Loggly has just secured a new round of funding for its event-logging Loggly API. The company added $5.7 million which more than doubles the $4.7 million total from series A & B investment rounds. This round introduces a new investment partner, Matrix Ventures, as well as a new CEO Charlie Oppenheimer and CTO Jim Nisbet. Oppenheimer hails from Matrix Ventures where he served as an executive in residence.
At the beginning of this year DocuSign started executing on a strategy to put together a brand new API. As a part of redesign we also decided to go forward with full adoption of REST protocol. This was no easy task as our existing DocuSign API was processing millions of documents and was responsible for about one-third of all traffic across the eSignature industry. Given that huge volume, we needed to create an exceptional architecture and design to support our customers’ growing applications and integrations. It was our responsibility to make sure the redesign fueled growth and acceptance across the industry–not just at DocuSign.
Trailforks runs “a user-powered mountain bike trail database currently 
focused on BC, Canada,” to report on trail conditions and what is required to upgrade them.Notes for the Trailforks API are like the bike trails it reports on: rough. But the site’s creator, Trevor May, promises more documentation soon.
Google is doubling down on cloud computing, further opening up its infrastructure to developers. Google Compute Engine supports “Linux virtual servers at Google scale,” according to the company’s announcement at its Google I/O developer conference. The new offering sits alongside the Google App Engine API as part of its infrastructure-as-a-service Cloud Platform initiative. Google Compute is also the closest competitor the search giant has to Amazon EC2.
The community of Web 2.0 startups thrives on open APIs, mashups, and quick time to market for new applications. For instance, mashup up-and-comer Pinstagram (you guessed it, a mashup of Pinterest and Instagram) created its market-ready version product in three days: “[We were] having lunch on a Friday…[w]e went into hackathon mode, and by Sunday we were basically done with the initial version we launched with” commented Pinstagram co-founder Brandon Leonardo. However, do legacy corporations that play vital roles in the web-app environment (e.g. you need a killer network to launch a killer app) adopt the same API-focused thinking? Consider the world’s largest communications holding company: AT&T.
Need to make sure your cloud is up and running? If you like pretty charts of that uptime, Nimsoft has got you covered. The company also has a not quite as pretty Nimsoft Cloud Monitor API that allows developers to integrate the tools for monitoring cloud performance into their applications.
It’s time we talk, Facebook, before you do something you’ll really regret. You see, I noticed you with that look in your eye again. The sort of look that marks the end of a promising young company and along with it a well-loved API. You say you’re changing, but I’m not sure I can ever trust you. Let me tell you why.
With respect to Web APIs, the industry has clearly and emphatically landed on REST as the standard way to implement these services. And for good reason… REST, which is generally implemented as a one-size-fits-all solution, is an excellent choice for a most companies who wish to expose their content to third parties, mobile app developers, partners, internal teams, etc. There are many tomes about what REST is and how best to implement it, so I won’t go into detail here. But if I were to sum up the value proposition to these companies of the traditional REST solution, I would describe it as:
Advocates of platform-as-a-Service offerings promote how easy it is to deploy and manage applications without having to be – or to hire – a system administrator. But as with most things, there are inevitable trade-offs. The less you have to manage the platform you deploy to, the more you’re tied to the stack the PaaS provides. Today AppFog adds a duo of supported services to their stack, bringing new database and email options to the company’s developers.
It wasn’t that long ago, just late last year, that I started wondering if CloudMine was trying to replace me. Just a few months pass, and it seems my fears were not unfounded.
If you’re not familiar with what the CloudMine API offers, it’s backend-as-a-service, with the core feature being easy storage and access of user – and global – data. All that’s required to store JSON data in the global scope is an HTTP call with the application’s credentials. Storing user data in a private scope only requires the addition of the user’s credentials.
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