API posts

Filed under: Developer, Social Software, Microblogging

Twitter apps now have people search, thanks to a new API

by Jay Hathaway Nov 17th 2009

Third-party Twitter apps have access to nearly all of Twitter's functions. Even the new lists feature and the new retweet format can be supported by any ambitious developer. It's sort of strange then, that Twitter's people search is just now getting an API.

Now that this missing API is finally here, the ability to search for users should be popping up in your favorite Twitter program very soon. "Find people" on Twitter's site works by search both name and username, which is something apps couldn't achieve with the (admittedly very handy) "go to user " function.

If you're a curious developer, go check out the official announcement on Twitter's API announcements list.

Tags: API, people search, PeopleSearch, search, twitter

Filed under: Developer, Photo

Flickr collects cool photo apps in its new App Garden

by Jay Hathaway Nov 4th 2009

Flickr has an open and very powerful API that's been around since 2004. Five years later, developers have built an enormous number of great apps and cool toys for Flickr. Now you can browse and discover Flickr apps in one central location, the new App Garden. Apps in the garden range from stats to importing/exporting to integration with other sites.

Although Flickr has chosen some featured apps to display prominently on the front page, any developer can submit to the App Garden. The Garden itself isn't the only place apps are being promoted around Flickr. On each photo page, along with the info you regularly see, you'll now see which app the photographer used to upload the image - as long as it's an app has already been submitted and listed by Flickr. If you're a developer, you have plenty of incentive to submit your app, and if you're a Flickr power user, you'll definitely want to check out what's already been posted.

[via Flickr Blog]

Tags: api, apps, developer, export, flickr, upload

Filed under: Developer, Web services, Search

Wolfram Alpha gets an iPhone app and a developer API

by Jay Hathaway Oct 15th 2009

Wolfram Alpha was hyped as better than Google for finding certain info, especially in the areas of math and science computation, but the hype died down a bit when people realized that it was finicky and a bit tricky to use. Wolfram Alpha hasn't gone away, though. In fact, they've just announced an API for developers and a new iPhone app. It's quite possible that third-party applications harnessing the power of Wolfram Alpha might prove more popular than the engine itself.

The iPhone app, due to be released soon, is sort of a demonstration of what developers can do with the API. It should be a big improvement on the iPhone-optimized version of the Wolfram Alpha site. It will be interesting to see what uses developers find for Wolfram Alpha, because the problem with the site is that it requires more specific, more complex search queries than most users are going to bother with. Third-party apps could narrow those queries down, and direct users toward some of the things Wolfram Alpha does really well.

[via Mashable]

Tags: API, developer, iphone, search, wolfram alpha, WolframAlpha

Filed under: Social Software, Microblogging

Twitter starts testing Lists, makes mass following easier

by Jay Hathaway Oct 1st 2009

Twitter's been working on a lot of new features lately, from geolocation to Project Retweet, and the latest new toy to enter limited testing is Lists. Pretty soon, you'll be able to make a list of Twitter accounts so that others can follow them all with one click. We've seen some well-known Twitter users - I'm not naming any names, but it rhymes with Scobbert Roble - vehemently bash the Suggested User List that Twitter invites new accounts to follow, so an alternate way to find interesting groups of users is definitely a positive development.'

Lists is a new Twitter API that third-party apps will be able to use, so we might see some of the early attempts at Twitter groups, like WeFollow, fall by the wayside. No matter, though: a huge database of user-generated lists will offer more specific categories of people to follow, and hopefully turn into less of a popularity contest. On the other hand, Lists could make it faster for all those Twitter spambots to follow the maximum number of accounts.

Tags: API, lists, twitter

Filed under: Developer, Mozilla, Browsers

Firefox learns some new accelerometer tricks

by Jay Hathaway Aug 26th 2009

You might be able to get more use out of your accelerometer. That little component that recognizes which way your device is tilted - you can find one in the Macbook Pro and the iPhone, amongst others - is getting some love from the Firefox developers at Mozilla, who have just added orientation support to the latest trunk build of Firefox. While it may seem like it should be far from a top priority for browser development, accelerometer support has a lot of potential, especially since it will eventually be available on Windows Mobile devices running Firefox's mobile version, Fennec.

Mozilla developer Doug Turner initially started building the orientation API because he was impressed by a Labyrinth game on the iPhone, where the player rolls a ball through a maze by tilting the phone. iPhone users already know that orientation support is great for gaming, but if it comes to Fennec on other devices that actually support Flash, we could see some amazing web-based accelerometer games. So far, however, the Macbook Pro is the only supported device.

