It’s been busy recently on API Jobs, the dedicated job board for API-focused professionals I built a couple months ago. The site features the best jobs building APIs, integrating them, or working at companies whose primary service is an API. Each week I’ll be bringing you an overview of the newest featured listings on the site.
A competitor created an export tool for Flickr ex-patriots, so the photo sharing site shut down the Flickr API developer key. The Google Plus developer page makes some wonder if the “real” Google Plus API is coming soon. Also: questions about the Google Safe Browsing API, free cloud database and 15 new APIs.
APIs are inherently difficult to learn for developers. The ProgrammableWeb API is no exception to this rule either. In this article we will show some examples of how Yahoo’s YQL can be used make developer’s life a bit easier when using the ProgrammableWeb API.
Yahoo! BOSS, the Build Your Own Search Service, has seen a series of upheavals in the last two years. When Yahoo! announced its Search partnership with Microsoft, it looked that Yahoo! BOSS might not survive for long. However, that was not the case. Yahoo! BOSS has come back strongly this year with paid version V2 and major updates to the BOSS API. In a sign that it is alive and kicking, it has announced a new home for Search BOSS and three new product offerings under the BOSS umbrella along with API updates.
Yahoo has had a rich tradition of organizing hack events globally, where developers come together for a day or two and hack on Yahoo APIs. Now imagine a battle of champions, where all previous winners of Yahoo’s worldwide Open Hack and University Hack Day events are pitted against each other in an event with the grand prize winner earning a year of incubation with Yahoo. Well, Yahoo just did that.
Earlier this month I eulogized the Yahoo Maps API. It was launched the same week as the Google Maps API and for some time was often mentioned at the same time. The Yahoo Maps API, it appeared, was to be disconnected by now, but it appears the company is going to wait a bit longer.
These days it might be hard to remember that the Yahoo Maps API was ever second fiddle to the Google Maps API. These days, it barely picks up its fiddle. And in less than two weeks, Yahoo will lift its once-mighty mapping API above its head and bang the fiddle repeatedly into the stage like Pete Townshend. The remnants, barely held together with strings and the crumpled instrument neck, will then go in some dumpster in Sunnyvale. It’s okay, after all, because Nokia’s Ovi Maps API will be a fine replacement. It’s only the nostalgic, like me, who’ll have any problem with seeing the Yahoo name disappear.
Flickr has added more real-time goodness to their photo API. Using a publish / subscribe (PubSub) system, developers can now receive real-time updates across millions of photos across Flickr friends, Flickr Commons, and by tags and geo-location using the Flickr Real-Time API.
Yahoo has just released a cool new embeddable media player, Yahoo WebPlayer, that supports MP3 and WMA files, as well as multiple services like YouTube and Yahoo Video. Yahoo has also launched a whole new site to attract publishers and developers and to encourage them to use the player when publishing audio and video across the Web.
It’s been a long year since Yahoo’s major search API changes. One of its popular offerings, the Yahoo BOSS API, was marked for transition to a paid service after integrating search results from Microsoft Bing. In April of this year, Yahoo BOSS V2 was released with pricing details, OAuth support and optional Advertising. Users have reacted positively to the changes and Yahoo has responded back with updates to BOSS V2 and a very short timeline to upgrade apps from V1.
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