This Week in APIs - May 7-13 »

The best API news and developer news from the week, including news from Ford, new stats out of Twitter's #devnest meetup, a heavy metal band hooks up with Instagram, and a new social music API for mobile. Hit us up with what we missed on Twitter.  

Ford made a splash this week with Google's Predication API, which they are using to model driving behavior based on a driver's history. This technology could be used to improve energy efficiency in cars by optimizing fuel/power consumption. The car industry is getting serious about APIs and cars as connected devices / app platforms.  

Twitter held their first #devnest event this week, a meetup to bring together developers and talk about the platform. They announced they are now doing 13 billion API requests per day and have a developer community of over 600,000. WOW. 

Instagram continues to demonstrate some pretty awesome applications of its API - including an implementation by metal band The Deftones and global coffee brand Starbucks. Instagram is quickly becoming a case study for the books so check it out! 

Developer Candy

• Rdio, the social music service, announced their Mobile Playback API for Android and iOS at Google I/O. This will let developers create mobile apps that can search, access and most importantly, play songs from Rdio's catalog. Congrats to the Rdio team! 
• Foursquare has been heating up lately and this week added two new features to their API - their new "explore" recommendations feature and access to their revamped leaderboard. 
• Google has launched an "API for APIs" - a discovery service to let developers find and retrieve details of Google APIs. This is a pretty cool concept and makes sense- Google has A LOT of APIs and this can help support tool development. 

This Week in APIs - April 30 - May 6 »

The best API news and developer news from the week. Updates on a company changing its strategy to focus entirely on its API business, a new API for a popular music festival, load testing for APIs and a new way to give payments to friends. Let us know what we missed on Twitter. 

Qwerly, formerly known as the "DNS for People" with profile pages that consolidated public identity data, has announced it is switching directions to focus entirely on its API, which is currently getting 30 million queries per month. According to the CEO, interest in the API has far exceeded interest in the website. Definitely a case study for the books. 

ING Direct customers can now transfer payments to friends just by bumping their phones together - using the Bump API. This is the first time Bump's been used for transferring payments and if the technology is more widely implemented, this could lead to a much better world of payments. 

SoundCloud, one of the fastest-growing APIs we've seen in awhile, just released SoundCloud Labs, dedicated to experimental projects and features that its employees have built off the API. We absolutely love this! It's really important for API teams to build innovation inside the company and use the API. We do a similar thing with Apigee Hack Days - maybe we should invite those SoundCloud guys sometime! 

Developer Candy 

• Mu Dynamics officially launched their load testing solution for mobile apps and APIs, Blitz, at the Red Hat Summit. Blitz has a cool gaming theme going on with a leaderboard that compares performance testing results. Check it out! 
• Lollapalooza, the famed music festival, now has an API and a HackLolla challenge to encourage developers to build off of the festival's data. You can try it out this weekend if you'll be attending San Francisco's Music Hack Day. Music-related APIs have been getting a lot of buzz lately, great to see Lollapalooza joining in. 
• Aviary, an online media editing company, just opened up an Effects API, which will let developers easily integrate photo editing and filtering capabilities into their apps. With the explosion of photo apps like Instagram, this is a smart move as well as a big plus to devs. 

This Week in APIs: April 23-29 »

The best API news and developer news from the week. Puppet gets a new set of APIs, Chrome speech input gets blessed, the big launch of an easy way to display apps built with your API, and as always, some developer candy for you. Let us know what we missed on Twitter and check out our own API news - yesterday we launched Apigee Source, a new Labs project that lets you rapidly prototype apps with the Twitter API using HTML5/Javascript. 

Puppet Labs, the open source IT systems management platform, just released Puppet Faces, a new set of APIs for interacting with its core features. One of the goals is to give users much more extensibility, so "we'll see people doing things we didn't expect or plan on them doing." Cool!

Josh Constine over at Inside Facebook has the scoop on an upgrade to Facebook's Insights API, which provides data and analytics on interactions with your own pages and Facebook apps. The API now shows if Likes and Comments are coming from mobile devices, giving users more data about how to optimize their campaigns and apps. 

Klint Finley at ReadWriteWeb has an interesting story out this week about sharing apps/services and APIs. There are a number of these services that allow communities to share objects, carpools, etc, and one of them, Kassi, wrote a blog post this week suggesting a common API that would let users search multiple sharing sites. The idea of shared APIs between similar services is a fascinating one, and worth a longer look. 

Developer Candy:

• You might have heard about Google's addition of speech input into the beta Chrome. Now that API is part of the stable release, allowing developers to make web apps that can transcribe voice-to-text. Congrats to the Chrome team!
• AppShowcase (formerly AppBistro) went live with its product that lets companies easily display and highlight apps built with their APIs. It's already being used by Eventbrite and SimpleGeo, and we are huge fans of making it easier for API providers to show off the hard work of their developers. 
• This week on Programmable Web, great highlight of the Cashboard API, a time-tracking and invoicing system to help users track and bill hours. Great for freelancers and anyone who bills hourly! 

This Week in APIs: April 16-22 »

The best API news and developer news from the week. API innovation in a very old industry, great advice for API monetization from Mashable, a hackathon with $25,000 in prizes up for grabs and a look at a hyperlocal API with a brand new revamp. Plus some great news for Windows Chrome devs. Read it, share it and let us know what we missed on Twitter. 

Jolie O'Dell at Mashable continued her awesome series on APIs with a deep-dive into monetization: "Should Your API be Free or Pay-to-Play?" Check it out for some perspective on the different API business models out there, how freemium works, the subscription model and more. 

SilverRail, which provides rail ticketing solutions, just raised $5 million in funding. What is interesting about train fares, routes, schedules and payment processing? SilverRail exposes its platform via API, allowing companies to get a lot of flexibility and power. We're including this news piece because its an awesome example of how APIs are disrupting industries as old as rail transportation! 

