Microsoft’s Vancouver office even put together a contest for its developers to create useful visitor applications. Among the half dozen entries are the parking finder shown below and MoBuddy, a mobile social networking app that was awarded the gold medal.

The official site of the olympic games gets in on the fun, too. It uses a Google flash map to track the olympic torch.

The Google Lat Long blog planned ahead. It talked to Vancouver experts, including the premier of British Columbia. In December it shared the favorite places of notable Vancouverites in a series of My Maps.

Dennis Delimarsky compared several weather APIs and decided that Google’s is best, despite having no documentation or support from the company. One reason Delimarsky found it useful is that Google left little work to the developer:

Unlike many others, the XML response for Google Weather API calls is quite explicit. No need to figure out what a specific abbreviation means or whatever a code means to a developer. There is either a positive response (with conditions) or a response notifying of an error.

Indeed, you just simply pass a city name or postal code, such as this Mountain View query:

http://www.google.com/ig/api?weather=Mountain+View

to get an XML response like this:

And the reason for the human-readable XML goes back to the original purpose of this API. The iGoogle dashboard simply consumes the feed and styles it for users. If the XML was complicated, so would be the weather on the iGoogle page.

The API has been accessible for some time, but it’s as unofficial as can be. Tom Fitzgerald provided some documentation and PHP source back in August. And almost two years ago someone asked about it on a Google message board, with Googler Jeff Fisher stating that it is “for gadget use only.”

There are a handful of official weather APIs. And, as we noted in our weather APIs post in April, there is a lot of developer interest. ProgrammableWeb lists 83 weather mashups, but only 8 weather APIs.

For those willing to skirt the line and use Google’s unofficial weather API, you’re in for an additional treat. The iGoogle interface can also access Google’s secret stock API and a strange abbreviated movies API, in addition to a news feed that goes beyond the top three items usually provided by the Google News RSS.

We’re proud to announce the first version of the new setlist.fm Application Programming Interface. The setlist.fm API has been designed to give you easy access to setlist data in order to build fancy websites and other applications.

The REST service provides methods to get both setlists and components of setlists such as artists, cities, countries or venues, and is free for non-commercial use. Currently the API is read only, meaning that the creation of new setlists still has to be done via the web interface.

To maintain a clean and consistent database, Setlist.fm relies heavily on MusicBrainz, using the same identifiers for bands and artists in a number of the API functions.

Setlist.fm has grown considerably since it was launched in September 2008, reporting almost 60,000 setlists, 5,000 artists and over 20,000 venues on its first birthday. Developers have already shown interest in using the growing Setlist.fm database for external applications (by means of page scraping scripts), and the new API is a nice complement to the embeddable setlists already provided by SetList.fm.

To get more information on their new web service visit our SetList.fm API profile. This API is a nice addition to the world of both music APIs and event APIs.

LittleSis API: LittleSis is a free database tracking the key relationships of politicians, business leaders, lobbyists, financiers, and their affiliated institutions (also described as “an involuntary facebook of powerful Americans, collaboratively edited”). The LittleSis API exposes the raw data used on the LittleSis website. The data consists of basic information about people and organizations, and the relationships between them. It uses a RESTful interface and responses are formatted in XML and JSON.

Mixpanel API: Mixpanel is a web service that lets companies track how users engage with their websites in real-time. The Mixpanel API allows users to post and access the data that Mixpanel is analyzing. This is a RESTful API and responses are returned in JSON format.

Mood of the Nation API: Mood of the Nation API allows clients to retrieve the raw trending data associated with the free Mood of the Nation iPhone application. The application collects mood information (physical, mental, emotional) from users and trends over day, week, month.

Motime API: The Motime Open Access platform is an affiliate program based on the APIs of the Motime service which allows partners/affiliates to advertise Motime ringtone content on their own web or mobile sites and earn money for each referral given to Motime. The search API offers a REST protocol to allow developers to link their content with Motime’s catalog of ringtones.

Muselius API: The Muselius API can be used to display information on up to 99 museums in an area on your own web site. The information about museums can be used to “enrich your art related sites, hotels and tourist sites. Muselius is a global directory of museums. Our mission is to facilitate the information you need for visiting museums all over the world. Muselius is created and maintained with the help of many users who update and complete the data we have about each museum.”

OpenSRS API: OpenSRS API is intended for resellers who offer domains and supporting services to their customers. Resellers can provide functionality to their customers by integrating data from the RESTful API functions (includes SSL support). Developers can use the API to run queries or automate tasks that would otherwise be performed manually using the Domain Name Control Panel.

