Publisher Pearson recently launched its new API program with three of its top titles. The new platform provides a common set of tools that developers have grown accustomed to: documentation, sample code, app showcase, blog, forum and FAQs, for example. Pearson has a lot of content to pick from with its core offerings, as well as its numerous partners, and they decided to start by launching three very different content APIs: FT Press API, Longman Dictionary API and Eyewitness Guide to London API.
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.
Travel reservation site Expedia starting working on its Expedia API back in 2009, according to the changelog. It has three APIs, covering hotels, flights and cars. Don’t be shy. Expedia has been expecting you. The Expedia developer site has all the warmth and care of a fine bed and breakfast. They clearly want to invite you in, make you comfortable, and get your development project of the ground. Though they do have a couple hoops to jump through, as well.
Eva, the Expert Virtual agent from Evature, is a natural language processing search utility that is open and available for incorporation in any travel website. It offers a natural language processing engine through its Evature Travel Search API, which is tuned to identify common travel parameters such as number of travelers, place names and locations, and fuzzy date ranges. Travel websites can then use these parsed information bits to search their system for matching flights, hotels, or travel packages.
Kumutu will take your vacation planning up a notch with its collection of high adventure experiences. By partnering with established adventure operators around the globe it has created an extensive network of guides to take you on your next daring outing whether it is scuba diving in Bali or Safariing in Uganda. It’s the nature of these experiences that sets the Kumutu API apart from the other 78 travel APIs already listed in the Programmable web directory.
Flight price tracker Yapta’s value proposition sounds a bit like Robin Hood of the travel industry. It will not only track travel prices for you, but to help you get a refund should the price of your reservation fall after you’ve booked it. I wouldn’t be surprised if Yapta can also be used to retrieve kittens from high branches, but that part of the Yapta API isn’t documented yet.
One of the key rules of having any service online is the ability to measure everything. Metrics like number of users, requests, where the requests originate, most frequently requested data and many more play an important role in not only fine tuning your services but also give a good measure of what it is going to cost you to run your online business as you scale up. SMSMyBus, a mobile telephone application that lets you find real time bus arrivals for the Madison Metro (WI) has just completed a year of existence and has published a report exactly of that.
The New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) has announced the opening of public voting for the NYC BigApps 2.0 Competition. The big apple has wasted no time in following last year’s successful competition with 350 datasets from over 40 agencies. From the looks of the apps, the NYC tech community is already fired up about the competition.
Riders on New York City subways are subject to all sorts of sights. For several months, that has included prominent advertisements for the MTA API, the developer program of New York City’s transit company. The ad (pictured below) includes the headline, “Our apps are whiz kid certified.”
Online mapping and directions innovator MapQuest has been building new web services on top of data from the publicly-editable OpenStreetMap project since the company announced a new open platform initiative in August. Now MapQuest has a new addition to its family of open data–based services, bike routes:
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