Epic article on the Nieman Journalism Lab blog on how news organizations are using APIs to innovate and succeed in the new post-browser world. Based on in-depth research, the article examines how APIs can be used as external R&D labs and the revenue opportunities they present for the news industry, as well as challenges faced. Excellent read for anyone interested in media and the future of content. 

Developer Candy 

• Docusign is getting serious about hackathons. May 14-15 they will be working with Box, HTC, ProgrammableWeb and Twilio to give $25,000 in prizes away to the teams who can build the best consumer, enterprise and mobile apps using the Docusign API. Best part? It's free to come and it could pay off big. Register here. 
• Fwix, the "hyperlocal places database", just re-launched its API to be easier to use and include an advertising layer. It's also read/write, so users and developers will constantly be enriching the data and the value of the API. Keep an eye on this one!
• Windows users can now check out Google's Web Audio API in the Canary build of Chrome. Now they too can test out this cutting-edge API, which can be used to give web apps voice-to-text capabilities. 

This Week in APIs - April 9-15 »

The best API news and developer news from the week, including hot news out of the Instagram API ecosystem, a major milestone for Klout, a great article on getting developers to use your API and a new developer contest to benefit students and teachers. Let us know what we missed on Twitter. 

Instagram has been making big news with its API, and this week several apps built off it have been getting serious media attention. Check out this article at The Next Web on several ecosystem players, including an Instagram "Hot or Not" and an app to display pictures on bigger form factors. The explosion of adoption around Instagram is a great example of the perfect storm of innovation and buzz that can happen around open APIs done right. 

Klout hit a major milestone this week, announcing that it now has over 2,000 API partners. Excellent case study in how open APIs can help drive business development, innovation and channel reach. 

Jolie O'Dell has a great post this week on getting developers to adopt your API. She talked with a bunch of API veterans, including us, to round up best practices on marketing, design, support, getting feedback and more. And if you haven't had the chance yet, check out her previous post on "Should Your Company Offer an API." 

Developer Candy

• At MIX11, the major Microsoft mobile conference, Microsoft announced over 1500 APIs - that's A LOT of API goodness. The functionality exposed is pretty wide ranging, so check out this wrap-up on the everythingwm blog. 
• DonorsChoose.org has announced a hacker contest for its newly released APIs. DonorsChoose is an online education charity where teachers can post and receive funding for classroom projects and has resulted in over $80 million in donations so far. Some big celeb judges here including Arianna Huffington and Wendy Kopp, plus great prizes, including tickets to O'Reilly conferences. Check it out! 
• The Khronos Group has announced an initiative to develop an open, cross-platform API that will provide advanced access to device and sensor input. The idea is to not only support expected input devices like keyboards and mice, but also cameras, touchscreens and more. Their goal is to get something developed in the next 12 months. 

This Week in APIs- April 2 - April 8 »

Happy Friday. Here's the top API news and developer news from this week. Advice on getting your API strategy running, some massive movement in the healthcare industry around data platforms, winners of the Data 2.0 Pitch Day, and Javascript goodness out of LinkedIn. Tell us what we missed on Twitter.

Jolie O'Dell at Mashable put up a must-read piece for companies considering an API strategy. "Should Your Company Offer an API?" has some strategic advice and practical tools for getting started, with tips and tricks from experts in the space and a shoutout to Apigee! 

The winners of the Data 2.0 Pitch Day are UP! There's a bunch of API goodness in here including Mashape, the API marketplace, and a "Google Maps for the Indoors" exposed through APIs. 

In healthcare news, TechTarget has the scoop on the development of a new API by the Substitutable Medical Apps, Reusable Technology (SMART) initiative. The API will be open source and allow interactions between clinical software. The vision is to realize the concept of medical records as platforms. Huge news. 

Developer Candy

• LinkedIn had some exciting news this week as they opened up access to a new Javascript platform, added support for OAuth 2.0 and released plug-ins that make it easier to integrate LinkedIn functionality into your website. Great focus here on making life easier for developers.  
• MixCloud, a company focused on social discovery of music, has released an API that makes the music preferences of its users available. It even gives information on popularity and playlists - an exciting new entrant to the world of music APIs. Check out a deep dive on Programmable Web. 
• FitBit, a company that offers a device and data service to track fitness information like weight, nutrition, exercise, sleep schedules and other health data, released a beta API this week. We're seeing lots of exciting stuff in the area of fitness and health APIs, and this trend has the potential to majorly disrupt the healthcare market. 

This Week in APIs - March 26 - April 1 »

The top API and developer news from the week, no foolin'. Some sad news on Data.gov, a wristband with an API, what Twitter is working on lately and more. What did we miss? Don't be shy. Let us know on Twitter.

Sad news came out this week that Data.gov and several other open data-focused websites will be taken down due to government cuts. We've been huge fans of the work Data.gov has done so are saddened to see this news. However, there is a campaign underway to save these sites - helped by non-profit Sunlight Labs. Go the the Save the Data site to find out how to help.

Basis is a new device that bundles a number of behavior and biology sensors into a wristband to monitor heart rate, movement, sleep patterns, temperature and sweat. Information can be easily shared and used to view charts and graphs. The project has an API in the works - and this could be a huge step forward in making APIs more human-centric. 

BlueVia has some good tips over at The Guardian about getting 3rd party developer adoption on APIs and platforms and their new initiative with Microsoft to provide a BlueVia SDK for .Net. 

Developer Candy

This Week in APIs - March 19-25 »

The top API and developer news from the week. Tasty tidbits on a new planned Color API, femtocell geekery, speech-to-text, a look at API uptimes across providers and more. What did we miss? Don't be shy. Tell us on Twitter.

The Femto Forum has published a set of API specs which will let developers create applications that can be integrated with femtocells. This will make it possible to take advantage of femtocells for things like geolocation-enabled apps. IDG has the full story. 