 Amazon eCommerce used in Insider Arts, Tinkrbox

 BooRah Restaurant Search used in Siri - Your Virtual Personal Assistant

 DBpedia used in Sumavisos Clasificados

 del.icio.us used in Similar Site Search

 Eventful used in Siri - Your Virtual Personal Assistant

 Facebook used in Egiate, Tinkrbox

 Flickr used in Insider Arts, Lowlands Mashup, News on Haiti, Tinkrbox

 FlightStats used in Siri - Your Virtual Personal Assistant

 GeoNames used in Sumavisos Clasificados

 Google AdSense used in Sumavisos Clasificados

 Google AJAX Libraries used in Lowlands Mashup

 Google Analytics used in Sumavisos Clasificados

 Google App Engine used in Sumavisos Clasificados

 Google Base used in News on Haiti, Sumavisos Clasificados

 Google Calendar used in Fertility

 Google Chart used in #LinS Stats on Your LinkedIn Social Graph, Lowlands Mashup

 Google Earth used in Egiate

 Google Maps used in E.P. Carrillo, Egiate, In This Light And On This Evening - Editors Hack, IP Geolocation Search, Lowlands Mashup, News on Haiti, Siri - Your Virtual Personal Assistant, Sumavisos Clasificados, Togfrog Adventure Travel Videos

 Google Maps Data used in Lowlands Mashup

 Google Picasa used in Lowlands Mashup

 Google Search used in IP Geolocation Search, Lowlands Mashup, Similar Site Search

 Google Spreadsheets used in Sumavisos Clasificados

 Google Wave used in Sumavisos Clasificados

 LinkedIn used in #LinS Stats on Your LinkedIn Social Graph, Sumavisos Clasificados

 Livekick used in Siri - Your Virtual Personal Assistant

 MaxMind GeoIP used in IP Geolocation Search

 Mobypicture used in Lowlands Mashup

 Technorati used in Lowlands Mashup

 True Knowledge used in Siri - Your Virtual Personal Assistant

 Twilio used in Telepheed

 TwitPic used in Lowlands Mashup

 Twitter used in E.P. Carrillo, Lowlands Mashup, Telepheed, Tinkrbox

 Ustream.TV used in Lowlands Mashup

 Vimeo used in Lowlands Mashup

 WeatherBug used in Siri - Your Virtual Personal Assistant

 Yahoo BOSS used in Insider Arts

 Yahoo Local Search used in Siri - Your Virtual Personal Assistant

 Yahoo Search used in News on Haiti

 Yelp used in Egiate, Siri - Your Virtual Personal Assistant

 YouTube used in Lowlands Mashup, Tinkrbox, Togfrog Adventure Travel Videos

Mashups of the day:
And each day there is one mashup selected to be Mashup of the Day. Here are last week’s winners:

 #LinS Stats on Your LinkedIn Social Graph

 Egiate

 Insider Arts

 IP Geolocation Search

 Siri - Your Virtual Personal Assistant

 Tinkrbox

 Togfrog Adventure Travel Videos

As might be expected, developers found some extremely creative ways of putting the NYC.gov data to good use in a variety of applications and mashups. The Grand Prize winner is WayFinder NYC, a mobile app (Android) that provides an augmented reality approach to providing users with directions to the nearest subway station (see embedded video below).

The Second Prize winner is TaxiHack, an app that allows passengers to post live comments on NYC taxis and their drivers via email and Twitter. The comments can be viewed as a stream at TaxiHack.com.

The Third Prize winner is Big Apple Ed, a school search and analysis tool for New York City schools that provides parents with a new tool for doing due diligence for schools based on a variety of parameters.

You can check out the honorable mentions and other applications that were developed for the contest at the Application Gallery. It’s certainly exciting to see how the developer community was able to take data shared by a city government to develop a diverse set of viable apps and mashups that will benefit both citizens and visitors to the Big Apple. We hope that the contest serves as a model for other major cities around the country that may be considering opening up their data and sharing it with the public at large.

The founders call their application the ultimate mashup, because it currently uses 35-40 APIs to provide the best reply it can. Queries are spoken in simple English, such as “book me a taxi” and “what’s the weather forecast in Boulder this weekend?” Even the speech-to-text translation is an API (in this case, Nuance).

Siri’s secret sauce is in its artificial intelligence that determines which APIs it needs to invoke. That’s where the R&D budget went, when it was still an SRI International project. Of course, Siri still has some problems interpretting what humans consider basic questions. What impressed me is how many of its deficiencies Siri is itself aware of. In the demo video posted below, I show one of them.

