The latest release of desktop Twitter app TweetDeck launched with a ton of new features, which includes showing geolocated tweets. If a tweet includes the location meta-data, TweetDeck shows a tiny marker icon. Click the icon and you get a map of the location.
The prevalence of mashups on the web is probably thanks to the Google Maps API and other mapping APIs. It remains the most popular type of mashup, more than three times the second-most, photos. The ubiquity means maybe map mashups have lost some of their luster.
Normally earthquakes are detected with sensative instruments, under the care of trained seismologists. With the Twitter API (our Twitter API profile), the ability to detect and report quake locations may fall into anyone’s hands.
When Google added transit directions to its Maps, it also created a format that allows any transit agency to be included. To date, over 400 have made their routes, schedules and fares available for the search giant using the GTFS feed format. As I lamented previously, very few of those feeds are available publicly. One developer decided to try and fix that and help transit agencies at the same time.
It’s time to start shopping around for another API to search for deals, prices and reviews. That it, if you use the Yahoo Shopping API (our Yahoo Shopping API profile). On March 11 Yahoo’s service will be discontinued, replaced by a “strategic partnership” that will leave developers sniffing for deals elsewhere.
This week we had 8 new APIs added to our API directory including an API for mobile location-based searches, an API that lets you create and send printed greeting cards delivered by the postal service, an API for streaming music access (which we covered in Napster Opens API: Puts Music on Your TV, iPhone and Web Site), a web site monitoring API, two more URL shortening services (including one that supports SOAP), as well as a new travel API that lets you search for and book flights, hotel rooms and car rentals.
A matchmaking service for people and neighborhoods? A wildfire warning system that can alert homeowners via tweet? These are just a few of over 80 excellent mashups submitted to the recent MashupAustralia contest.
This past week 14 new mashups were added to our mashup directory and 32 different APIs were used to build them. Some of the newer or less frequently seen APIs include Bing Maps, ChartLyrics Lyric, PDF Generator, Retro Avatar, and Stylight. The most often used APIs this week are Google Chart, Google Homepage, and YouTube. And the most frequently used types of APIs were Social (4 APIs, 4 mashups), Shopping (4 APIs, 5 mashups), and Mapping (3 APIs, 3 mashups). The list below shows which APIs were used by which mashups:
Last month mobile-to-mobile communications company Bump decided to share its technology, which allows for data transfer between two iPhone or Android phones. For example, its flagship iPhone app swaps contact info and photos when two phones “bump” (as in “fist bump”) near each other. Bump introduced an API, but to little fanfare.
The lines between cars, computers, and mobile devices are blurring, as several new web-powered apps have made their way to Ford vehicles via the SYNC on-board vehicle control system API. Following up on our post last month about the use of the SYNC system to enable “cars as a platform,” news has emerged about the release of some new apps that give drivers (and passengers) access to web services via mobile devices.
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