[via MozillaLinks]

Tags: accelerometer, API, firefox, mozilla, orientation

Filed under: Social Software, Microblogging

Twitter gets ready to add geolocation features

by Jay Hathaway Aug 21st 2009

Location-based Twitter projects are tough to pull off, because whatever's in the location field of a user's profile could be completely made up, if the user enters anything at all. There's no reliable way to know where a tweet is coming from. Twitter wants to change that, though, and they've got a geolocation team working on an API that will let app developers map your tweets.

Before anyone gets too worked up, let me point out that allowing apps to use your location will be strictly opt-in, meaning it's off by default. One of the advantages Twitter foresees with this location API is the ability to read local tweets. Most people agree that Twitter's public timeline is useless, but I would definitely read a location-aware local timeline. No word on when the new service will be ready, but it will roll out to developers well before it hits the Twitter website, so there should be time for your favorite Twitter app to get ready.

Tags: api, geolocation, location, twitter

Filed under: Audio, Developer, Utilities, Mozilla, Browsers

Jetpack 0.4, now with audio recording and page mods

by Jay Hathaway Jul 22nd 2009

Jetpack is Mozilla's new favorite power tool for customizing the browsing experience. As Lee has explained here on Download Squad, Jetpack makes creating Mozilla add-ons easier, allow developers to build using HTML, CSS and Javascript. The latest Jetpack release, 0.4, includes APIs for audio recording and encoding, as well as a page modification API.

Audio can be recorded directly to Ogg-Vorbis, which is the sound format of choice for Firefox 3.5's audio tag. That means you can allow recording and embedding, straight from the browser and all within Jetpack's APIs. There's a voice memo demo you can check out to get an idea of the way these features can be useful.

The page mod API makes it easy to implement Greasemonkey-style modifications to web pages. Some code examples are posted, including a little page mod that blacklists a site for a set amount of time to deter proscrastination.

Tags: API, audio, firefox, jetpack, mozilla, recording

Filed under: Internet, Text, Blogging, Office, Productivity, Web services, Freeware, Browsers, Web

After the Deadline polishes your writing online

by Jason Clarke Jun 16th 2009

While some modern browsers include built-in spell checkers, and some operating systems include built-in spelling and grammar checkers, there are people out there using operating systems and browsers that do not have these features.

If you're looking for some help with your writing and don't have access to Microsoft Word or a similarly-powered word processor, there is a solution available on the web called After the Deadline. The site (at the memorable URL polishmywriting.com) offers spelling and grammar help, and even writing style suggestions.

Tags: after the deadline, after-the-deadline, AfterTheDeadline, api, demo service, demo-service, DemoService, grammar checkers, grammar-checkers, GrammarCheckers, microsoft word, microsoft-word, MicrosoftWord, rich text editor, rich-text-editor, RichTextEditor, spell checkers, spell-checkers, SpellCheckers, spelling, style suggestions, style-suggestions, StyleSuggestions, word processor, word-processor, WordProcessor

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Blogging, Web services, Freeware, Social Software, web 2.0

Feedstats gives you stats on your FriendFeed usage

by Jason Clarke May 27th 2009

Although there's no doubt that Twitter is the current reigning social status update king of the hill, upstart FriendFeed is certainly a more than viable alternative. FriendFeed does everything Twitter can do and much, much more right out of the box, aggregating all of your feeds (including your Twitter stream) into a single unified online presence.

If you're already using FriendFeed, you might be interested in Feedstats, which shows you statistics about just what it is you get up to online, at least in terms of what you are funneling through the FriendFeed service. It also shows statistics about which other FriendFeed users you tend to interact with most, and which ones you are most compatible with, in terms of liking the same content.

Of course, all of these statistics are drawn from FriendFeed's openly available API, which means that you can snoop on your friends and see just what their habits are, as well. Or even better, check out a few A-list microbloggers to see just how much more social-networky than you they are.

Tags: api, feedstats, friendfeed, statistics, twitter

Filed under: Developer, News, Search

NYT Explorer shows off New York Times Article Search API

by Jay Hathaway Feb 23rd 2009

At a time when a lot of newspapers are shutting down or finding themselves forced to come up with a smarter online strategy, the New York Times is evolving its web content with improvements like the Article Skimmer and an Article Search API. The API can be used to build interesting applications on top of the Times' huge database of articles and information. Taylor Barstow's NYT Explorer is one early example of an app built on Article Search.

When you search for a topic on NYT Explorer, it quickly delivers a list of the relevant articles, sorted by date. For example, a search for software turned up about 40,000 results. That's a lot of articles, but not to worry: NYT Explorer's sidebar has a bunch of quick ways to refine your results and get what you want. You can check a person, a specific column in the paper, a subject, or a location to narrow your results down. All of these categories are sorted by the number of times each item appears in your results. It's an efficient, unfussy way to browse through a mountain of news.