The new photo-based social network Color has been making news everywhere - to good and bad reviews. In their plans? A news API to let journalists collect and share news in a richer way.

Our Sam Ramji has an article out in GigaOM on the building blocks for a successful API strategy detailing common patterns in successful API programs. Check it out for a great guide to market segments, channel partners, management, staffing and more. 

New Stuff to Play With and Developer Candy 

• Google's been working with the HTML Speech Incubator Group to add support for HTML speech input to the new Chrome 11 beta via API. This will make it possible for web apps to take advantage of speech-to-text capabilities. 
• WatchMouse just released a list of the top 50 popular APIs and their uptime. Among the 100% club are SimpleGeo, Quora and a few Google APIs. Performance is critical in the APIs developers rely on, and this is a cool look at performance across the best and brightest in the API economy.
• O'Reilly announced a developer contest focused on their new API, a writeable API to let programmers add to the O'Reilly dataset. Great highlight of the power of write APIs and the prizes are pretty sweet- all-expenses paid trip to OSCON anyone? 

This Week in APIs - March 5 - 11 »

Google also released an API explorer for 7 of its top APIs to make life easier and better for developers. Big validation for tools that are built specifically to improve working with APIs - like our API Consoles.  

What happened this week in APIs? The Twitterverse is abuzz with a new platform update from Twitter. Etsy launched their new Apigee To-Go console and we're at SXSW getting ready for the GET Down party and talking to developers. Here's what else is fresh off the presses. And tell us what we missed on Twitter.

Adam DuVander at ProgrammableWeb has released an awesome trend analysis of APIs based on the more than 3000 APIs listed in their directory. Big takeaways here on APIs for internal use, REST and JSON, and new business models. Must-read. 

The Instagram API is still new, but already there's an app ecosystem forming, heating up this week with the launch of three new Instagram apps made by the Social Printshop. More details at Techcrunch.

Google is taking steps to address the Android platform's fragmentation and compatibility issues by expanding the Honeycomb API to support both current and earlier Android phones. 

Developer Candy and Contests 

• Mendeley calls itself the "Last.fm for academia", a service which tracks and ranks research papers. And they just announced a contest offering $10,001 (no, that's not a typo) to the best app submitted by August 31. The Next Web has the details, including some big-name judges. 
• Social music subscription service Rdio just opened an API to developers, announced at SXSW. Devs can now put songs from Rdio's library into their apps and monetize them through an affiliate program. 
• Google also released an API explorer for 7 of its top APIs to make life easier and better for its developers. Big validation for tools that are built specifically to improve working with APIs - like our API Consoles. 

This Week in APIs - February 26 - March 4 »

It was a busy week in APIs! We released a new product to let you build, skin and embed your own API console, and meanwhile the rest of the API world kept active building new APIs- for meetings, for gaming, for notifications. Check out the cream of the crop below and happy weekend! But first, let us know what we missed on Twitter.

Going to SXSW? Along with SimpleGeo, SendGrid and Twilio, we'll be holding a geek party til 4:00 am in the morning with innerpartysystem and moneypenny. RSVP here: http://getdownparty.com/

Great article in IT Business Edge on the 5 Laws of Integration in the Cloud. Must-read for API providers. Great advice for a world where, "In a few years, my watch is going to be an API. Your refrigerator is going to be an API." 

Tinypay.me released a new API to make it easier to create e-commerce apps. Tinypay.me takes advantage of PayPal's infrastructure. Says their CEO: "We don't consider our API as just an extension of our website, we see it as a standalone e-commerce platform for developers." Cool. Audrey Watters has got the scoop. 

Developer Candy

• Tap Me has set out to create an ad platform just for gaming, one that will give developers more control over how ads are integrated and displayed in their apps. They're planning an API and using a new model: instead of "pay-per-click", it's "pay per tap." As advertising must adjust to go new places, via platforms and APIs, we like strategies that give control to the developer. 
• Fuze just released an API to take their online meeting software into apps. While not everyone likes meetings, we like the trend of enabling them through flexible, open platforms to give users more control. A space to watch. 
• Scott Gilbertson at WebMonkey has a great look at the new public working draft of the W3C Web Notifications API, which allows websites/web apps to push notifications to users, the way desktop apps do now with apps like Growl. 

This Week in APIs- February 12-18 »

The best API and developer news from the week, including hot news out of the Mobile World Congress, what to expect from geolocation, ample APIs from Samsung, what APIs have to do with SEO and more. What did we miss? Hit us up on Twitter. And for more API goodness, join us in San Francisco next Wednesday for the API Meetup, with speakers from Expensify, CBSi, SimpleGeo and the developer behind InboxQ.  

eBay and PayPal announced they will be joining their developer platforms and working together on a major developer conference building on the famed PayPal Innovate X. There's a lot of power in combining mobile, social, local, payments and shopping, all brought together by APIs - we're excited to see where this one goes. 

Samsung unveiled 90 APIs on their implementation of Android 3.0, including APIs for device cameras, password controls, Bluetooth and encryption. That's a lot of APIs and a definite challenge to expose in ways that are simple to use. Still, this news represents major moves in the Android platform and the growth of APIs in allowing more device control and app/device interaction. 

APIs and SEO! Might be too many acronyms but still an example of how even traditionally non-technical roles, like marketing, have a lot to gain from APIs. MediaPost's Janet Driscoll Miller has a list of top APIs for marketers.

Chicken Soup for the Developer's Soul 

• With a sweet V-Day gift to devs, Google announced updates to its developer tooling, including new APIs for Google App Engine and HTML5 support in its Web Toolkit 2.2. And check out the improved XMPP API in the App Engine SDK. Darryl Taft has the scoop. 
• At the Mobile World Congress, Location Labs debuted its geofencing platform. Developer accounts are free. Ryan Kim of GigaOm has the story on this and other mobile geolocation developer (mogeodev?!) news that suggests a tidal wave of location is coming.  
• James Yu has open sourced Gmailr, his Javascript API for Gmail which powers his popular inbox gamification app, 0Boxer. Yu's hope is that the community will continue to improve upon the API to make it more fully-featured. 

