When it comes to map mashups there’s no doubt that Google Maps leads the way. On ProgrammableWeb we list 1,964 Google Maps mashups, almost four times as many as any other API. This popularity makes utilities built on top of Google Maps especially interesting, such as this contextual menu control, which pops up a menu when the user right clicks.
Klout is turning Twitter into a game. As you tweet and connect with other Twitter users, you earn badges for notable achievements. For example, when you’re mentioned by 100 unique users, or have a message retweeted by 25 people, your Klout profile gets a pretty new graphic. The data behind this can be used to determine influential Twitter users.
This week we had 11 new APIs added to our API directory including a new API to find state and federal campaign contribution data, an API to get structured access to company news information such as press releases, a semantic text analytics API, and a new API for online payments.
This past week the new mashups added to our mashup directory used 29 different APIs. Some of the newer or less frequently seen APIs include Active, ChaCha, JoyRack Games and World Time Engine. The most often used APIs this week are Facebook, Google Maps and Twitter. And the most commonly used types of APIs were Social (4 APIs, 11 mashups), Utility (3 APIs, 3 mashups) and Shopping (3 APIs, 3 mashups).
If you’re using Twitter’s Search API via the api.twitter.com sub-domain, you have a week to switch to search.twitter.com, according to a post from Twitter’s Taylor Singletary. The endpoint being removed has not been officially supported by Twitter, though other supported calls use the same sub-domain.
On your marks, get set… Wait, did you geocode your marks? I hope so, because you only have the next week to enter the Location Wild Competition from NakdReality and SimpleGeo. The winner gets $2,500 and an iPad for creating the “most interesting location-based app.”
Groupon, which calls itself a “social commerce site,” is one of many online services that help consumers pool their buying power to get great deals. However, few companies can share Groupon’s experience of attracting $135 million dollars from the same venture capital funds that helped grow Facebook and Zynga. To help third-party developers and affiliate members get the word out about its daily specials, Groupon has released a publicly available API.
The phone isn’t dead yet. And vanity toll free numbers, which use words to be memorable, are something even small businesses can now afford. And now you can search them via an API–and make money when your users reserve a number.
U.S. government agencies may be tossing down nearly a million dollars each to include the premier version of Google Maps on their sites. The payments aren’t going directly to Google, but an Ohio service provider Onix Networking. Onix lists several options on Apps.gov, a marketplace for technology services and applications.
What does a tool maker do when his tool breaks? He builds a new tool to patch the broken one. At least that is what David Beckemeyer (Mr Blog) did when his tweeting garage door opener was threatened by the approaching OAuthpocalypse. This date with destiny for all Twitter programmers is the planned June 30th cutoff of basic authentication. At that point all Twitter apps must communicate with the API through OAuth authentication instead of the much less complicated user name/password form of HTTP Authentication. There are many good reasons for this change, which have been repeated endlessly on the Twitter developer forum, but in practice it is a lot of added complexity, more complexity than David wanted to build into his little, simple garage door device.
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