APIs Shine at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon »

We're spending the weekend in New York with the city's top hackers, makers and even some travelers (lots of SF devs on that Friday-night redeye!) for the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon- 500 developers, a lot of caffeine and 24 hours to build something for fortune, fame and fun. Here are some of the APIs that shined and our top observations from the event as we take in the live demos.

#1 New York's Tech Scene is On Fire! 

The energy at the event is amazing and the hacks being demoed right now, from GitHub for legal documents to facial recognition for Facebook, prove that NYC can definitely take on San Francisco for top dev talent, creativity and fast innovation. Check out @mager's live blog on ZDNet for more hacks and we're really looking forward to getting more involved in the New York scene, so if you're NY-local and want to chat, shoot us a note on Twitter!

#2 APIs Aren't Just About Data - They're About Exposing Powerful Services, Gracefully

The APIs on the tongues and fingertips of developers today go beyond simply providing programatic access to data - they let developers incorporate powerful, cutting edge technology into their applications quickly and easily with RESTful interfaces, shiny new libraries and SDKs and better tools. Some of the brightest here are telephony kingpins Twilio and geolocation heroes SimpleGeo, but there are some new kids on the block.

Here are our favorite APIs from the show: 

Aviary: The new photo hotness, Aviary provides an image-editing API to style, correct and beautify photos, plus all that utility goodness like cropping and thumbnails. For anyone who has ever struggled to implement photo editing in their apps the old fashioned way, Aviary is pretty exciting and there's lots of chatter about them on the ground at TechCrunch Disrupt.  

Echo Nest: Representing for music disruption, Echo Nest provides a real-time API to deliver tons of data and services, from artist data to audio previews, recommendations and audio streams. And of course you must check out their Remix API, an internet synthesizer for music and video. 

Face.com: Face.com provides an API to let developers incorporate facial recognition into their apps, and they're causing a lot of buzz. Facial recognition + REST - it's some cutting edge stuff, and creates pretty impressive demo material when hooked up with social platforms. 

TokBox: TokBox lets you add video chat into your site or web app, using either some nifty easy widgets or their free API. It's helping make video conferencing easier, faster, and more ubiquitous, plus giving more control to developers and end users. We love APIs that put the power of complex services like video chat into the hands of developers, focusing on speed and ease of use. 

#3 Developer Evangelism Is Here to Stay 

Pioneered by industry titans like Google and Microsoft and perfected by today's API pros like Twilio, the art and science of developer evangelism and advocacy shines at TechCrunch Disrupt. API providers are clearly recognizing that developer advocates and community builders are key to API adoption, and there are lots of them on set to help developers get started, troubleshoot, help build cool things and spread the word. Good developer advocates are hard to find but we're happy to see growing industry recognition of the important role they play in bringing great technologies to developers. 

Finally, if you're on the ground, let's meet up - we'll give you an I <3 APIs t-shirt!