A project of the Elgg Foundation, Elgg is a free open source social networking engine licensed to users under the GNU Public License v2. The REST Elgg API allows developers to integrate Elgg and offer new apps for it. To give a sense of its size, 1,646 plugins have been created so far by the user community, with nearly 3 million downloads. Examples of plugins include blogs, forums, social bookmarks.
The Cliflo API from New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) gives access to data from 6,500 climate stations maintained by the government of New Zealand. The API webpage notes that access is by subscription, though the cost is free, suggesting that only registration and agreement with the terms and conditions are required. Access to data gathered by Pacific Island stations is restricted by agreement with Pacific Island countries. However it is possible to obtain access by permission.
The Salsa Commons API is a REST and XML API that, as Salsa explains,
“At it’s simplest, using the Salsa API may consist of just a form placed on an external website … At it’s most complex, you could use a Ruby library to authenticate, pull down information on recent supporters and events, validate that data, change it, and submit it back to the node, while generating and displaying counts of petition signers — all through the API.”
The Votizen API aims to get friends to involve their friends in supporting candidates. The API website notes that the API is entirely based on HTTP. Votizen is based on the premise that, “Voters are more likely to listen to friends than campaign volunteers.” Votizen is the first “social campaigning platform built entirely on personal connections.”
For some, pursuing further education is impractical or simply unaffordable. In such cases, having the option to study from wherever is convenient and without the burden of cost would be an invaluable gift. The Khan Academy is working to provide a solution and the Khan Academy API is helping to spread the wealth.
Space is big. Really big. That means a lot of information, and where there’s data, there’s opportunity for automation. Now, NASA wants your help to create new APIs for its extensive and ever-growing data archives. Launched in 2011, data.nasa.gov offers APIs for many different types of information–ranging from Mars Science Laboratory Raw Images to Annual Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Reports–as JSON objects via a RESTful interface.
“Anedot makes fundraising easier for causes and donating simple for donors.” Integration with the Anedot API allows non-profits, political campaigns, churches, and other causes to accept donations through a website, Facebook, or a mobile device. After many years of frustrating fundraising experiences in the political campaign world, Paul Dietzel founded Anedot so donors would never miss a chance to donate because of cumbersome processes.
Civic Commons, a non-profit initiative that aims to help cities and local governments harness the power of shared technologies and adapt to a more collaborative software development methodology, recently released an app store for civic technology called the Civic Commons Marketplace. Just last week, an alpha version of the Civic Commons Marketplace API for this app store was also released.
Last week I had the pleasure of attending the O’Reilly Strata Conference in New York City, and sat in on a very important keynote from Drew Conway and Jake Porway about their project, Data Without Borders.
Data Without Borders is looking to match non-profits in need of data analysis with freelance and pro bono data scientists who can work to help them with data collection, analysis, visualization, or provide decision support.
Internet Archive have released a REST API that gives developers access to their historical snapshots of the web. It is based on the Amazon S3 API, and is currently the best way to access the Internet Archive data.
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