Is this the year of the API? Or is it next year? As we’ve pointed out before, the API universe is expanding. You have a chance now to make sure when thousands of geeks descend upon Austin next March, that this new way of the web is given the billing it deserves. But you have to get moving by September 2.
When you gotta go, you gotta know: where’s the nearest toilet? SitOrSquat has been helping answer that question for several years. Now the SitOrSquat API will allow you to interface with the app’s extensive database of public restrooms, replete with all kinds of meta data.
Thrutu is a company that looks to enrich phone calls by enabling the sharing of information during a phone call between two users. Thrutu lets users access and share real-time features through the use of a “button” while making calls on their Android or iPhone devices. With its first contest the company is reaching out to developers to build something great using its Thrutu API.
Developers are game changers. Developers are craftspeople. Like all smart, motivated tinkerers who like to make stuff, developers also tend to have strongly-held opinions about what makes their craft easier or more difficult. Developer pain tiers upwards from mildly annoying to “bang head here” WTF. Debugging someone else’s sloppy code or terminal sessions timing out? Non-awesome. Coworkers talking loudly on the phone near their desk or standing over their shoulders? Painful. Awful documentation? Excruciating.
Data marketplace InfoChimps continues its march to API-ify its most useful, sliceable datasets. The latest is a bundle it calls the InfoChimps Geo APIs and it makes available some extremely interesting location data from both public and private sources. The company has created a location data schema to unify sources, which include several place databases, Wikipedia articles and Zillow neighborhood boundaries.
Stereomood is a streaming music service that gives recommendations. To start, it uses a list of moods, each of which have an associated playlist. While playing songs, users can like or ban songs, much like Last.fm or Pandora. The Stereomood API allows full access to the site’s functionality to developers, allowing developers to make fully usable clients on any platform.
After pulling the plug on its Google Translate API, the company will now charge for the service. It hopes the fee will curb what it characterized as “extensive abuse.” Users did not respond favorably to the original announcement and we were pleased to report that the API would be available as a paid API. We now have the details on the pricing.
This week we had 40 new APIs added to our API directory including a stock trading system automator, file sharing service, website performance testing tool, realtime photo updates from flickr, mobile visual search and a local deals aggregation service. Additionally, we covered the potential value of emerging commerce APIs. Below are more details on each of these new APIs.
This past week 23 new mashups were added to our mashup directory and 25 different APIs were used to build them. Some of the newer or less frequently seen APIs include CareerBuilder, FreshBooks, LinkUp Job Search Engine, Magento, Mediaburst SMS, Scalr and SocialOomph. The most often used APIs this week are Facebook, Twilio and Twilio SMS. And the most commonly used types of APIs were Job Search (4 APIs, 4 mashups), Social (4 APIs, 9 mashups) and Reference (2 APIs, 2 mashups). The list below shows which APIs were used by which mashups:
Twitter is embracing the trend where 1 in 5 new APIs do not support XML. The trend is playing out, appropriately enough, with Twitter’s endpoint for accessing global and local trending topics. It follows a move in late 2010 where Twitter Streaming went JSON-only. All signs point to no XML support for new Twitter features.
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