Instagram pulls photos from Twitter’s stream. Gilt Groupe signs up Google Analytics. Plus: Scraping websites can stand in place of APIs, how to put together an API support team, and 11 new APIs.
Our API directory now includes 44 booking APIs. The newest is the WuBook Wired API. The most popular, in terms of mashups, is the Rezgo API. We list 5 Rezgo mashups. Below you’ll find some more stats from the directory, including the entire list of booking APIs.
Our API directory now includes 134 travel APIs. The newest is the TakeABreak API. The most popular, in terms of mashups, is the Kayak API. We list 12 Kayak mashups. Below you’ll find some more stats from the directory, including the entire list of travel APIs.
It’s funny that when I talk to people in the travel industry about mashups and APIs, most of them get glazed looks in their eyes. Throw in terms like location based services or geospatial awareness and I’ve lost them. What most of them don’t realize is that the majority of the travel apps that are starting to come out, both online and for mobile are mashups that are relying on location awareness and geospatial data. Many of them, like Pocketvillage are a consumer interface on top of a variety of APIs all normalized for a single homogenous user experience. That’s right, it’s essentially a metasearch tool that pulls in content from a variety of sources including Viator, GetYourGuide, TourCMS, Rezgo, AirBnB, and many others. What differentiates a metasearch like Pocketvillage from other metasearch applications however, is the fact that with location based services enabled, Pocketvillage can return content based on your current location. The issue right now however is that not all geo data is equal. Not all APIs provide geolocation information and some return it based on different criteria.
There is no doubt that there is a lot of money to be made in travel. Heck, travel (globally) accounts for over 12% of the World’s GDP. That is some serious coin. You have an incredible idea for a web application that is going to make travellers love you and make you rich at the same time. The question is… who should I connect with and why? Here is a quick run down on the pros and cons of connecting with the likely, and not so likely, hotel distribution partners.
The Tnooz THack event at ITA Google’s headquarters in Boston was a lesson in how overwhelming development for the travel industry can be. On the morning of the first day of the hackathon, the eleven API hosts provided brief descriptions of their APIs and their respective functionality or access to data. It became clear, very quickly, that most of the APIs were not like the Twitter API or Google Maps API. Many of the APIs delivered a lot of complex data in a highly structured format. Building some kind of mash-up using any of the APIs would be a challenge.
If there is a segment that is ripe for integration it is travel. APIs in the travel segment have been around for a very long time. In fact, some of the earliest APIs are based on Electronic Data Interchange, which dates back to the 1960s. Granted many of these connections are highly complex enterprise only integrations, it is a history that should bode well for modern day integrations, should it not? Despite a long history of interconnectedness, much of the travel space still remains behind closed doors. The major global distribution systems, represented by Sabre, Travelport, and Amadeus all offer powerful APIs of their own, but their commercial requirements tend to be out of the league of most application developers.
In spite of the limitations the travel industry has effectively self imposed, there still exists many opportunities to monetize sites using travel APIs. There are several types of APIs available in the travel space. Most are transactional and some are content driven. Let’s take a look a broad categorization of available travel APIs.
This past week 19 new mashups were added to our mashup directory and 28 different APIs were used to build them. A couple of the newer or less frequently seen APIs include Microsoft adCenter and COLOURlovers. The most often used APIs this week are Box.net, Google Maps and Twitter. And the most commonly used types of APIs were Mapping (4 APIs, 11 mashups), Social (4 APIs, 10 mashups) and Advertising (3 APIs, 3 mashups).
This past week 20 new mashups were add to our mashup directory and 24 different APIs were used to build them. Some of the newer or less frequently seen APIs include Goodreads, Norway Weather, Playme, Rezgo, Tweetmeme, and the USGS Elevation Query Service. The most often used APIs this week are Amazon eCommerce, Google Maps, and Twitter. And the most frequently used types of APIs were Mapping (6 APIs, 14 mashups), and Social (3 APIs, 7 mashups), Internet (3 APIs, 3 mashups). The list below shows which APIs were used by which mashups.
This past week 16 new mashups were add to our mashup directory and 28 different APIs were used to build them. Some of the newer or less frequently seen APIs include Fantasy Football Nerd, geocubes, Geograph, Maplight, New York Times Campaign Finance, New York Times Congress, Norway Weather, Rezgo, WatchMouse , and WiserEarth. The most often used APIs this week are GeoNames, Google Maps, and WeatherBug. And the most commonly used types of APIs were Government (6 APIs, 6 mashups), Mapping (5 APIs, 10 mashups), and Photos (2 APIs, 2 mashups). The list below shows which APIs were used by which mashups:
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