These days everything from your mobile phone to desktop PC will most likely have an internet connection. This means you you can send an email, collaborate on a document or share a photo between almost any device using the myriad of web services that are available today. But printers are still stuck in a time when private networks reigned supreme, when it was rare that devices would be connected to the internet. This means printing a document from outside that network is convoluted process at best, and for most people it is just not possible. Google is looking to change that with Google Cloud Print.
Last month Twitter CEO Evan Williams announced Twitter Anywhere, but it wasn’t exactly clear what it was. Now the microblogging platform, which looks pretty busy with all its announcements centered around its developer conference, is sharing more details about the API that is part display widget and part external login, all controlled via JavaScript.
Factery is a search API with a twist. Instead of links, it returns facts. Actually, it returns links, too. But the real interesting stuff is that it extracts the sentence or two that best answers a user’s search.
This week we had 15 new APIs added to our API directory including a document publication and sharing API, a UK-based cycling route planning API, an API for a health information aggregation service, an API for an open geo database of wifi access points (which we we covered this week), and a URL shortener specifically design for video, movie and television content.
This past week 15 new mashups were added to our mashup directory and 37 different APIs were used to build them. Some of the newer or less frequently seen APIs include CorpWatch, ImageShack, LongURL, Scribd, Scribd iPaper, Tweetmeme and TweetPhoto. The most often used APIs this week are Flickr, Google Maps and Twitter. And the most commonly used types of APIs were Office (6 APIs, 6 mashups), Social (3 APIs, 7 mashups) and Video (3 APIs, 3 mashups).
Though Google Maps may still be the choice of most developers, Bing continues to be a contender. Microsoft evangelist Chris Pendleton points out a new Weather.com feature and mentions it has used the service since back when it was called Virtual Earth (the switch only happened this June).
In many ways Twitter is a platform to be admired. But how and where it communicates with its developer community has been a bit lacking. At the Chirp conference, Twitter launched the sort of home for discussion and information that should make Twitter developers happy.
There were plenty of stats doled out by Twitter’s founders during Chirp Conference keynotes today. The two that stuck with us were: 1) that its servers handle 3 billion calls every day, just to the API, and 2) that 75% of all their traffic comes from their API. If you look at the volume alone, that’s over 30,000 updates, timeline requests and searches per second. That’s a massive API.
Twitter’s announced “promoted tweets”, a way for businesses to send their status messages into the timelines of users who may not follow them. Many developers are wondering how it affects updates via the API–will promoted tweets show up in results from API calls?
ProgrammableWeb has been tracking Twitter mashups since the first one was added in December, 2006. Looking at the number developers have added to the database, one thing is clear: 2009 was a huge year for Twitter and apps built upon it.
©ProgrammableWeb.com 2012. All rights reserved.
Terms of Service | Privacy Policy
