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Monthly Archives
March 11th, 2008
36 Photo APIs
Online photo sites have steadily grown in popularity. Millions of people use Flickr, Smugmug, Picasa, AOL Pictures, and other sites to post and share all kinds of pictures. What many people don’t know is just how many of these sites offer APIs that can be used to build mashups, photo tools, and other applications.
There are many different types of photo APIs, including photo sharing and management APIs, image editing APIs, and APIs that specialize in image slideshows, geolocation, and mapping. In fact, there are so many APIs that there’s now a ProgrammableWeb Photo API and Mashup Dashboard to keep track of them all in one place. In this post, we’ll take a look at the breadth and power of the 36 photo-related APIs and 415 photo mashups in our directory.
Photo sharing and management
About half of the available photo APIs help you manage and share your photos. The Flickr API is the standout in this category, offering API methods that can be accessed using multiple standard protocols (REST, SOAP, XML-RPC). The Flickr API lets you manage and retrieve everything from photos to contacts to comments and geographical locations. The API is well documented and their developer site links to examples in over a dozen programming languages. It’s no wonder that more than 300 mashups have already been developed using the Flickr API.
The 23 API is modeled after the Flickr API, with the objective of standardizing photo APIs and providing interoperability between photo sharing sites. Other popular photo APIs include the Google Picasa API, the Smugmug API, the Buzznet API, and the AOL Pictures API.
Image editing APIs
If you’d like to offer visitors to your Web site the ability to edit their images online, there are several APIs available that will help you accomplish this. The Snipshot API is simple to apply. You send the API the URL of the image to be edited, a callback URL, and the name of the file to be output (after the user has finished editing the image). The Snipshot Services page provides plenty of example code to get you started.
The FotoFlexer API provides access to a particularly rich online image editor. The API, which can be accessed using standard Javascript, can be extended using server-side scripting technologies such as PHP. The Picnik and Pixenate APIs also provide access to powerful online image editing tools.
Slideshows, geolocation, and mapping
There are a few specialized photo APIs as well. The imageLoop API lets you create photo slideshows. imageLoop includes more than 80 well-documented functions, and can be accessed using standard protocols. Developer kits are available for programming in Java, PHP, Javascript, .NET/SOAP, and ActionScript.
The Panoramio API enables digital photographers to geolocate, store, and organize their photos, and view the photos in Google Earth and Google Maps applications. Panoramio uses JSON data formats and the REST protocol. Panoramio was acquired by Google last year.
If you live in Great Britain and you’re wondering what you’re looking at, the GetMapping API is available to assist you. The GetMapping API provides imagery that can be accessed by Web-enabled mobile phones for any location in Great Britain. You can select your location using postal code, town/village, street name, motorway junction, or East and North position. The GetMapping photos zoom to as close as 12.5 cm per pixel, which lets you see details as small as garden furniture and road markings, anywhere in the country.
Photo mashups
With more than 400 photo mashups available, there’s a good chance you’ll find many of interest. One of the best known and most popular is Big Huge Labs, home of “fd’s Flickr Toys”. As we reported last year, it’s a great mix of over two dozen toys, games and utilities for your photos.
Some of the other more popular directory listings for photo mashups include:
- FlickrSudoku: Mashup of a popular online sudoku player and images from Flickr (more at our profile)
- Tagnautica: Experimental navigation tool for exploring the space of related Flickr tags. Type in one start tag and dive into tag space (our profile).
- A fun experiment in finding Flickr photos by color comes from Jim Bumgardner in Color Fields Colr Pickr. You can select colors directly or use the slider to adjust lightness and darkness (our profile).
The Current Photo API List
To give you a sense of the scope, here’s the list of photo-related API entries in the directory:
Summary
The spectrum of available photo APIs is broad and continues to grow. Check the new ProgrammableWeb Photo Mashup Dashboard for the latest on photo APIs and mashups.
Posted by KevinFarnham as APIs, Popular, photo at 2:59 AM | 2 Comments »
February 21st, 2008
25 Music APIs
[Editor’s note: Today’s post comes from Kevin Farnham, who we are very happy to have joining us as a regular contributor here at ProgrammableWeb.]
Whether you’re a performer or a listener who enjoys discovering great new music, there are many music APIs available to help you accomplish your objectives. Last.fm is among the most popular music destinations on the Web. Its API provides you with data about Last.fm members, artists, albums, tracks, and more. More than 36 Last.fm Mashups are available, and the list keeps growing. With the recent addition of the handy LyricsFly API and its database of lyrics for 314,000 songs, there are now 25 music APIs in the ProgrammableWeb directory (as well as 135 music-related mashups).
But Last.fm is just one example. There are APIs that help you discover music you may like, APIs that provide detailed metadata about music, and APIs that let you store and manage your music online. Other APIs provide online radio and music subscription services. There are APIs for customizing music players, finding live music, and even for selling your own music. So many that ProgrammableWeb has just added a place to track them: the Music API and Mashup Dashboard.