This Week in APIs: What do you love, Valentine? (hint: beer) »

This week developers got candygrams from some of our favorite mobile apps.  Something for you car and train lovers. An important Twitter policy update. And our best sticker request ever.

Love Instapaper?  So do we - and now we love the Instapaper API.  Marco of Instapaper discusses the decision behind their free vs. full (paid) API. 

Obsessed with photoblogging? PicPlz launched their API and Instagram's API will be coming out soon.  The PicPlz API has  interesting analytics, we'll see what Instagram brings..    

Infatuated with big cars and trains?  NYC wants you all over their MTA API (as long as you don't mind being called a "whiz kid") . @landlessness gave Detroit's #igniteauto a 7 minute pitch on why you should be hacking cars.

How about a movie?   How about 20 billion movies?  Netflix's Dan Jacobsen on the traffic growth and redesign of the Netflix API.   Dan and Mike Hart also did a great webinar last month that's worth checking out.  

Going dutch?  Mastercard announced their open payments API.   

Sometimes Love Hurts.  Twitter announced that they will no longer give whitelisting status to any applications. This will certainly impart what developers can build, and there has already been some backlash. 

Love Beer?  We got the best.sticker.request.ever.  "I love IPAs because they have a fantastic hoppy aroma, and a delicious bitter taste. In addition, you can alter the IPA recipe and not be concerned with backwards compatibility. The serving vessel's signature will still conform to the consumer's mouth." 

And then they hacked our I ♥ APIs sticker into an "I ♥ IPAs" -  awesome. Look for API IPA coming to a party near you very very soon.   In the meantime, have a sticker.  

Happy Valentine's day. Love, Apigee

This Week in APIs - January 29- February 4 »

Exciting news this week from Android; a new project by the creator of XMPP; a hack with stickers; and what marketers need to know about APIs are hot in this week's API and developer news. Tell us what we missed on Twitter.

Jeremie Miller, the creator of XMPP, is starting something new: The Locker Project. The vision of the Locker Project is to allow users to download and host personal data from APIs, services and feeds, then search and share it. With users reclaiming ownership of this data, apps can be built on top of their databases that are more functional, more personalized, and more powerful. We think the Locker Project could lead a huge change in the web, and this one is a must-follow. ReadWriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick has a thoughtful look at the plans. 

Android 3.0, codenamed "Honeycomb," has exciting API news as they release a preview of the new Android SDK. In it is a look at new APIs to enable Android developers to more easily create applications for tablets. As we prepare for the tablet boom, this is an important step for Google. Ryan Paul at Ars Technica has the deep dive. 

AdAge has a great article by Razorfish's Garrick Schmitt on how APIs are changing the way brands connect with consumers. 2011 will be the year that marketers, creative and digital agencies and others really start thinking about brand in the context of an API economy. A great read for understanding the impact and top players in the space, including Twilio, Best Buy, Sears and others. Plus a shout-out to Apigee! 

Developer Candy

• Blinkx, a video search engine, launched a new TV API to let developers access Blinkx's extensive video library. Coolest part? The API filters content based on client and device capabilities. Television as a Platform is coming and Blinkx is getting serious about enabling developers on the next app frontier. 
• Pete Warden has just released a new e-book called "Data Source Handbook," which contains a ton of information on important APIs and allows you to quickly find the data that's relevant to your projects. 
• ToneCheck is an API that checks the emotional content of email messages - a cool development in the sentiment and textual analysis platform space. This week it announced that Sherpa Software will be licensing the API to build integrations first for Lotus Notes and then other Lotus products. ToneCheck has plans to expand its partnerships as well. Great example of a partner-focused API strategy. Mashable has the deets. 
• Ever wanted to hack stickers? Reddit users have "mashed up" our geek-famous "I <3 APIs" stickers to make "I <3 IPAs" stickers. Now that's something we can get behind on a Friday afternoon! Check it out and enjoy your weekend. 

This Week in APIs- January 22-28 »

The best API news from the week, including a sweet visualization from Google, a new vote for Javascript, legal lyrics, "Facebook-as-a-Currency" and more! Check it out and hit us up on Twitter with the API news you care about. 

Google has -a lot- of APIs. This week they introduced an awesome way to describe the surface area of the developer platforms and APIs they provide, using a visualization based on the Periodic Table. Not all companies have this much *stuff* but it got us thinking: what are some ways developers and providers can use infographics to convey their utility better? We loved this! 

ReadWriteWeb's "API of the Week" is Snapr, an API for sharing geo-tagged images. Klint Finley's got the scoop and we love this quote from the company: "In fact, we love our API so much that it has more functionality than our currently available app and website!" That's hot. 

Facebook officially unveiled plans to require its developers to adopt Facebook Credits, its payment system, beginning July 1 if they want to integrate transactions in their apps. Facebook takes 30 percent of developer revenues generated via Facebook Credits. Gamasutra has good analysis on the controversial announcement. 

Developer Candy and New Stuff to Play With

• Interesting story on the role of APIs in gaming platforms and community management as the increasingly popular game Minecraft announces plans to introduce a "proper" modding API so that plugins won't break when the game is updated. APIs play a huge role in taking care of your community and we're excited that Minecraft is recognizing and prioritizing this! 
• Slideshare, the popular platform for sharing presos, has announced a Javascript API to provide access to major functions like navigation and embed.Two interesting things here: the API provides more ability to control presentations than their original API, and we can count this as another provider vote for the power of Javascript in APIs!   
• MusiXmatch, which has one of the largest lyrics databases in the world, has opened an API. Their big differentiator? MusiXmatch's lyrics are all authorized, so they promise totally legal, global integration. Check it out! 

