MapQuest is known for driving directions. Now it hopes to bring those to mobile navigation systems everywhere. Today the company has launched the MapQuest Open Guidance API built on top of OpenStreetMap. Developers will now be able to include turn-by-turn directions in mobile apps without any usage limits being imposed by MapQuest.
RESTful services that underpin many Web APIs today should follow design patterns that make any Web API a good Web API. Such design patterns are all about respecting HTTP protocol specifications, respecting good URI design principles, or taking the full advantage of underlying Web infrastructure for Web API’s good performance and scalability. If you are interested in such practices or in a cutting-edge research that may impact the future of Web APIs developments, you should look into the series of workshops on RESTful Design.
During the past four months we’ve seen not one but two well known real-time search engines disappear. First there was OneRiot, which in October 2010 decided to focus on advertising. More recently, Collecta closed it’s real-time search engine and API to focus on alternative real-time products. Digging further into real-time search offerings you will also discover that crowdeye has also decided to pull its real-time search engine. This now appears to leave Topsy, and of course Google as the main players focusing on building a real-time search destination. Does this trend signal the end for all real-time search engines or just that their focus has been wrong?
What’s that song that begins “the night we met I knew I needed you so?” There are two new mashups that can help you find the answer to that–right now. Both use the MusixMatch API for lyrics search and present the results “instantly.” We wrote about APIs fueling the instant frenzy in September, shortly after Google Ajax-ified its search. Including the two lyrics mashups below, we now list 22 instant mashups.
Collecta, a real-time search engine that allowed users to query across a variety of sources, has changed directions and suspended its service. The Collecta API, which drove a significant amount of queries to the Collecta search engine, will be unavailable come February 11.
This week we had 35 new APIs added to our API directory including online accounting software, an online collaborative outlining service, web based drag-and-drop sharing platform, DNS hosting service, trust network based search tool and a self-service advertising platform. Below is more detail on each of these new APIs.
This past week 27 new mashups were added to our mashup directory and 26 different APIs were used to build them. Some of the newer or less frequently seen APIs include Empora Evergreen, Forvo and WhitePages.com. The most often used APIs this week are Google Maps, Twilio and Twitter. And the most commonly used types of APIs were Search (4 APIs, 4 mashups), Social (4 APIs, 15 mashups) and Shopping (4 APIs, 5 mashups). The list below shows which APIs were used by which mashups:
Computational knowledge engineWolfram Alpha has just become more accessible from a variety of applications. Wolfram Alpha has thrown open access to its API to all developers with version 2.0 of its Wolfram Alpha API, allowing you to integrate its results into a variety of sources of web, desktop, enterprise and mobile applications.
The last couple of years have demonstrated that having an API is the gateway towards building an entire ecosystem of applications and developers around your product. Traditional businesses like directory publishers have been slower off the blocks to provide access to their content via an API. But the early movers who understood the importance of an API are beginning to see the payoff, such as YellowPages.ca and its Yellow API.
We live in a world of APIs, data formats and web applications. Integrating all of these services is one of the foremost challenges facing organizations as we move into the next stage of cloud adoption. If you have a product offering that addresses the challenge of web application integration in a unique way, you have a great chance to showcase it at Gluecon 2011 for free.
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