Managing Your Music
Managing your music collection no longer means maintaining an orderly stack of CDs. Today we enjoy music from so many different locations and on so many different kinds of devices, that it can be easy to forget where it all is. In addition, music is available everywhere, but how can you find music that you will like?
These are the types of problems that developers are trying to solve with music APIs. Here’s a breakdown of what’s available and what problem the APIs address.
Music Discovery
How do you find new music that you’re likely to enjoy? And once you find it, how do you bring it into your music collection and manage it such that you’ll be able to find it later on? We’ve already talked about Last.fm. But a lot of other good solutions are also available.
Like Last.fm, the OpenStrands API takes a Web 2.0 approach to music discovery: the API provides programmable access to the MyStrands.com community’s recommendation, tagging and playlist services. Other music search tools include the Digital Podcast API, which lets you search for music using keywords, the SeeqPod API, where you enter the name of a song you like, and API returns a list of recommended songs, and the Yahoo Audio Search API, which enables structured and unstructured queries for finding audio files and correlated music data.
The MusicDNS API deserves special mention: it will automatically compare your music with all the music in its database using algorithms, then identify artists whose work is similar to your own.
About the Music (Music Metadata)
Once you’ve found music you like listening to, you may want to find out more information, about the songs, the artists… Several APIs provide information about music — that is, metadata. Freedb / CDDB provides information about music CDs: artist, CD-title, track list, and other information. The interesting thing is that a track for which you’d like to find information can be on a CD in your computer’s CD-drive, or on many different Freedb-compliant devices.
The MusicBrainz API, Tunelog API, and Discogs API all take a Web 2.0 approach, providing access to a large database of music metadata that is maintained by or based on the collective actions of the MusicBrainz, Tunelog, and Discogs communities.
Media Management and Online Broadcasting
Several APIs are help you manage your music. The Faces.com API and Ipernity API let you share music, pictures, and video with your friends and other members of the site.
Sharing your media is not all that different from broadcasting it, today. But some sites prefer the term broadcasting, implying more professional content. The Orb API allows you to broadcast your music, videos, photos, and more. Meanwhile, the RadioTime API enables you to find and enjoy over 60,000 online radio stations around the globe.
The Rhapsody API and subscription music service lets you programmatically manage your Rhapsody playlists, search for music, and access your Rhapsody RSS feeds.
Music Players
There’s music, then there’s how you listen to it. The Yahoo Music Engine API, the Winamp API, and the MP3Tunes API each offer the ability customizable their respective music players via code.
Music Events
After listening to some tunes by a new artist, you may want to see them perform in person. The Eventful API, JamBase API, and Gruvr API all let you search for concert information and other events. Eventful goes a step further by letting you “demand” an appearance by a performer in your area. Gruvr’s API lets you integrate live music maps and concert schedules into your own site.
APIs For Performers
If you’re a performer, then you’re sure to be interested in the above APIs. You’ll want to have your music available wherever listeners are searching for new music. You want to submit your songs to MusicDNS.org so that people who like your kind of music will be more likely to discover your own music. You’ll certainly want to publicize your performance calendar using the APIs for Eventful, JamBase, and Gruvr. And when it comes to selling your recordings, investigate the SNOCAP API, which will help you set up your own music store.
Music Mashups
Music APIs make a wide variety of music mashups possible. One of the earlier and more popular music mashups in our listings is MusicPortl, which collates information about a specific artist from across the entire web, creating a page that includes biographical information, photos, album releases, videos, blogs, and more. MusicPortl applies seven different APIs to provide all this information: Amazon eCommerce API, Flickr API, Last.fm API, MusicBrainz API, Ontok API, Technorati API, and the YouTube API.
Many music-related mashups aggregate artist data from around the Web into a unified search interface. One of which is FoxyTunes, which was acquired by Yahoo! earlier this month and you can see our listing with APIs used here.
Of the 135 music-related mashups listed, some of the more popular include: TuneGlue, ZonTube, KEXPlorer.com, MusicTonic, One Hit Wonders Map, JukeboxTube, Indie Tube, NPR Station Map and Mashup Camp winners PodBop and the Hype Machine.
We’ll cover more of these in an upcoming post.
Summary
The variety of music-related APIs is enormous, and the number of music APIs keeps growing. Click here for an updated list of currently available music APIs.
- Digital Podcast - Podcast search
- Discogs - Music database
- Eventful - Events discovery and demand
- Faces.com - Photo and media sharing service
- Freedb / CDDB - Online CD catalog service
- Gruvr - Live music and concert information
- Ipernity - Media sharing service
- JamBase - Live music and concert information
- Last.fm - Music playlist management
- LyricsFly - Lyrics database
- MP3Tunes - Music services
- MusicBrainz - Music metadata community service
- MusicDNS.org - Music fingerprinting service
- MusicMobs - Social music service
- OpenStrands - Music recommendation and discovery
- Orb - Digital media remote access and management
- RadioTime - Music and talk radio service
- Rhapsody - Online music services
- SeeqPod - Music recommendation service
- SNOCAP - Digital music marketplace
- Tunelog - Music metadata management
- WebJay - Music playlist management
- Winamp - Customizable music player
- Yahoo Audio Search - Music search services
- Yahoo Music Engine - Desktop music player
Kevin Farnham runs Lyra Technical Systems, a small software consulting and publishing company where he often works with O’Reilly Media, currently as Community Manager for the Threading Building Blocks open source project and was previously the Managing Editor for the AOL Developer Community. On the software engineering side Kevin specializes in mathematical modeling, simulation, and scientific data analysis.