This Week in APIs - January 15-21 »

Here's the best API news from this week! Enjoy, and if you see something important we missed, hit us up on Twitter.  

First up is some news we're really geeked about - Wolfram Alpha announced today that they've opened up an API to make all of their data available. Best? It's free for personal use. Huge news. Check it out. 

Martin Bryant has an interesting story at The Next Web on Rummble, a London-based location recommendation startup. Previously focused on consumers, Rummble is now offering an API to focus on becoming a platform for trust-based recommendations and working with third party partners. Interesting story on a business shift with APIs at its core- worth a read! 

The Cloudstock Hackathon, which took place in December in San Francisco, had a ton of great API-focused talks by companies including Twilio, SimpleGeo, Heroku, Salesforce, Rackspace and more. A number of those videos are now available on the Cloudstock website, including our own Marsh Gardiner's "Your API Sucks: Why Developers Hang Up and How to Stop That."

Hot New APIs and Developer News 

• PicPlz, a photo-altering app for Android, has added a new feature for live thumbnails previews and a new beta API. Definitely worth checking out as the photo-altering trend takes off with other brands like Instagram. 
• Khronos Group has been on a roll the last few months with cool API news- this week they released OpenMAX AL, a set of APIs for audio and visual functionality including media playback, recording, effects and more. The specs can be used across a number of A/V devices.  
• A bit of API controversy this week as the Facebook API added the ability for developers to access user phone number and address information. Even though apps would need to get user permission, security concerns have caused Facebook to pull down this functionality for now. They want to reintroduce it when they can better handle these concerns. 

This Week in APIs- January 8-14 »

It's still the middle of winter but API providers and developers are keeping early 2011 hot. The market is getting bigger and bigger by the day (we just announced that over 16 billion API calls per month are managed on Apigee's platform!). And already we've seen some major moves in location services, hot new startups, and in-car app platforms. Check out the best news from this week and if there's something we missed, hit us up on Twitter. 

Instagram, a photo sharing service, has announced plans to release an official API after developers started using a reverse-engineered, unofficial API in their apps. Instagram has requested that developers stop using this API until they release an official one. This is another case of community demand pushing companies to become API providers, and a good reason why APIs should be top of mind for new services. We're looking forward to the official Instagram API and are excited to see their efforts in this direction! 

OnStar has announced its 2011 Student Developer Challenge to reward the most original in-vehicle, voice-enabled apps. It has invited students from Carnegie Mellon, MIT, the University of Michigan and more to compete in categories like location, informed driving and "responsible connectivity." 2011 will be a big year for "car-as-platform" so this is a contest to watch. We also love the idea of bringing students into the mix! 

FierceDeveloper has the scoop on AT&T's preview of its Location Information Services, which will provide developers and enterprise customers with access to domestic location and tracking data. It's scheduled to roll out later this year with a single, easy-to-use API to allow developers to leverage device location information. 

Developer Candy and New Stuff to Play With

• Google just released an API for its URL shortening service, goo.gl. You can now use it for apps and to monitor stats and traffic. Anyone had a chance to check it out yet?
• We've mentioned the Geni platform, which holds genealogy data and profiles, in this blog before. This week they announced they now have over 100 million profiles. The data is accessible with the recent release of their API. This is a huge testament to the value of APIs in providing access to large and innovative datasets, and turbocharging innovation in important areas like genealogy.
• Klint Finley at ReadWriteWeb covers the Quora Extension API in our favorite column, "API of the Week." The API lets users access notifications, followers and messages. We're excited to see what other features Quora adds as they continue to grow! 

This Week in APIs - January 1-7 »

The first week of the year is always a time for reflection, planning and working towards new year goals. It was no different in the world of APIs - check out the best from this week. 

 We've been talking about API design a lot lately. Check out these tips from Joannes Vermorel on lessons learned while iterating the Lokad API, including be minimalistic and have explicit input/output limitations. 2011 will see lots of companies redoing their APIs to reach greatness, and this is a good starting point. 

Investor's Business Daily has a great post for your exec team on APIs. The article notes that the business team - not just the tech team - must be involved in the "API Economy" to succeed. Also some interesting points on the role of APIs in dealing with the increasing complexity of software applications. 

Chris Crum at WebProNews has some interesting analysis on what will impact search the most going forward- including the effect of APIs, local, social and realtime. Food for thought as we head into the new year! 

Developer Candy 

• Twilio just announced a new Twilio Developer Connect mailing list to connect its developers to consulting and job opportunities. Very cool for Twilio devs and an interesting concept for API providers.
• Developers and API providers should go weigh in on Alex Williams' Weekly Poll over at ReadWriteWeb. Will 2011 be the year of the API? What will growth look like? What about mobile? Looking forward to seeing the results of this one. 
• Miso, a social platform for television, has launched an API for developers to access real-time information about shows, movies, users, checkins and more. TV is the next big platform for apps and APIs so keep an eye on what Miso does next.

This Week in APIs- December 11-17 »

Check out the best API news from the week! 

Infochimps, which provides a marketplace platform to buy and sell structured data (and is based primarily on APIs!) acquired DataMarketplace.com. DataMarketplace was founded to be the "Amazon" for data, so this looks like a great match! Keep an eye on how the platforms integrate and grow, and congratulations to both companies! 

Sunlight Labs announced a fundraiser to keep its API for U.S. Congressional data up and running. Sunlight Labs has been a leader in open government and Government 2.0 for years. Check out the project and consider lending a hand! 

Nokia released a Notification API beta plug-in, which means that Symbian and MeeGo-powered Nokia phones should eventually be enabled with push notifications. Great move as push capability becomes increasingly important - and even expected - in the device-driven market. 