The company plans to add more APIs every month. The initial launch is just a platform upon which to build. CEO Dag Kittlaus calls Siri a “click reduction machine,” but goes further in his post The Birth of the Virtual Assistant:

This will be a market in which every player along the line wins. Users will be able to click less, enjoy simpler interactions and receive much-needed help getting things done and managing their day. Participating service providers get simpler discovery, more transactions, and higher consumption rates. This then drives more data dollars to networks, fueling infrastructure expansion.

The real money, it seems, is in transactional APIs, ones where users are making a purchase. Some examples already included in Siri are booking taxis and reserving a table at a restaurant. The company plans to add flight booking, among other ways to promote what Kittlaus calls “frictionless e-commerce.”

In some cases, the APIs just aren’t there yet. At the top of the Siri team’s wishlist? Amazon. The huge web store has been at the forefront of web services, but has held tight control over the purchase interraction.

If you have an iPhone 3GS, check out Siri in the app store and let us know what you think of the future.

According to a ZDNet report, the agency would like to pay to license mashups when they are used by the government.

Free research and development is a common reason for starting an API, for both commercial and government ventures. However, developers do not always feel there is a fair trade. In some circumstances, providers use the license terms to shut down and then copy the most popular applications, as happened with Amazon and Alexaholic in 2007.

The legal framework isn’t quite there in the UK yet, as the ZDNet article points out:

Some developers were cautious about the Data.gov.uk licensing plans. Jonathon Raper, professor of geographical information science at City University London, said that while he welcomed the OPSI proposals, the licence terms and conditions would need to be carefully drafted.

“In principle, it’s a truly fabulous idea to take government data, mash it up, give it back to the government, and they pay the developers,” said Raper. “But there is a potential danger. Crown copyright is an absolute — the Crown owns this data. If there are loopholes [in the Data.gov.uk licence], the government could come back later and dispute ownership.”

If they can get licensing issues figured out, it could blaze a trail that eventually becomes a standard way of compensating the best developers. Acquiring the best mashups is still less expensive than traditional R&D. And it’s not unheard of: The Weather Channel bought Weatherbonk (pictured above) and Google acquired Panoramio, both in 2007.

The Business.gov Web Service is a RESTful API that provides access to the same information that can be accessed using the site’s core search tools (technical summary at our new Business.gov API profile).

The API provides access to four key sets of data, including:

• Loans & Grants Search:
  This data set provides a collection of links to Federal, state, and local financial assistance programs that help small businesses get started or expand operations. Each program is categorized to 15 dimensions, from loan type to business activity, industry group and location.
• Business Licenses & Permits:
  This data set provides a collection Federal, state and local licenses, permits and registrations small businesses need to operate.
• U.S. City & County Web Data:
  This geographic names data set provides a "mashup" of URLs for city and county web sites and city and county location data from the USGS Geographic Names Information System (GNIS). GNIS data includes incorporated places, census designated areas, unincorporated places, counties, and populated places.
• Recommended Sites:
  This data set includes links to federal, state and local websites that are boosted to the top of organic search results for "long-tail" queries to improve the relevancy of web search results.

Developers will be pleased to learn that the API is free, and it allows for unlimited queries. Data is provided in either XML or JSON formats, and according to the Business.gov site “the API is regularly synchronized to ensure that all updates are immediately available.”

Though at first it may appear subtle, this API provides access to much sought after information, and there’s potential for mashups and apps that could contribute to the success of small businesses around the US. According to the web site:

In 2003, businesses and citizens spent approximately 8.2 billion hours and $320 billion filling out paperwork and complying with government regulations, according to a report by the Small Business Paperwork Relief Task Force. Small business owners spend considerable time navigating multiple websites to get information they need to comply with regulations and to find government assistance programs.

The API is quite new, having just been released last week. This is an API with interesting potential and we look forward to seeing how this newly available data is utilized by the developer community.

discoverOmatic allows you to discover new artists and tracks while listening to the radio or even your own collection. Simply select the radio station you’re currently listening to (currently on BBC brands supported) and we’ll do the rest.

Mystery Music Search gives you the results for whatever the person before you searched for. Heavily inspired by mysterygoogle.com, and using the new Echonest search_tracks api.

Another favourite is the Twitter best ever Midi Player, which is a small box that creates a realtime MIDI stream from Twitter messages.

A live feed covered the event, including a number of photos, twitter posts and video feeds.

You can find a similarly eclectic collection of hacks from the previous Music Hack Days, and developers sharing the same hacker spirit can find 74 music APIs to get them started on their own mashups.