For a few days, Facebook was providing a user’s phone number and address available, with the user’s permission, via its Facebook Graph API. Likely fueled by distrust of Facebook’s previous approaches to privacy, users and press reacted negatively to the concept. Based on this feedback, Facebook reversed its decision and neither phone or address is returned to applications at this time. Privacy is a big concern, especially for APIs, but Facebook took appropriate steps for gaining user permission. The reaction to Facebook’s platform change was an overreaction, which points to a need for more granular privacy controls and a better method of granting access.
The spreadsheet application within Google Docs must be the most well known and most commonly used online spreadsheet. A bit like Google Search, the Google Docs spreadsheet dominates the online spreadsheet market. But also, a bit like Google Search, we occasionally we see companies coming along and trying out in an already dominated space. With the resource that Google has at its disposal this is a very tough market, but Hypernumbers, an Edinburgh based startup, is trying to do just that with its online “team” spreadsheet.
CityGrid Media, the company behind local mainstay CitySearch, has announced a new version of its CityGrid API. The service offers developers new access to content, as well as new ways to monetize whatever integrations they might build. The new API provides features now synonymous with local services, such as business listings and coupons. And CityGrid is sharing revenues with developers.
A core feature of the real-time web is the continuously updating real-time streams of information. These streams are commonly generated by social networks and with the continued uptake of social networking the amount of information is only going to increase. This will continue to introduce opportunities for companies to create products and services that extract value from that vast amount of data. Some of the most common services built around these streams include trend and sentiment analysis, data storage, aggregation, sorting, search and filtering. DataSift is a service that offers a host of exciting features including the ability to let users browse, build and share their own real-time streams using social media data drawn from a host of sources.
This week we had 39 new APIs added to our API directory including a Twitter advertising service, url shortening service, Google Buzz search engine, web telephony service and a Frisbee finding service. We wrote about several of these new APIs on the blog, including Quora quickly released Alpha API, Google’s URL Shortener and MapQuest’s OpenStreetMap mapping platform. Below is more detail on each of these 39 new APIs:
This past week 23 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 Forvo, GreatSchools, Groupon, MusixMatch and Wordnik. The most often used APIs this week are Google Maps, Twilio and Twilio SMS. And the most commonly used types of APIs were Reference (5 APIs, 5 mashups), Search (5 APIs, 6 mashups) and Shopping (5 APIs, 5 mashups). The list below shows which APIs were used by which mashups:
“It’s been pretty riotous,” Tony Wright said. His LinkedIn mashup that lets people rate their co-workers has been more popular than he expected. Called CubeDuel, it’s been out for less than two days and already it has hit the LinkedIn API limits. Twice. Wright is confident his site will see further increased limits, but it’s Friday night and he’s had to close the site to new users. It’s both an API success story and a cautionary tale about relying too much on one platform. But it’s also a lot of fun.
The Samsung Free The TV Challenge which invited developers to create applications for the Samsung TV and offered total prize money of $500,000 has announced its results. The results were announced at the recently concluded Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
Video content is exploding over the web. It is likely that you have recorded a lot of files over the years and are looking at ways to summarize them into short capsules. Well, HighlightCam is such a service and they even have a HighlightCam API to go along with it.
The debate over RSS never seems to end. 2011 kicked off with a widely read post predicting the decreasing influence of RSS in 2010. There have been responses from Fred Wilson and GigaOM that argue it is still relevant today. We believe that it continues to be a solid mechanism for web sites to aggregate data from multiple sources, as displayed by the 121 RSS APIs in our directory. In this post, we’ll look at RSS beyond blog syndication.
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