Can dealing with a difficult API provider be like trying to solve the puzzles in a classic text adventure game? In an amusing blog post entitled The Quest for the UPS API over at Ruby Discoveries and Idioms, the trials and tribulations of dealing with the United Parcel Service API has been parodied as an old-school adventure game. And as any developer who has had to navigate some of the more onerous API sign-up processes or unclear and overly complex documentation can attest, this may seem familiar. As the introduction notes:
I’m inspired by the hoop-jumping UPS (yes, that UPS) requires for developers to begin using their web service APIs. There are NDAs involved, so this is not about the APIs themselves; it is about getting to the point where one can start working with the APIs. It is presented in the format of a text adventure. Pedantic corrections to format are welcome, since it’s been a long time since I’ve played one.
And the game itself? Here’s a snippet that gives you a sense of how it goes:
Welcome to Colossal API Quest! Find the documentation, get authorized to use the development integration environment, and meet the needs of your client to achieve fame and fortune!
And this is only the first part of the adventure. API providers might take notes here on what not to do.
Over at ReadWriteWeb, Marshall Kirkpatrick takes a thorough and engaging look at APIs and Developer Platforms: A Discussion on the Pros and Cons. Marshall spoke with a wide variety of people in the industry to pull together a lot of the key ideas and issues in this space. Here are some of the highlights:
It’s a good overview which in its breadth points out how much discussion and debate there is in this fast moving market as well as how it’s only just getting started.
We recently added this new API listing to the US government site USAspending.gov which provides API access to budget data, but we didn’t notice a detail which one of our readers did: that there’s a somewhat intimidating, red-text warning on the homepage that says:
WARNING: This is a United States Federal Government computer system that is “FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY.” This system is subject to monitoring. Therefore, no expectation of privacy is to be assumed. Individuals found performing unauthorized activities are subject to disciplinary action including criminal prosecution. Click here for more information.
In his blog post Coby Logen points to a variety of potential issues and inconsistencies in the site:
And later on notes that:
Although there are other ways to get federal budget information, the warning on USASpending.gov is unfortunate, because it is wrong and it violates federal policy. USASpending.gov does not meet the definition of “For Official Use Only”; it contains public information. There is an expectation of privacy; no personally-identifying information is collected from visitors. The warning conflicts with OMB Memoranda, which require each government site to “post clear privacy policies” and adhere to them, because the warning significantly obscures and confuses the site’s privacy policy.
Coby’s post points out a variety of good alternatives including the Sunlight Foundation who provide the same data via the Fedspending.org API as well resources on our Government API Dashboard.
In the meantime, you’ve been warned.
For the third time in as many weeks a Facebook application is the subject of controversy (the other two being the Facebook Hoax and the Facebook Spyware). This time around the news comes via Fortune’s Josh Quittner who reports that Hasbro, the company behind Scrabble, wants to shut down the popular web site and Facebook app Scrabulous. Scrabulous started in 2006 when two bothers, Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla, created the Scrabble knockoff out of their home in Calcutta, India. It did well that first year but really took off after they ported it to Facebook in June of last year.How popular is it? It’s the 9th most popular Facebook application, has 2.3 million active users and 500K using it every day. And according the Fortune report it has revenues of about $25,000 a month.
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For the second time in a week a third-party Facebook app is the subject of controversy: this time it’s ePresident, an application for nominating the Facebook’s “worldwide President”. Not a serious app of course, but as reported today by TechCrunch’s Ouriel Ohayon, some of the French press, in a series of escalating misunderstandings, has fallen for this as real. In a nutshell: Facebook user Arash Derambarsh ran for this pretend office, complete with campaign site and pledge for global peace, got over 9000 votes, began getting more and more press coverage that often missed the fake-ness of the whole thing, made it to TV, eventually a Facebook group forms denouncing it, and some of the press catches on, and at this point he’s not available for comment.
Read the rest of “French Press and Facebook Mashup Hoax” »
In a promising sign for the future of data portability across platforms, earlier today DataPortability.org Workgroup announced that representatives from Google, Facebook, and Plaxo joined their initative: “We are proud to announce the inclusion of Joseph Smarr (Plaxo), Brad Fitzpatrick (Google) and Benjamin Ling (Facebook) to the DataPortability Workgroup.” For more on the group’s goals, which includes creating a ‘DataPortability Reference Design’, see their philosophy and mission:
Our Philosophy: As users, our identity, photos, videos and other forms of personal data should be discoverable by, and shared between our chosen tools or vendors. We need a DHCP for Identity. A distributed File System for data. The technologies already exist, we simply need a complete reference design to put the pieces together.
Our Mission: To put all existing technologies and initiatives in context to create a reference design for end-to-end Data Portability. And, to promote that design to the developer, vendor and end-user community.
From a technology perspective, they encourage an “Invent Nothing” approach that builds on existing standards like:
Involvement from some of the biggest names in the business means greater potential for real progress on interoperability. For more on this story see ReadWriteWeb and TechMeme.
Anyone who has installed the third party Facebook application “Secret Crush” is at risk of installing spyware according to this report from security firm Fortinet. Apparently the app entices users by saying “one of your friends my have a crush on you” and then once installed it attempts to download the infamous spyware Zango. The malicious widget authors get rewarded with as much as over $1 USD upon each successful installation, according to Zango’s affiliate program rates (note that as of January 4, the widget changed its name from “Secret Crush” to “My Admirer” and as of today WebWare reports that Facebook has disabled the application completely).
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Web APIs rarely do everything the underlying site or service does. They are typically a defined subset of the total functionality. While understandable from a business strategy and resource perspective, these limits can be frustrating for developers. Sometimes this leads them to find a solution using undocumented APIs, often services used by the UI of the site, that provides them enough functionality to meet their needs (which was essentially the case with the original Google Maps, an undocumented JavaScript API until Paul Rademacher reverse engineered them and built HousingMaps.com).
Read the rest of “YottaMusic and the Limits of APIs” »
Even wonder if the sites you log into on a regular basis might inadvertently let any of that information leak? If you want to see a very real, interactive example of just how prevalent this might be, just check-out JavaScript guru Kent Brewster’s series on “How to Tell if a User is Logged In to X”, where “X” is one of the leading online services millions of us use every day. Last week the “X” was Facebook and today “X” is Netflix. Because the examples are live and work with you and your own account they get your attention.
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Earlier this year in Beware Mashup Spam we saw how spammers were working on gaming Google Maps via mass uploads and creating questionable or false listings. Well, Search Engine Land’s Mike Blumenthal has just followed-up on his initial report with more in yesterday’s MapSpammers Getting More Sophisticated.
In a nutshell, Mike reports on get rich quick schemes in which the spammer uses post office boxes in any city to “legitimize” themselves and get ranking in Google Maps. The overall scheme is to: “Rent a mailing address with forwarding in every major market near the centroid of the city (UPS is one of many that offer this service); Obtain a domain name for each city with a relevant “location + service” domain; Create a website that returns an optimized “location + service” page for the domain; Enter the businesses in the Google Local Business Center (if you are doing the top 50 metro markets, not such a big deal) note: skip this and the next step if using Yahoo Local; Enter the PIN numbers when they are forwarded to you; Get rich quick.”
Read the rest of “MapSpammers Coming to Mashups?” »