Box.Net is on a mission to increase adoption of its file storage service with consumers. After successful adoption of its service with enterprise customers, it is clearly determined to woo mobile device owners by providing them with large amounts of free space (50GB!). To make it easier, it is partnering with device manufacturers like LG to provide the free space seamlessly via the Box.net API.
Back in May I wrote about the race for either unified APIs or API standards to bridge the growing number of APIs in specific industries or areas. Unified APIs are created by a third party provider to bridge multiple APIs, while API standards would potentially create an industry-wide standard of how APIs should operate.
Google Maps API is one of the most popular APIs in our directory. A month back, we reported on Google’s plans to charge for high usage of its Google Maps API. This led to a good amount of confusion among developers on whether they would fall under the category of high usage and if occasional spikes in usage would end up labeling their applications as heavy users. Meanwhile, MapQuest capitalized on the opportunity to declare its maps 100% free.
Moonshadow Mobile is making US Census data available on a high performance platform. They have taken the data and geocoded it for Google and Bing maps. The service offering is a proprietary, patent pending system that is able to search through between 20 and 100 million census data records in under a second. Moonshadow has the full census data set, even down to individual voter registration records which only be released to office holders or government entities. The Moonshadow Mobile API offers developers access to a subset of this data.
This week we had 69 new APIs added to our API directory including a mobile image editing service, mobile payment service, small business phone service, indoor mapping service, hotel reservation service and online meeting service. Below are more details on each of these new APIs.
This past week 14 new mashups were added to our mashup directory and 20 different APIs were used to build them. Some of the newer or less frequently seen APIs include Bandcamp, ECGridOS EDI, LocLizard and USGS Elevation Query Service. The most often used APIs this week are Google Maps, Twilio and Twitter. And the most commonly used types of APIs were Mapping (6 APIs, 7 mashups), Social (2 APIs, 3 mashups) and Tools (2 APIs, 2 mashups). The list below shows which APIs were used by which mashups:
In the United States, today is Thanksgiving. Many will gather with family and gorge themselves on turkey, the traditional meat of this holiday. Bellies full, many developers might begin thinking of food and drink-themed apps to build over the holiday weekend. We’ve decided to give them some ideas and inspiration.
As I continue to report on new APIs popping up all over the Internet, one theme has caught my attention: systems powered by simple information tasks completed by humans. It’s developing trend in which humans take requests from software systems, complete them, and feed the results back into the system. This is a fundamental shift in computing. Now, Human input is no longer solely for the purpose of controlling or directing the application. It has become just another functional component of the system. The human is taking the place of a software component and can in some instances be described in terms of expected inputs and outputs.
SendWrite is a new service that allows you to send a real printed physical greeting card through its website. Even better, you can send a card via the incredibly simple, RESTful SendWrite API. There’s something magical about creating something in the real world through API calls. I think the concept makes just about every programmer smile. SendWrite is one of at least four real world APIs in our directory, including ThanksThank Notes, a similar service.
When I saw three new SMS APIs, Kinross, Oventus & Txttools added to our index I thought that I might as well dive into this telephony area a little more deeply. A few minutes of clicking and I learned just how ignorant I was about this space. My previous understanding of the texting service provider arena was based on limited exposure. I had only heard of Tropo & Twilio and I assumed that they were the main players with other SMS sites simply wrapping around them. It seems that just the opposite is true, and that there is a lot of fragmentation in this area.
©ProgrammableWeb.com 2013. All rights reserved.
Terms of Service | Privacy Policy
