Factual Inc, a company founded by ex-Googler Gil Elbaz that is creating a collaborative data platform, announced extensions to its Factual APIs today that are aimed at improving the ability to target advertising and provide other geo-based capabilities in mobile applications. The three new APIs, Geopulse, Reverse Geocoder, and World Geographies, fill gaps and extend the scope of Factual’s API portfolio. But the way that Factual thinks about its APIs also holds lessons for anyone who is mapping out an API strategy of their own.
Gecko Landmarks is working on an easier way of giving directions. The theory behind their madness is that “everyone thinks in landmarks”. They took this idea and ran with it. In fact they have run all over the world with this idea. They have now collected landmark data for every country in the world. Most of this data is now available in the Gecko Landmarks API.
Google intern Joey Scarr had a busy first month at the search giant’s Sydney office, home of much of the Google Maps API engineering team. Scarr added the weather layer, available on the Google Maps website, as an optional layer in the API. The resulting feature even gets you at some of the data, making it close to an official Google Weather API.
The push notification and in app purchase enabler, Urban Airship, has added a long-expected feature to its Urban Airship API. Users can now segment audiences by location using technology Urban Airship acquired from SimpleGeo.
Google continues to bring new APIs into its new developer site. The most recent addition is the Google Maps API, the company’s popular platform for all things location, mobile and local.
Google Maps is still the top choice for adding maps to the web. It’s powerful, customizable and for most sites, free. However, Google Maps pricing did encourage several large sites to make the move to other options, most recently foursquare. If you’re also looking to move from Google, our API directory has several JavaScript-based options to consider.
Foursquare just made the switch from using the Google Maps API, to joining the crowd-sourced, global OpenStreetMap movement. To do most of the heavy lifting, foursquare relied upon the still fairly new MapBox API.
Foursquare has embraced the open maps movement. Russia’s biggest search engine integrates with the Topsy API. Plus: Disqus comments available in Gnip, Microsoft launches its own Webmaster Tools API and 21 new APIs.
Geoloqi has added added platform-specific SDKs to its collection of developer tools for real-time location. The SDKs interact with the Geoloqi API and have native tools to improve battery life and simplify common location-based app features. The company hopes the new enhancements will encourage broader use of its platform, which has already found fans in government and enterprise.
The Google Maps API took a hit in France as non-competitive. The Gnip API now lets its customers go back in time, tweet-wise, retroactively tracking specific terms. Plus: APIs for hustlers, putting the “why” in user permissions and 10 new APIs.
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