Posted by KevinFarnham as APIs, Music, Popular, Site News at 4:18 AM | 8 Comments »
February 11th, 2008
Microsoft and Yahoo: Comparing the APIs
Now that Microsoft has responded to Yahoo’s initial rejection of their offer it looks like this story isn’t over yet. Whether or not this deal goes through, it’s worth noting that both of these companies take developing open web APIs as a key part of their strategy going forward (even in the midst of the talks last week Yahoo released their Yahoo Live API). Overall Yahoo has 28 open web APIs and Microsoft has 22 open web APIs. This means that between them there are 50 APIs. Of course there’s overlap and given the technical challenges it’s not easy to combine platforms (ex: look at how Flickr and delicious APIs at Yahoo retain their own flavor). To give a sense of comparison the following table gives you an overview of how the APIs currently stack up:
Posted by John Musser as Microsoft, Popular, Yahoo at 11:58 PM | 7 Comments »
February 8th, 2008
30 Video APIs
As we reported not long ago we’re seeing lots of growth in the number of video APIs, and the past week has been no exception. Three of the last ten APIs listed in our directory are video-related whether it’s for video sharing, video search, or socializing around video content. We now have 261 mashups tagged video and 30 APIs tagged video. Here’s a quick overview of the latest:
- blip.tv API: This service gives video content creators free hosting and distribution along with an opt-in ad program. It focuses on episodic content like “shows”. The v2.0 of their REST API offers search capabilities as well as the ability to create posts and add new accounts.
- ffwd API: The ffwd service, in private beta now, is described as “a new way to discover videos from all over the web” through search, organization and sharing tools. The REST-based API for now provides ways to retrieve user profiles, favorites and other interests. It’s also part of another API trend: it can return results in both XML and JSON formats.
- Seesmic API: Lastly is the soon to be released API for the Seesmic service described by Mike Arrington as a “Video Twitter” where “people are constantly interacting around both user generated and professional content.” Both the service and API are in development so more technical details are still pending.
You can use our new new Video API and Mashup Dashboard to keep up to date with what’s new in video APIs, platforms and mashups.
Posted by John Musser as Popular, Video at 2:16 AM | 1 Comment »
February 1st, 2008
Graphing Bebo Application Growth
Since Bebo brought its Facebook Platform-compatible API out of closed beta a few weeks ago, as we reported in this post, the initial growth shows a steep curve from about 50 launch partner applications available before Jan 12th to 714 on Jan 26th. For a better sense of what that looks like, the graph below shows the developer uptake since public launch.
Read the rest of “Graphing Bebo Application Growth” »
Posted by John Musser as Facebook, Metrics, OpenSocial, Popular, Social at 12:17 AM | 3 Comments »
January 15th, 2008
Hasbro Versus Scrabulous
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.
Read the rest of “Hasbro Versus Scrabulous” »
Posted by John Musser as Facebook, Issues, Law, Popular, Social at 12:42 AM | 1 Comment »
January 11th, 2008
Google Chart Mashups: Love and Stats
Do you like charts, statistics and graphs? Apparently lots of developers do given how quickly folks have taken to creating charting apps following last month’s release of the Google Chart API. Here in our PW directory we’re starting to see some interesting mashups built with it being submitted. They range from useful interactive charts that let you visualize US federal spending to not-so-serious charts that let you graph your love life. Here are three new entries from our directory:
- US Federal Contracts by State: Federal contract data from FedSpending.org visually presented using the Google Chart API. See where the money goes. (From prolific and talented mashup developer Jim Hamilton, see his PW profile for more.)
- Chart Generator: An Ajax web form that lets you interactively try-out Google Charts by directly entering data and seeing the results.
- Love-o-Graph: Fun app that takes information about you and your crush, and generates lots of data about your potential as a couple. Type your name and the name of your crush in the appropriate boxes, and hit Graph It.
Posted by John Musser as BestMashups, Google, Metrics, Popular, Visualization, fun at 2:50 AM | 2 Comments »
January 9th, 2008
French Press and Facebook Mashup Hoax
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” »
Posted by John Musser as Facebook, Issues, Popular, Social at 1:13 PM | 1 Comment »
January 7th, 2008
Facebook App Installs Spyware
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).
Read the rest of “Facebook App Installs Spyware” »
Posted by John Musser as Facebook, Issues, Popular, Security, Social at 2:32 AM | 12 Comments »
December 20th, 2007
How to Tell if a User is Logged In to Netflix
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.
Read the rest of “How to Tell if a User is Logged In to Netflix” »
Posted by John Musser as Issues, JavaScript, Popular, Security at 12:51 AM | 2 Comments »
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