Developer Contests and Candy

• ReadWriteWeb's Klint Finley has the scoop on a new developer contest from Microsoft- $10,000 to the best spell checker, delivered as a RESTful API. We always get excited about contests for applications, but a contest for an API? Even better. 
• Geni, the genealogy platform that lets people collaborate to build and connect family trees, just released an API to give developers access to its data. We think this is a really awesome set of data adding another dimension to the social and connected web, so congrats to the Geni team and we're looking forward to seeing some apps! 
• Google announced the beta phase of its WebGL 3D graphics API has begun. WebGL is an API for Javascript that developers can use to create 3D apps. There are a few cool examples Google has been demoing, and APIs are definitely accelerating a future with more 3D. 

What did we miss? Shoot us a note on Twitter. 

This Week in APIs - December 4-10 »

Fresh and tasty API news to end your week and start your weekend projects! 

Foursquare unveiled the new version of their API, designed to be faster and easier to use. It's also updated with OAuth 2. Congrats to the Foursquare API team on delivering some great stuff to their community and we look forward to seeing some new apps and integrations. 

Twitter has made some changes to the Twitter Search API to give developers access to an expanded database of location information. This will allow developers to offer users more places to tag and an easier way to find tweets associated with a specific location. And if you haven't seen it, you might want to check out the video of Twitter's Leland Rechis talking about Twitter's mobile and location experience at Social App Workshop. 

Amazon has launched new SDKs for Android and iOS, designed to make it easier to call the AWS APIs directly from mobile apps. There is increasing need for mobile devices and apps to access cloud services easily and quickly, so it is worth looking at how Amazon is accomplishing these goals. 

Developer Candy

• Simple Geo launched two new APIs, Context and Places. With the Context API, developers can serve up information to users (such as population and weather information) based on geolocation. With Places, developers can pull in lots of venue information from various sources by calling a single API. The APIs are free and will remain free. The Next Web has the full story. 
• Saplo, a startup based in Sweden, launched an API that lets developers tag text (whether articles, texts, or ads) and automatically identify related texts and recommend new ones. The concept of APIs that can "understand" text and perform semantic analysis is fascinating and growing quickly from theory to real-life implementation, so this company is one to watch. 
• The USA Today API team launched a new Articles API to give developers a better way to construct feeds of content. This provides a better, easier-to-use experience for developers and partners. The team is also looking at expanding into offering more types of feeds through the API. 

This Week in APIs- November 27-December 3 »

The top API and developer news from this week to close out your Friday! Enjoy. 

Next week promises to hold one of the biggest hackathons to date for API and cloud developers. Cloudstock, at Saleforce's Dreamforce conference, is sold out with thousands of developers registered to come for technical sessions, coding and fun. Hope to see you there! 

Google App Engine released version 1.4.0, with some awesome new features like a new Channel API for Push events, a way to keep three instances of your app running at once for high availability and increased rate limits for several of their APIs. All great moves, congratulations to the App Engine team and we're excited to see what's next!   

AllFacebook has released a very interesting report on the state of the Facebook Platform, derived from conversations and surveys with the top Facebook developers. Some interesting data points- like 50% of developers are considering using the Places API. Worth a look. 

Fun New Stuff to Play With

• Adobe has made Flash 10.2 available to developers. The version includes a new API called Stage Video that is designed to deliver better quality across platforms with less CPU usage. 
• ReadWriteWeb's API of the week is TweetSentiments! The API lets developers use sentiment analysis technology to get an idea of what mood the Twitter-verse is in. Definitely worth a look for our many Twitter developers. 
• Foursquare announced that it is testing version 2 of their API. The new version promises to be faster and more flexible. The API is not yet publicly available but stay tuned!

What'd we miss? Shoot us a note on Twitter. 

This Week in APIs - November 20-26 »

Hot off the presses- the top API news to close out your week. Happy coding!  

ReadWriteWeb's Klint Finley has a new feature out called "API of the Week," a great complement to This Week in APIs! This week's featured API is MailChimp, which recently launched a new fund to encourage API projects- a very cool move. Watch this space at ReadWriteWeb! 

Josh Constine at InsideFacebook has been doing some great reporting on companies and products built off the Facebook Ads API. This week he dives into AdParlor, which lets developers set a cost per acquisition rate and then buys and manages ads on their behalf. This lets devs focus on apps while benefiting from ads- an important story around how developer monetization is evolving. 

Banks... open and social? Forbes has some interesting analysis of how bank and credit card companies are bringing innovation to payments by opening up APIs. Mastercard's new API is coming out of beta soon and there's lots more payment API innovation on the way, so check out this timely analysis.  

API Candy

• Web measurement firm Compete opened a new "All-Access API" to allow developers unlimited data calls for information like page views, demographics, user behavior and more. The API is available for free up to 1,000 calls per day. Cool concept and interesting look at the tiered access monetization model for APIs.  
• I-Programmer has the scoop on the new version of the Bing Maps API, which is built to be faster, smaller, and detect and respond to browser capabilities like HTML5/CSS3. It also gives access to Bing's new "birds eye view".  
• Tynt launched a new API to retrieve real-time data for content in six categories, including technology and travel. It also launched a real-time API for geolocation information. Real time is moving into more and more areas of the web and we'll be watching for how Tynt moves the needle.  

As a bonus, check out Loraine Lawson's Thanksgiving article on integration trends, "Five Integration Trends to Inspire Thanksgiving." Great insight on how open APIs are changing the game for integration and how their adoption has grown, as well as more great stuff on cloud and SOA.

What'd we miss? Let us know on Twitter! 

This Week in APIs - November 13-19 »

We just spent a great few days geeking out and talking about APIs at the Defrag conference. Here's all the other API news from the week. 

Great article out in Business Week on how the "app economy" and mobile era are encouraging top payment and credit card companies to open up to third party developers with APIs. The article takes a look at how Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and American Express are working with developers to innovate. Keep watching this space and look out for new entrants like Ixaris.   

