I’vRead is a service for keeping track of what books you’ve read. Seems simple, but it can be rather useful for those of us obsessed with reading like myself. Its web site offers the service for free, and using it is already pretty simple. There isn’t even another account to register for. All a user needs to do is add a specific tag, @ivread, to a Twitter post mentioning the book. It allows for some basic searches of the data on their website, but the I’vRead API is where the service really shines.
Gas costs sure have risen lately, at least in the US. With many drivers are seeing prices well over $4 per gallon of gasoline, the time has come to do something about it. The FuelFrog website, as well as its iOS app or Twitter, can help with this. It helps you keep track of how far you’ve gone, and how much gas you’ve used, as well as trends for gas prices in your area. Of course, there’s also the FuelFrog API which, despite some security concerns, lets you integrate that data into just about anything.
Evan Jacobs is one of the developers doing some really interesting things with the Twitter API. Instead of using Twitter as a means of broadcasting information, Jacobs’ apps are actually gathering information from Twitter to turn it into something more useful.
Every single public message on Google Buzz, the content-sharing platform from the search giant, is now available to any developer. A similar, if much fatter, pipe is available from Twitter, but only for large partners paying big bucks. Accessing the “firehose” is about the same any other API, which makes it an easy way to get a lot of content quickly.
Anyone used to be able to send a postcard to a U.S. service member by addressing it to “Any Service Member.” Now a name is required to send a physical letter. That’s where the Gratefulapp mashup comes in. It broadcasts your message via Twitter to troops–or anyone else who checks out its rotating front page.
A year ago Twitter was just a microblogging platform. Sure, it was a popular one, but it wasn’t until the announcement of its geotagging API that it took its first step toward being a location platform. Since then, it has expanded its offering to include the four geo APIs I’ve categorized below.
Last month Twitter CEO Evan Williams announced Twitter Anywhere, but it wasn’t exactly clear what it was. Now the microblogging platform, which looks pretty busy with all its announcements centered around its developer conference, is sharing more details about the API that is part display widget and part external login, all controlled via JavaScript.
In many ways Twitter is a platform to be admired. But how and where it communicates with its developer community has been a bit lacking. At the Chirp conference, Twitter launched the sort of home for discussion and information that should make Twitter developers happy.
There were plenty of stats doled out by Twitter’s founders during Chirp Conference keynotes today. The two that stuck with us were: 1) that its servers handle 3 billion calls every day, just to the API, and 2) that 75% of all their traffic comes from their API. If you look at the volume alone, that’s over 30,000 updates, timeline requests and searches per second. That’s a massive API.
Twitter’s announced “promoted tweets”, a way for businesses to send their status messages into the timelines of users who may not follow them. Many developers are wondering how it affects updates via the API–will promoted tweets show up in results from API calls?
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