local search and driving directions. A number of our partners, including WeatherBug, Booking.com and Platial have already created Mapplets.

They have extended the Google Maps JavaScript API to support mapplets with developer API documents here. The Google team have also extended their Gadgets directory into this new Mapplets Directory.

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Posted by John Musser as AOL, Events, Google, Mapping at 8:24 PM | 5 Comments »

May 28th, 2007

Digg Mashup Contest Top 3 Finalists

The Digg API Visualization Contest ends this week but they’ve opened the voting to all Digg members. There are 10 finalists remaining. Just go to the Digg page above and place your vote. We’ve listed three of the leading finalists on ProgrammableWeb. Here they are:

• Digg City: Shows the 10 newest popular stories. The more popular the story gets, the taller the building. When someone diggs the story, a stick figure representing that user is added. By Chris Alvares.



• Digg Charts: Adobe Flex application that generates charts comparing popular stories. Additionally, a graph is generated showing a selected story’s popularity over time. The user view allows viewing a users popular submitted stories.



• Digg Expose: This project takes snap.com shots of pages from Digg and displays them in a configurable view. Drag the images around, sort them, or change the category. By Hart Woolery.

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Posted by John Musser as BestMashups, Contests at 4:37 AM | 2 Comments »

May 25th, 2007

The Facebook Platform

In a groundbreaking move Facebook yesterday formally launched the Facebook Platform at their F8 Event. What is the Facebook Platform? Essentially it allows third-party developers to develop applications that function directly within Facebook itself, not just outside of it as many have done with their existing Facebook API. Build your app, including commercial ones where you keep the revenue, on a platform that’s the 6th highest trafficked site in the US and growing by 100K users per day.

For more, you can get lots of coverage via Techmeme including good takes by TechCrunch on the Anti-Myspace, GigaOM on the Social OS, Mashable on F8 Live, SpashCast with an FAQ, and ZDNet on uncorking the social graph. And they’re kicking it off with real apps: over 65 developers were showcasing applications at the launch.

This brings a whole new dimension to the meaning of social network platform.

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Posted by John Musser as Social at 1:35 AM | 1 Comment »

May 24th, 2007

New APIs: Lists, Academics, and Forecasts

Continuing from yesterday’s post on new APIs for maps, photos and email, here are three more new entries to the API directory:

• gubb: A web-based application to create, manage and share lists. The gubb API is one of those that has abilities not in the core product, in this case it allows filtering and querying of items across lists.
• OpenDOAR: Is an API from the academic space that’s part of an effort to construct a comprehensive and authoritative list of institutional and subject-based repositories.
• Lokad: Is an online time-series forecasting service. The SOAP-based API allows you to perform web service functions like AddSeries and GetForecast on your datasets.

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Posted by John Musser as APIs at 12:18 AM | No Comments »

May 23rd, 2007

New APIs: Urban Maps, Stock Photos, Email

Five new APIs have been added to our listings in the past two days bringing the current total up to 441 APIs. Here are three new ones of note that provide web services for urban geo-location, stock photography, and email marketing:

• Urban Mapping: Their Urbanware Neighborhoods product is a SOAP-based web service that allows access to “a database of neighborhoods and other informally-defined regions. Specific services include alternative names, relationships with other neighborhoods (nesting, aliases, dominance), multi-lingual support, intersecting postal codes and intersecting municipalities.” Urban Mapping was also noted by Brady Forrest over at O’Reilly Radar this week in Trends of Online Mapping Portals.
• ShutterPoint: This provider of royalty-free stock images has a simple HTTP POST-style API that allows third parties to submit image files.
• IntelliContact: A service to track email newsletters, surveys, blogs, autoresponders, and RSS feeds. Their REST-based API can be used to manage messages, campaigns and contacts.

On that last point, there are now 13 APIs tagged “email”.

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Posted by John Musser as APIs, Mapping, photo at 1:40 AM | 1 Comment »

May 22nd, 2007

Best New Mashups: Charity, Digg, Running

While mashups for shopping and mapping continue to be popular, it’s worth noting that over 25 different APIs were used in mashups listed at ProgrammableWeb in the past two weeks. Here are three interesting ones:

• Giveness: Giveness is a social network for philanthropy. Charities can create their own communities to connect with their supporters and fundraise online. When a user purchases a product through Giveness, 100 percent of the commissions generated will be donated.



• Digg Comment Spy: Track live comments posted to Digg. Blue posts are replies to the top thread, yellow are replies to another comment. By Alex Bosworth who created LiveMarks that provides a real-time stream of comments to del.icio.us.



• Walk Jog Run: WalkJogRun.net is a very good route planner and a distance-speed calculator for runners, joggers and walkers. See runs that others have outlined or create your own.

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Posted by John Musser as Amazon, BestMashups at 12:05 AM | 3 Comments »

May 21st, 2007

Salesforce.com, SOA, and Web APIs

At today’s Salesforce Developer Conference in Santa Clara, CEO Marc Benioff is announcing Salesforce SOA, a notable move on their part to deliver SOA, Service Oriented Architecture, as an external service on top of their Apex platform. Thus SOA meets SaaS (for more on SOA and SaaS trends see this timely piece by Dion Hinchcliffe).

In particular, Salesforce SOA builds on their enhancements from last year like Connect Out, our coverage here, by allowing a greater bi-directional, event-driven communication into and out of the Salesforce.com infrastructure. In a demo shown to me by Salesforce’s Adam Gross, two independent browser windows were open, one pointing at an account record in Salesforce.com the other at a Google Spreadsheet. Changing values and clicking a submit in Salesforce caused the Google hosted spreadsheet to be updated almost instantly. In the past the Salesforce.com API allowed updates in the other direction, but now it’s possible to integrate, SOA style, across systems in both directions.

This move by Salesforce.com is another step in the evolution of SaaS and web APIs to make the web as platform offer all the same services that used to be available only behind the corporate firewall. This will lead to a greater number of hybrid corporate IT applications consisting of a combination of internal IT systems and external web-based services.

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Posted by John Musser as Enterprise, Salesforce at 9:20 AM | 1 Comment »

May 19th, 2007

Microsoft Popfly

The big mashup news yesterday came from Microsoft with the invite-only alpha launch of Popfly, their tool for creating mashups without writing code. Using the Pop Creator application users can bulid mashup applications and embeddable widgets. A rich drag-and-drop interface built on Microsoft Silverlight has an extensible component model called “Blocks” with built-in wrappers for external web services like Flickr and Live Spaces. You connect these-up to build applications as shown in their good 15 minute introductory screencast.

Along with this tool is an online community called Popfly Space that lets creators “host, share, rate, comment and even remix creations from other Popfly users”. At this point Microsoft will host up to 25MB of data. As we’ve seen with other mashup tools like Yahoo! Pipes, OpenKapow and Dapper, fostering an active user community is an important part of the strategy.

This innovative product comes from the Non-Professional tools team with a mission to “democratize development by making it approachable to an entire class of people that want to ‘create’ without necessarily having to write code.” And they have a wry sense of humor, from the FAQ comes “Q: Why did you call it Popfly? A: Well, left to our own devices we would have called ‘Microsoft Visual Mashup Creator Express, May 2007 Community Tech Preview Internet Edition,’ but instead we asked some folks for help and they suggested some cool names and we all liked Popfly.”

Popfly looks very promising and will certainly heat-up the growing mashup tools space.

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Posted by John Musser as Microsoft, Tools at 12:25 AM | 9 Comments »