HootSuite launched a new API and App Exchange to let developers quickly build and get out new apps and integrations. As Tris Hussey at The Next Web points out, this is significant because it marks the expansion of the HootSuite platform beyond Twitter.   

At Defrag, the year's best conference focused on data, analytics and APIs, Twitter announced a partnership with Gnip to offer 50% of all Tweets for $360K/year. This will allow companies to innovate in the social analytics space and, as Marshall Kirkpatrick points out at ReadWriteWeb, might help ensure that everyday developer access to Twitter remains free. Check out the story and make sure to check out Defrag next year, and Gluecon, a related conference, coming up in May! We'll be there too.   

Stuff to Play With

• Social gaming platform MindJolt launched a set of APIs called "AdJolt" which allows developers to integrate advertising and virtual currency to monetize content. This combines three hot stories in APIs right now - gaming, virtual currency and developer monetization. MindJolt's head is the former CEO of MySpace, Chris DeWolfe. We're excited to see where AdJolt goes and how it helps developers make bank!  
• ProgrammableWeb's got the story on the new Wordnik API, which targets word game developers by giving access to its online dictionary. Coolest part? Wordnik has a write feature so you can manage your own word list.  
• MailChimp, a popular email platform, is launching a $1 million integration fund to support developers and projects building applications around their API. More than 80,000 users are already on the API.

What'd we miss? Hit us up on Twitter. 

This Week in APIs - November 6-12 »

Here's a wrapup of the best news as we head into the weekend. Stay safe out there kids. Hold the OAuth handshake and look both ways before crossing the streams.  

Twilio, the API that lets developers bring the power of telephony into their apps, raised $12 million in Series B funding. The money will go towards product development and more staffing. Congrats to Twilio and make sure to check out our new API Console for the Twilio API.   

Zend released version 1.11 of its PHP framework in GA. Notable is the addition of support for the Simple Cloud API, which provides a common interface to major cloud providers, allowing portability and helping developers avoid cloud lockin. Charles Babcock from InformationWeek has some great analysis here.  

Twitter announced that they will be ending support for XML on all streaming APIs on December 6. For now, this doesn't affect other Twitter APIs. Taylor Singletary gives details over at ProgrammableWeb.  

Developer Candy:

• PaidContent has a great article out on how TV is bringing new opportunities for developers with a range of APIs opening up and disrupting the industry. For example, PlayJam, a TV games distributor, will be launching an API in an upcoming beta. This is a space to watch and a must-read by Robert Andrews.  
• eBay announced that it has added Microsoft's OData protocol to its API. OData is a standard way to access and query data in an API, and has lately had a number of blue-chip implementations. What do you think?  
• If you're going to Dreamforce, or if you're going to be in San Francisco in early December, and you love APIs, check out Cloudstock- the Woodstock for cloud developers. Hang with the top API companies, code, compete, and hey- a gaming arcade. Best part? It's free.  

This Week in APIs- October 16-22 »

We've been thinking about slogans lately. How do you guys feel about: "You do the REST, we'll do the rest?" Alright alright. Here's the best news in APIs from this week.

Game development... more social? Interesting article on what the Playstation integration with the Facebook API holds for the future of gaming. APIs are disrupting the gaming and console space- good news for devs and the industry as games become increasingly weaved into the social sphere.

The OpenStack project, an open source cloud computing software for managing compute, launched its first official release. Notable is its OpenStack API, which will likely play a big role in shaping the future of cloud APIs. Worth a read over from Alex Williams at ReadWriteWeb.  

PayPal's P2P (person to person) payment API is showing significant adoption with banks. Look out for a big announcement next week at the Innovate conference- we'll be there too so make sure to say hi!

Dev Candy

• Mappr, an iPhone and web app that lets you publish check-ins to Facebook Groups, is one of the first apps to integrate into the new Facebook Groups API. Worth a look at how they are making it work.
• MapQuest launched a new API to provide geographic search results for any data added to its OpenStreetMap. The Nominatim Search provides an interface to an open source project that lets you do cool things like landmark searches. As the data explosion only grows in volume, search functionality and search layers become increasingly important. Great move.
• Goodreads, a social network for book lovers, has opened up an API to pull rating and reviews for book titles. Register for a dev key and get hacking!

What'd we miss? Send us a tweet on Twitter.

This Week in APIs- October 9-15 »

"Are you there, endpoint? It's me, POST request." Check out what you missed this week in API action.

Great dive into the new Facebook Groups API by Josh Constine over at InsideFacebook. Learn about how it works, what you can do with it and if you're ready to start playing.

Best Buy announced that its API will now allow customers to make transactions on 3rd party apps or pages- no more routing to the Best Buy site for purchase. For retailers, allowing customers to view and purchase merchandise in the same place is a best practice. Great move.

Our own Mike Debnar has an article out in the E-Commerce Times called "The Rebirth of E-Commerce in the New Internet," a look at how retailers can innovate using APIs to reach the mobile, multichannel and app-driven web. Includes three rules for doing APIs right!

Hot New APIs and Developer Candy

• YouTube has added PubSubHubBub to its activities feed, making it possible to have video data pushed to your apps- no more polling! ProgrammableWeb's got the scoop on how you can get to real-time with your video apps.
• SimpleNote's got a new API in private testing that you can sign up for here. SimpleNote provides an easy way to keep things like lists, notes and instructions.
• The Next Web loops us in on a fun new API from Wibiya, a site that provides websites with toolsbars for social and sharing. They are on the hunt for some innovation!

What'd we miss? Shoot us a note on Twitter. And if you love APIs, remember to get your free "I <3 API" stickers.

This Week in APIs- October 2-8 »

Here's the best news in APIs for the week! And if you love this stuff as much as we do, make sure to check out Social App Workshop next Saturday, October 16 in San Francisco! Hack on the Facebook and Twitter APIs and learn some great stuff about mobile design and social integration for apps. 