Tags: API, new-york-times, news, newspaper, NYT, NYT-explorer

Filed under: Fun, Internet, web 2.0

Five awful sites built on the Twitter API

by Lee Mathews Nov 19th 2008

Since Twitter decided to take care of the frequent outages that used to plague its servers, I've actually started using it here and there. It's a nice service, and definitely has useful applications. You've only got to look as far as sites like NowPublic and Twubble to see how the API can be put to good use.

However, there are a mountain of applications feeding off it and they're not all contenders for Best in Show. These five definitely are, but only if it's a show dedicated to sucking at Twitter API use.

Twitemperature
Finally, a service that can tell you how hot or cold you are on Twitter. Does anyone actually need this? I suppose there are people that think Twitter is like a web 2.0 popularity contest, but can't you look at your follower total and figure this out yourself?

I'd also like to know how their script works. Their "hottest" tweeter has 55 followers. The crowd has spoken, and 55 < hot. Also, his level of hotness is referred to as "volcanic" and features a picture of a guy holding Tabasco - arguably one of the least-hot hot sauces you can buy.

And no, I'm not just bitter because I'm only a few degrees above freezing.

Tags: api, failure, twitter

Filed under: Developer, Web services, Web

Tiny Geo-coder, for all of your latitude and longitude needs

by Jay Hathaway Nov 11th 2008

I have to confess that, until today, I was still converting latitude and longitude by Googling "convert GPS coordinates" and putting it into whatever came up first. That just changed when I found Tiny Geo-coder. It converts coordinate pairs to addresses, and vice versa. Not only that, but it has an API, so you can use it in other web projects that require coordinates.

One of the first real-world uses of Tiny Geo-coder can be seen on travel.perfectspace.com, where the authors are passing their check-ins on Brightkite through Tiny Geo-coder to generate a map of their location for display on the site. Another possibility that comes immediately to mind is converting the coordinates that the iPhone version Twitterrific generates into the name of the location for your Twitter profile. I'm sure clever people will come up with some even better ideas for this little app.

Tags: api, coordinates, Google-Maps, gps, location, location-based, Tiny-Geo-Coder, TinyGeocoder

Filed under: Audio, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Expect more and better Last.FM apps, thanks to a new API

by Jay Hathaway Jul 4th 2008

We've covered several apps that integrate with the social music platform Last.FM, and we've expressed our worries about what might happen to the site when it was bought by CBS. As it happens, though, Last.FM has only gotten better lately. And now that they've released a shiny new version of their public API, we're hoping for more development on the downloadable app front.

Here's the skinny on the new API features: there's now read/write authentication for desktop, web and mobile apps, which, besides being essential for any service that logs your music listening, sets the stage for -- dare we hope? -- a killer Last.fm app for iPhone. The API will also allow apps to access search functions and make playlists, which means easier access to Last.FM's growing library of free streaming tracks. Scrobble on, amigos.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

UPDATE: Some of our astute readers have recommended MobileScrobbler as the killer Last.FM app for iPod/iPhone. Thanks, Neil and Robotrock.

Tags: API, Audioscrobbler, Last.FM, music, social

Filed under: Developer, Internet, E-mail, Yahoo!

Yahoo! Address Book API now open to 3rd party developers

by Brad Linder Jun 4th 2008

One of the most valuable features of any good email or IM service is the contact list. Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, and other companies that provide online communication tools also give you a place to store information about your friends, family, colleagues, and people who you met years ago and have completely forgotten about.

Yahoo! is making that much more useful by launching the Yahoo! Address Book API, which will let 3rd party developers create applications that can interact with your contact list. For example, you can use the API to develop an application that will scan your contact list to find other users who already belong to the social network you're signing up for, or a list of people you may want to invite. The API also supports contact synchronization, which could come in handy if you want to develop a tool that syncs online contact lists with Outlook or Thunderbird.

The API also provides the ability to create, modify, or delete contact information, which sounds a litle scary. But Yahoo! says write-acess is "available on a case by case basis," so developers will need to contact Yahoo! before creating a utility that has the ability to wipe out your address book.

Plaxo and LinkedIn have been using the API for a while, but Yahoo! is launching it publicly today.

[via Mashable]

Tags: address-book, api, contacts, yahoo

Filed under: Internet, Video, Web services, Google, web 2.0

YouTube launches API for uploading videos from any web site

by Brad Linder Mar 12th 2008

One of the moves that has made YouTube successful is the ability to embed YouTube videos on any site. Now YouTube is going a few steps further and giving web developers tools that will let users upload and edit YouTube videos from any web page.

What that means is you can essentially build a web page that lets visitors upload videos of kittens and puppies doing cute things, send video responses to one another, edit their video metadata, and never ever have to click through to YouTube, even though all of the transcoding and file hosting is taking place on a Google server.

Web developers can also customize the look and feel of the YouTube video player using a new Javascript API.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Tags: api, online-video, platform, youtube

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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