Waiters like to work in pricey restaurants serving wealthy patrons because they are able to pay for high class service. That’s also why you see so many professionals in the banking industry: it pays to work for people with money. Xignite took note of this and decided to become the Maitre’d of information to the financial industry. With more than 3.5 Billion calls per month to its Xignite APIs, it is doing a fine job of it, as well.
For most of ProgrammableWeb’s nearly six years, there were two things that always remained true about the mashup directory. First, that Google Maps is the most popular API used to create mashups. And second, that Flickr is a distant second, but well ahead of third. Recently one of these is no longer true, as the Twitter API has passed Flickr in popularity.
Hackathons always produce new apps, but how about one that also encourages updating what you already have? That’s the case with The Muther of all hackathons, in which new and enhanced apps are both eligible for some great prizes. The Wireless Industry Partnership has scheduled more than 24 hours during which it hopes developers produce 100 new or enhanced apps. Lofty, yes, but we all know what a group of passionate developers can make with the right motivation. And you can go to Silicon Valley June 24 and 25 to make it happen. Read on and we may even cover your ticket to the event.
Quova’s is a geolocation service, went free last November. The company has revamped its developer portal and added a few awesome new features to the Quova API. The company also added JSON as a response format, as so many other APIs have lately. Unlike the APIs ditching XML, Quova is keeping the XML format and expanding developer options. Also, the company added a developer forum and app gallery to its portal, to encourage community around its API.
OnSIP is a business VoIP service that uses SIP to provide end users the ability to make unconventional phone calls in a very conventional way: picking up a desk phone and dialing a number. Crank open the hood, and you’ll find that SIP technologies operate a lot like Google [Services] while behaving more like a Verizon [Telco]. The OnSIP & Highrise Click-To-Call mashup, for example, is a new Chrome extension that highlights how phone service as a software opens the gates to smarter business solutions.
BodyMedia provides insight into your body’s physical state through four scientific measurements. It uses a pedometer-like device to measure physical motion and steps, but also has galvanic skin response, skin temperature and heat flux measures. The BodyMedia API will give application developers access to all these metrics on your body’s recent activity. FitBit is in a similar space, but FitBit just doesn’t have as many measurements to use in its applications.
Shoudio is an amusing iOS application made to tag places with audio snippets. These can be anything a user imagines, and a lot of fun could be had with this. For example, integrating this into Geocaching could be a lot of fun, allowing things like audio hints to help Geocachers find the cache. However, the developers of Shoudio didn’t want it limited to just one platform, so they released a Shoudio API to allow clients for other platforms, and fun mashups.
This week we had 29 new APIs added to our API directory including a business conversion tools platform, fitness tracking service, hotel search and booking service, server log management service, uk transit data service, location based audio platform, stock news service. In addition, we provided more in depth coverage of the U.S. census search service and a new designer/developer community. Below is more details on each of these new APIs.
This past week 9 new mashups were added to our mashup directory and 39 different APIs were used to build them. Some of the newer or less frequently seen APIs include 5min, 8tracks, FanSnap, Google Places, Howcast, Movieclips.com, New York Times Movie Reviews, Songkick and VideoSurf. The most often used APIs this week are Facebook, Google Maps and Yelp. And the most commonly used types of APIs were Video (9 APIs, 9 mashups), Shopping (4 APIs, 4 mashups) and Music (4 APIs, 4 mashups). The list below shows which APIs were used by which mashups:
RhymeBrain is a service made to help writers, or anyone else for that matter, find rhymes for words, make new portmanteaus, and alliterate well. When writing with figurative language, or writing poems, such a tool can be very helpful for a writer who’s currently stuck. It might also be helpful for such things as computer generated literature, but for that, you’d want a robust API with full access to the database. Well, you’re in luck, because it does indeed exist.
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