Google Desktop Gadget Contest

John Musser, June 30th, 2006

Another API developer contest has launched: Google’s Desktop Gadget Contest. Here’s how they describe it:

Do you have what it takes to create a great Google Desktop Gadget? Have you been waiting for some motivation to prove it? Well, good news — the Google Desktop Gadget Contest is here to spur you into brilliant action.
The contest [...]


The New Google Authentication

John Musser, June 29th, 2006

Remember Microsoft Passport, er now Windows Live ID? Google has just introduced their entry in the space, which is now more of the Identity 2.0 space. For details see thier new Account Authentication Proxy for Web-Based Applications page. And check Garett Rogers post at ZDNet for a concise summary.
It was only earlier this week there [...]


Best New Mashups: Amazon

John Musser, June 28th, 2006

Continuing this week’s review of good new mashups, here are a few built using Amazon’s API:

Similarity Web: Search for any product on Amazon and visualize its 2-level deep similarity web in Flash. Nice visualization.
Amazon CLI: A unique browser based command line interface to Amazon.com. Search, browse and purchase Amazon products all via the command line [...]


Best New Mashups, Part 2

John Musser, June 27th, 2006

Our review of the best new mashups continues and even includes some good non-Google-maps mashups (yes, they exist):

floverview: floverview gives you a comprehensive one-page view of any Flickr member.
Running Map: A nice site to measure your running distance. Built in Flash with Yahoo Maps. Good UI.
Flickr in Second Life: A home in SL that [...]


Best New Mashups

John Musser, June 26th, 2006

Here’s a sampling of the best new mashups added at ProgrammableWeb recently (go here for the full list of 789 mashups):

Slurlmaker for Second Life: Slurlmarker uses your del.icio.us account to create a bookmark slurl of your favorite locations in Second Life.
Flickrball: A fun six-degrees-of-separation scavenger-hunt game, using Flickr thumbnails and tags for clues.
ASCII [...]


New Yahoo Messenger API

John Musser, June 22nd, 2006

Yahoo! this week introduced a new Plug-in SDK for Yahoo! Messenger. It is a JavaScript and C++ API for building features to run inside their IM client. Some initial plug-ins are over in the Yahoo! Gallery.
There is a new Messenger API entry on the ProgrammableWeb site.


AOL AIM Updates

John Musser, June 21st, 2006

In AOL news: Open AIM continues to expand functionality, now with AIM bots, location-based services, and PC-to-PC calling. Since AIM supports SMS you can access the bots via your phone (like the Wall Street Journal bot). The location service is also designed for mobile devices — it can use the network to determine location and, [...]


Amazon MTurk and S3 Updates

John Musser, June 20th, 2006

As noted by Amazon’s Jeff Barr over in the good Amazon Web Services Blog there have been some updates to the Mechanical Turk and S3 APIs. Interesting feature enhancements. For S3 this includes virtual hosting and hierarchies of keys and for Mechanical Turk this includes event notifications (email or web service call) and rich media [...]


Considering API Parity

John Musser, June 18th, 2006

Marc Hedlund over at O’Reilly Radar points out an interesting discussion at FlickrCentral. The gist of the initial question revolved around whether a competing photo service should be given an API key so they can directly use Flickr’s API to move a customer’s data directly out of Flickr and into theirs. After some back-and-forth and [...]


New Riya API

John Musser, June 17th, 2006

The photo search engine Riya now has their own API. Nice, clean REST model API includes access to their well regarded facial recognition search. More on the API itself from Dan Farber at ZDNet. They will soon release version 2.0 of the core service, an upgrade that moves them towards a more generalized visual search [...]


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ProgrammableWeb
APIs, mashups and code. Because the world's your programmable oyster.

John Musser
Founder, ProgrammableWeb

Adam DuVander
Executive Editor, ProgrammableWeb. Author, Map Scripting 101. Lover, APIs.