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April 30th, 2008

Make Phone Calls With AOL’s New API

AOL has just launched a new telephony web service for developers: the Open Voice API. As noted in the announcement, this API is intended to “provide third-party developers and VoIP device manufacturers with open standards protocols that will enable them to easily integrate the AIM Call Out service into softphones, as well as SIP-enabled hardware and cell phones with wi-fi connectivity.” The new platform works in conjunction with the AIM Call Out service that offers discounted global calling:

AIM Call Out is a pay-as-you-go outbound voice calling service built right into AIM that lets users make calls to landline and cell phones in more than 200 countries. This service complements the existing AIM Talk service, a free PC-to-PC voice calling service available to AIM users.

AIM Call Out offers low per-minute rates with no connection fee or monthly charge. Users pay for call credits in increments as low as $5. AIM users can visit http://call-out.aim.com/rates for a complete list of long distance rates.

Users can also make phone-to-phone calls using the Web Connect feature within the AIM Call Out service. Users simply enter their phone number and then the phone number of a friend. In a few seconds, the user’s phone will ring and then connect them to their friend’s phone.

As you can see on the AIM Call developer’s page, the API itself supports a host of SIP-related standards. We’ve now added a new Open Voice API profile to our directory.

Telephony and communications APIs have become a highly competitive space. How competitive? There are now over 20 APIs in the Telephony category alone.

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Posted by John Musser as AOL, Telephony at 12:48 AM | No Comments »

March 10th, 2008

MapQuest Offers Unlimited Free API Calls

We’ve seen that the Google Maps API gets the lion’s share of Web 2.0-style mashups, but the overall market share leader in online mapping is still dotcom veteran MapQuest. And though they may have been behind in this part of the market they’re looking to make up for lost time with their their announcement of the new MapQuest Platform: Free Edition. This substantial new release replaces their first generation open API launched almost exactly two years ago. We’ve updated our MapQuest directory profile with technical details on the lasted API.

As you can see on their Why Join? page, one of key reasons for using the API is that now there’s no limit on the number of standard and tiled maps, geocodes, and routes and no fees for publicly available websites. This is in contrast to most of the other well know public mapping APIs which eventually reach a ceiling above which developers must work-out a for-fee contract with the provider either for map displays or geocodes. (Note that MapQuest still offers commercial, for-fee services starting at $5,000 per year that provides additional enterprise grade requirements like SLAs and phone support.)

This strategy reflects just how competitive this space is with over over 50 mapping-related APIs.

Not only are they releasing an API, they’re releasing six APIs: Java, C++, .NET, JavaScript, (Adobe ActionScript 3: Flash, Flex, AIR), and their own creation they call FUJAX: “Flash Under JavaScript and XML, which allows developers to write in JavaScript, yet leverage the power of Flash.” In terms of Ajax and RIA-style features, there’s a wide range of functionality, some of which are available from other mapping providers and some of which only MapQuest provides:

Aerial Imagery and Hybrid Views - Satellite imagery and aerial photography.
Smart Rollovers - Rollover windows that adapt their size and positioning on the map based on the content placed in the window.
Smooth Zoom - Animated transitions between zoom levels.
Globe View - A map of the world presented as an interactive globe.
“Flickable” Maps - Maps that continue to pan based on speed and friction settings.
Advanced Shape Overlays - Build apps that allow users to create and interact with a variety of overlays on maps.
Advanced Map Marker Features - With “declutter mode,” automatically move collided markers (POIs) to alternate positions on the map with a customizable leader line pointing back to their original location.

Note that in addition to our new ProgrammableWeb Mapping API and Mashup Dashboard we also now have a dedicated Mapping RSS feed that includes any and all mapping related news from PW including new APIs, mashups, news and code.

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Posted by John Musser as AOL, Mapping at 1:38 AM | 4 Comments »

October 3rd, 2007

AOL Launches New Blog API

With yesterday’s announcement of the new AOL Journals API developers now have access to a million+ blogs hosted at AOL.

What else is notable about this? If you take a look at our AOL Journals API profile you’ll see the API itself is based on APP, the Atom Publishing Protcol (we now have 11 Atom APIs listed and 24 APIs tagged “blog”). More from AOL’s Bruce Steinback’s announcement post:

AOL Journals has been hosting blogs for AOL users for over four years, with over a million blogs in use.

What can you do with this API? Well, of course you can use Feed Readers as always, but now you can also make additions and modifications to blogs programmatically. So, for example, you can create mashups to write user comments to their AOL Journal and also to other services they may want to publish to, or use AOL Journals as a container for comments for your mashup.

We’ve stuck to standards here, extending the Atom protocol (RFC4287), and sticking fairly close to the still evolving Atom Publishing Protocol Draft. It’s an entirely REST-style based HTTP protocol, and uses AOL OpenAuth for authentication. REST is a very straightforward protocol format - you just do a GET, POST, PUT or DELETE HTTP request depending on whether you want to (respectively) read, add, modify or delete content. The content in this case being journals, journal entries or comments, based on the URL you act upon.

AOL has been busy rolling-out open APIs the past year — we now have 12 AOL APIs in our directory.

