2011 was another great year for mashups. At ProgrammableWeb we saw over 900 new mashups added to our directory. Popular app categories such as mapping, search and shopping continued to lead the way. This year however saw social apps continue their rapid growth from the last couple of years. As 2011 comes to a close, we take a look back at some of the best and most popular mashups that were submitted.
Micello is living my dream. This company is specializing in providing a navigation system for indoor environments. Indoor environments can be unpredictable and complex spaces. In other words they are the ideal scenario for maps. Micello has seen this opportunity and seized it by establishing a fast growing collection of indoor maps. The map collection is open for integration through both an embeddable HTML 5 element and RESTful calls to the Micello API.
As we look back at 2011, it was a big year for APIs. We passed both the 3,000 API and 4,000 API marks within six months. In our discussions with various companies, it seems like APIs are becoming a bigger part of their online and mobile strategies. We reached out to several industry experts to highlight what API stories were on their radar this year. From big companies launching developer programs to the undeniable technical preferences of developers, these were the trends in 2011.
After our recent look at the growth of social APIs, we thought we’d look back at the history of the category. We added the Plazes API in September, 2005. In terms of the web, this is recent history. In terms of APIs, we might as well be looking at scrolls. In fact, less than half of the first 10 social APIs are still alive today. Below you’ll find a list of those trailblazing 10, along with a status for each of them.
It seems like analytics are everywhere today with businesses trying to make sense of the mountains of data they’ve collected to improve their users’ experiences and increase their own bottom line. Whether it’s tracking site visitors, following online conversations, understanding how leads turn into customers or increasing mobile engagement; businesses have a vested interest in using tools that turn their data into profits. Developers in the ProgrammableWeb community recognize this and frequently submit anaytics mashups to our directory. Today we’ll take a look at some of the best ones that we’ve recently come across.
ODesk claims to be the future of work, or more recently: ”Work 3.0.” So it should come as no surprise that the next version of work comes with an API. If you’re not familiar with the platform, oDesk provides contractors and companies with a hourly billing system which both verifies the work done for the company, and guarantees payment to the contractor.
I don’t think you have to be a developer to know that IMAP is a pain in the ass. Anyone who has used IMAP knows how wonky the experience can be, and as a developer if you have done more that basic folder listing and message display, you know IMAP is a headache. The Context.IO API is working to alleviate common IMAP headaches and it’s now out of beta.
The new Yahoo Content Analysis API capitalizes on the success of its term extraction API while adding new functionality. The reborn implementation not only extracts terms and entities but ranks them based on perceived importance within the article. Peter Levinson, product manager for Yahoo Content Analysis, says “The new API gives developers actionable metadata about their content. By extracting and then ranking terms on the page, the API separates signal from noise in unstructured content.”
The FCC just launched a new tool that allows any user to custom build a dashboard from a variety of FCC released data, tools and services, built on the FCC API. The tool, called MyFCC, lets you create a customized FCC online experience for quick access to the tools and information you feel is most important. MyFCC make it possible to easily create, save and manage a customized page, choosing from a menu of 22 “widgets” such as, latest headlines and official documents, the daily digest, FCC forms and online filings.
According to Mozilla, more than half a billion browser add-ons are in use on Firefox alone. But unlike an app in an App Store, browser add-ons cost nothing to use. So browser add-on developers like us have had to turn to other options to generate revenue for our hard work.
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