From Polaroid that threatened film developing to Apple that eliminated keyboards on phones, a class of killer innovation thrives on what it destroys. Now comes Cloudtop with the next why-didn’t-I-think-of-that? transformation, Filepicker.io, out to destroy downloads and “make the upload button obsolete,” according to the founders, Anand Dass, Liyan David Chang, Brett van Zuiden and Thomas Georgiou.
As a retailer, are you tired of doling out receipts? Do you feel receipt remorse every time you hand that slip to a customer and you just know they will lose it, or worse, that they won’t lose and just leave it bulging in their wallet? The Lemon API can help retailers turn the downside of these transactions into opportunity. Each consumer using Lemon has a unique Lemon email address to organize 0their transactions.
Well, maybe not forever. But Wednesday’s announcement that popular iPhone photo app Hipstamatic can now post their snapshots directly to Instagram’s photo sharing network is pretty huge. This marks the first time the Instagram API has allowed a third-party app to add content to its growing social network, clocked at 27 million registered users earlier this month. For developers who couldn’t wait for Instagram to publish its API (resourceful hackers reverse-engineered the system back in December, 2010), this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
The company that turned away from 2 million users to focus on developers has announced a new way to integrate with its TokBox OpenTok API. The video chat platform is now available on iOS to create face-to-face applications. Using the new SDK, developers can integrate video chat into any iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad app.
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.
Twilio has really upped the ante with the release of its new iOS SDK for developing voice over IP applications. This means that any iOS App can quite easily add telephony via the Twilio API to its product. By providing an SDK for iOS, Twilio (a ProgrammableWeb sponsor) has lowered the bar for developers wanting to build VOIP applications. It only makes sense for a company that is a pure-play in the API business to do everything possible to encourage adoption among developers, and this release is another is a series of smart moves by Twilo. I expect that this will have a big impact developer adoption and would love to check back in with Twilio to hear how the project goes over the next couple months.
Perhaps the biggest surprise in today’s Apple announcements is that the voice command feature, widely anticipated since the largest mashup acquisition ever, is keeping the name “Siri.” The newest version of Apple’s iOS for iPhone and iPad will include the features of the voice command iPhone app that some called the “ultimate mashup.”
Taking pictures on your iPhone gives you a great deal of data embedded in to your photos. Location, camera type, exposure, even camera orientation. But what if you want more. Well, MetaPhoto (currently available on the iPhone) aims to further enrich your photos. Using the Urban Mapping API, MetaPhoto looks up a great deal of information about the area a photo was taken and adds it to the photos header.
Twitter has a popular iPhone app, but now some of its functionality is also built into Apple’s latest mobile operating system, iOS 5. Tweeting a photo from the default camera app is now a tap away, as is tweeting a link from Mobile Safari. Tweeting is also built into the SDK, making it available via other applications without needing separate Twitter authentication.
There are a number of advertising networks available for mobile applications, but game company Tap Me is creating one specifically for game developers. Tap Me has launched its iPhone SDK today, with plans to support other platforms soon, including a generic API that will allow developers full control of how advertisements are included in their games. Rather than simply provide display advertising, Tap Me ties the ads into in-game actions, with brands able to be integrated deeper into games.
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