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Posted by John Musser as AOL at 1:01 AM | No Comments »

June 29th, 2007

TopCoder Live Webcast Today

AOL, who now have 10 open APIs listed here, are live webcasting later today the 2007 TopCoder Open from the Mirage Resort in Las Vegas. This has been called the major league of programming competitions with $260,000 in prizes and about 4,600 developers orginally entered worldwide.

See it live at 4pm ET today at dev.aol.com and watch the webcast hosted by ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap. And you can check-out this preview video on their site as well.

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Posted by John Musser as AOL, Contests, Events at 8:04 AM | No Comments »

May 29th, 2007

API News from Where 2.0

With O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 Conference in full swing this week there’s been no shortage of online mapping-related news. Highlights range from the Google Maps with Street Views to the launch of the very cool GeoCommons from FortiousOne, the folks behind the GeoIQ API.

API related announcements include:

MapQuest’s new ActionScript API for Adobe Flex and Flash.
Meta Lens API from National Geographic.
Google Mapplets: Small embeddable widgets like Google Gadgets that can be dynamically integrated with Google Maps. Try it out on the mapplet preview page.

For more on Mapplets, here are some specifics from their site:

Mapplets enables third party developers to create mini applications that can be displayed on Google Maps, much like Google Gadgets are displayed on iGoogle. These Mapplets contain a variety of information, from housing listings to crime data, and tools like distance measurement. Users can select from a wide range of Google and third party Mapplets to display on the Map, essentially creating their own “mashup of mashups” directly on the Google Maps site, while still enjoying the built-in functionality of Google Maps, such as local search and driving directions. A number of our partners, including WeatherBug, Booking.com and Platial have already created Mapplets.

They have extended the Google Maps JavaScript API to support mapplets with developer API documents here. The Google team have also extended their Gadgets directory into this new Mapplets Directory.

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Posted by John Musser as AOL, Events, Google, Mapping at 8:24 PM | 5 Comments »

December 1st, 2006

New AOL Mashup Competition

Yesterday AOL and TopCoder announced the Web AIM Mashup Competition, with more here in the press release. They are offering prizes up to $5,000 to a developer who creates the best mashups built on their new OpenAIM initiative. The contest window is short and entries are due by December 6th. See also our /contests page.

AOL has been making a notable push in the open API space this year and is gaining some traction: 50,000 developers have registered for Open AIM. Their main developer home page is the recently revamped and much improved dev.aol.com and their AIM-specific developer site is developer.aim.com.

You can find 10 AOL APIs at ProgrammableWeb including some you may not have realized they have.

And below is an example of a mashup built with AOL Video API, a Finnish mashup of video services, HakuHaku.

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Posted by John Musser as AOL, APIs, Contests, News at 3:25 AM | 2 Comments »

October 19th, 2006

AOL Video API

AOL Video AOL has released their AOL Video Search API. It’s based on their acquisition of startup Truveo back in January (all API methods are prefixed with “truveo”). They have created a pretty comprehensive developer center for their video search tools, which includes both a REST and AJAX API.

In addition, they’ve been smart and with searchvideo.com they built on top of their own API.

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Posted by John Musser as AOL, APIs, Examples, Video at 1:36 AM | 1 Comment »

September 11th, 2006

New Phone APIs from AOL

At the VON 2006 Conference in Boston this week AOL will demonstrate the use of three new VoIP Internet telephony APIs as part of their AIM Phoneline service. As reported in InformationWeek:

AOL hopes the Open AIM Phoneline initiative would encourage the building of devices and software that add functionality that consumers find attractive. AIM Phoneline is a voice over Internet protocol service that provides PC-to-PC and PC-to-telephone calling.

One API would provide the ability to add personalized ring tones, a feature that’s become popular among mobile phone users. Another would allow manufacturers to build speakerphones and phone adapters that use a computer’s USB port. The adapters could be used to allow standard cordless phones to initiate and receive calls over AIM Phoneline, AOL said.

Finally, the third would let developers build new call management functionality, such as context and relevance-based call handling that could treat each call on the basis of rules set for Caller ID, online presence, calendar activities and more.

The API database here now has this new AOL AIM Phoneline entry.

As part of their promotion for the APIs, AOL is announcing a contest, now listed on the /contests page. More on the contest later here this week.

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Posted by John Musser as AOL, APIs at 12:05 AM | No Comments »

June 21st, 2006

AOL AIM Updates

In AOL news: Open AIM continues to expand functionality, now with AIM bots, location-based services, and PC-to-PC calling. Since AIM supports SMS you can access the bots via your phone (like the Wall Street Journal bot). The location service is also designed for mobile devices — it can use the network to determine location and, at the user’s discretion, allow buddies to see this data.

The AOL AIM profile is here and AOL Presence here.

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Posted by John Musser as AOL, APIs at 12:05 AM | No Comments »

May 11th, 2006

New AOL Music Now API

AOL has just released an RSS-based API for accessing Music now information on members, artists, albums, charts and playlists. It’s a fairly straightforward API. For example, to get the latest releases use the URL /rss/newreleases/ (from the domain aol.musicnow.com), or, to get the top Eric Clapton fans use /rss/artist/topfans/?id=211. All results use RSS.