Mashup games are always fun. Those built upon FourSquare have an extra layer of enjoyment, because they’re tied to the real world. In the case of City Warfare, players use various water weaponry to soak other FourSquare users.
Life on the web is full of search terms and human filtering. Even good results often require some effort to determine which has the information we seek. There are several services attempting to help with this problem and they’re making their applications available via API.
This past week the new mashups added to our mashup directory used 33 different APIs. Some of the newer or less frequently seen APIs include AddThis Menu, Akismet, BlankSlate, Google Website Optimizer, WhatCounts and Zendesk. The most often used APIs this week are Amazon eCommerce, Google Maps and YouTube. And the most commonly used types of APIs were Internet (5 APIs, 5 mashups), Shopping (4 APIs, 5 mashups) and Mapping (3 APIs, 5 mashups).
NextStop was building a new kind of city guide and giving away all the content. Now its team joins Facebook, a company as famed for being closed as for being one of the largest sites around. The NextStop site, and its API (our NextStop API profile), will close September 1.
Quick, what is your House of Representatives district? Many people don’t know this number, or the member who represents them. The New York Times’ new Districts API makes it easy for your application to answer the question for any point within New York City, though it could serve as a template for a nationwide–or even international–service.
Sure, YouTube gets all the press. And YouTube gets most of the mashups. But when it comes to video APIs, there’s a lot more than just YouTube. In fact, there are 100 video APIs, from live content Ustream to micro-vlogging 12 seconds.
Sometimes there’s just too much interest in open data. The Greater London Authority has temporarily pulled its feed of the Underground due to “overwhelming demand.” The service gave locations of every subway train in the city updating in nearly realtime.
Sure, making a map mashup (like the more than 2,200 map mashups we list) is fairly simple these days, but how about showing more complex geographic data? That’s a bit tougher, but the sites below make it look easy. These three mashups provide environmental data, human-created place boundaries and a tool for robust geo-spatial analysis.
This past week the new mashups added to our mashup directory used 25 different APIs. Some of the newer or less frequently seen APIs include BlankSlate, Google Gears, Meetup and TokBox. The most often used APIs this week are Google Maps, Twitter and YouTube. And the most commonly used types of APIs were Shopping (3 APIs, 4 mashups), Social (3 APIs, 6 mashups) and Internet (3 APIs, 3 mashups).
Anyone used to be able to send a postcard to a U.S. service member by addressing it to “Any Service Member.” Now a name is required to send a physical letter. That’s where the Gratefulapp mashup comes in. It broadcasts your message via Twitter to troops–or anyone else who checks out its rotating front page.
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