CloudMade, a geospatial services provider that utilizes the open source map data from OpenStreetMap (OSM) (our OpenStreetMap API Profile), recently released a new CloudMade Platform that includes access to various mapping tools and APIs for geo developers including Geocoding and Geosearch, Location Management,Map Tiles, Routing, and Vector tiles (alpha). CloudMade says that the combination of the rapidly growing community sourced mapping data of OSM and their new APIs are the future of mapping.
Hellotxt, the service that lets you simultaneously update your status and read your friends’ status across many services, has now released an API. There is a long list of microblogging and social networking sites that Hellotxt interacts with, ranging from Facebook and LinkedIn to of course Twitter and FriendFeed (see their home page below).
There is something to be said for simplicity, especially when it comes to applications that leverage web APIs for mobile devices. Enter Sparrow, an application for the iPhone, that serves as a good example of how a few web APIs can be elegantly implemented for use on a mobile device.
Innovation in web service APIs is not always technical, sometimes it’s about money. Such is the case with Yahoo’s announcement that later this year they will begin charging for usage of BOSS (Build your Own Search Service), their search web service for developers. Given that search revenue is typically ad-driven, and that advertising doesn’t typically mesh with APIs, this has meant that search APIs have been one of the most challenging classes of APIs for providers to monetize. So it’s notable to see how Yahoo has chosen to tackle this: via a ‘utility’ pricing model, somewhat akin to how infrastructure services like Amazon Web Services charge by usage.
Most mashups rely on some type of API that’s freely provided by a public web site. ProgrammableWeb tracks thousands of these resources across dozens of categories. Generally, these interfaces are SOAP or REST-based, but they may also work in cooperation with other open formats like RSS or Atom. In an enterprise setting, mashups have a more diverse set of protocols to potentially leverage including JDBC/ADO.NET (databases), SMTP/IMAP (email), and SNMP (network monitoring). Unless you are building a data mashup, one of the participants API’s is usually focused on visually representing the data. It could be the classic Google Maps API, or perhaps some type of charting (Google Charts is a great resource).
A recent report by the Aite Group entitled “The Case for Mashups in Capital Markets” projected that despite the current financial climate, capital market firms will spend $35 million in mashup technology this year. According to the report, which surveyed 13 major capital market firms around the world, these companies will be willing to invest in mashups in order to address a variety of business processes:
Taking another innovative step on the path of opening-up, Yahoo! now now supports microformats through its Yahoo! Query Language (YQL). Microformats are one of the most under appreciated ways in which web sites can make their existing service into a development platform. By using existing HTML standards and adding a small layer of semantic data to already-existing web pages, sites can enable a range of innovation on top of their existing service. As noted on microformats.org:
Last week we reported on the release of another API by The New York Times: the Times Bestseller’s API. Well it didn’t take long for the API to make its way into a neat book recommendation engine called Reading Radar.
The big API day is finally here for the New York Times. After launching a series of interesting and useful APIs since last fall, covering everything from campaign finance to movie reviews, they’ve now released their most important API to date: their Article Search API. With this new web service, developers now have access to 2.8 million articles from the paper of record dating from 1981 through today (our Article Search profile). This API should be a terrific source for a wide range of mashups and third party applications.
Developers now have an additional opportunity to contribute to their karma by developing socially conscious applications with the newly released Kiva API (our new Kiva API profile). Kiva, a person-to-person micro-lending site, announced the release of the RESTful API on its new developer blog earlier today. This is great news for the mashup community.
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