LinkedIn launched a new Javascript API and upgraded their APIs to support JSON. These changes are designed to make their services as accessible as possible to developers. LinkedIn is quickly becoming a leader in the API space- one to watch! 

Ford announced that it will be releasing an API for its Sync in-car technology, which will let developers build hands-free apps. APIs are coming to the highways fast and this is a big move for Ford.  

David Linthicum has an article out in InfoWorld on three essential approaches to API design for cloud services. Great tips in here and a must-read for all you APIgeeks building out! 

New APIs and Fun Stuff to Play With 

• The World Bank has given its API for access to large financial datasets a makeover and is launching an app developer contest! The API will now have some great geo-coded data to play with. 
• More financial data fun! The New York Times has released version 3 of its Campaign Finance API. This version makes it easier to access the data. Lowering the barrier to entry for developers is key- great move. 
• Google announced that it will be launching an API for its goo.gl link shortening service. The API will let devs get the link shortening into their apps and have access to analytics. No word on timeline yet but we'll be staying tuned. 

This Week in APIs- September 25-October 1 »

We all know that APIs make the world go 'round. Here's what you might have missed in the fast-changing tides of the API economy this week.

Google added OAuth support to the Google Apps APIs. Google says OAuth provides better security and makes it easier for apps to make API calls. OAuth adoption is growing both at the tech titans and in enterprise APIs- Google joining is a big step forward.

MasterCard, which is planning to open APIs by the end of 2010, announced it will be focusing on mobile app development for iPhone and Android in its open API strategy. The mobile payment space is heating up as new and classic finance companies open up to let mobile in.   

Dictionary.com launched a new developer portal to get devs up and running on its API. The portal has a great gallery of apps built with it - ranging from games to education. Best practice for API providers.

New APIs and Stuff to Geek Out With

• Josh Constine at Inside Facebook has the scoop on XA.net, which provides cheap multivariate testing using the Facebook API and will now allow agencies and advertisers to manipulate campaigns themselves. As APIs become more and more integral to advertising, keep your eye on tools like this.
• Verizon released new APIs for location and subscription at its second Verizon Developer Community conference. Verizon also launched some cool tools and other tasty treats for devs worth checking out.
• We're sure you've heard about the launch of Storify, a service to let you integrate and curate content to create your own stories. The company will be launching APIs to support mobile so stay tuned.

This Week in APIs- July 31 - August 6 »

Momma don't let your babies grow up to be APIgeeks... 

Microsoft will be phasing out version 1.1 of the Bing Search API - developers will need to migrate to version 2.0 by November 1. 2.0 has better support for source types and allows unlimited queries. The new API is also designed to accommodate changes to the API without needing to switch versions - important best practice.

Derek Harding over at ClickZ had a great post this week on APIs for marketers - we talk to more and more marketers that are interested in using or providing APIs and Derek has some important points on the benefits (real-time enablement is a big one) and challenges (versioning and technical skills required). We're glad to see more marketing people getting in on the conversation!

MyTown, a location-based service, just announced it is the first to support global check-ins via the Google Maps API - it has now expanded into Canada, Australia and the UK. One of the great things about APIs is how easily they allow globalization of services, and this is a great example!

New APIs and Opportunities:

• Gowalla has officially released its write API for check-ins. ProgrammableWeb has the scoop and we also think Gowalla's practice of offering a sandbox for API testing is great!
• The National Library of Medicine has announced a hackathon this fall to improve a database of drugs that could harm breastfeeding moms and their infants and help build a better API. Awesome example of how APIs can contribute to the greater good, and innovation in the health sector.
• InfoChimps has refreshed its Twitter datasets to give accurate information on influence, activity level and interaction, with new API calls. Great resource for you Twitter devs out there.

Miss something cool? Light the Apigee bat signal and yell at us on Twitter.

This Week in APIs- July 24-30 »

We might be a little obsessed with APIs here at Apigee- here's what made API fanaticism great this week. 

The Khronos Group released version 4.1 of its OpenGL graphics API, which promises to better support different hardware and software configurations and provide a better 3D graphics experience. It's increasingly important for APIs to address the proliferation of devices and fragmentation of mobile phone OSes, so we're happy to see an open standard making progress- plus, it's 3D! 

Google announced that they will be working with developers on supporting applications with check-in functionality on its Places API, launched this spring. The check-in app space is increasingly competitive and we're excited to see what devs come up with.

Twitter has begun testing a new streaming API that lets desktop apps automatically update their streams in real-time. The User Streams API is being utilized by TweetDeck and Echofon. By transitioning to streaming, Twitter will cut down on rate limit and latency problems- major progress! We're looking forward to seeing this roll out more widely.  

Hot New APIs- 

• Video search engine blinkx unveiled a new mobile API to give access to its huge collection of MP4 videos- including those from the AP and Lonely Planet.
• TypeKit, a font startup, unwrapped a new API that lets developers generate kits from its library and build them into their applications. Very exciting for all you typography geeks! 
• Gamerang is launching a new site to focus on the social side of gaming. As Chris Crum over at WebProNews says, Gamerang is like Netflix for video games- and its new API makes it easy to incorporate the gaming news and social content into sites and apps. 

Did we miss anything? Shoot us an @ sign on Twitter!

This Week in APIs- July 12-16 »

The top news from the API geek-sphere this week. Enjoy!

Skype released its SkypeKit SDK for Windows and Mac, giving developers access to Skype APIs and some really cool functionality- like embedding chat, voice calling and video into their apps. SkypeKit was originally released for Linux and we're glad to see more developers will now be able to share in the fun!

Evernote - the popular service to store, organize and access information across, well... your life - released the Evernote Trunk- a place that highlights cool apps and services built using the Evernote API. We love this idea- great best practice for API providers!

Apple has reportedly acquired Poly9, a mapping API provider that has built APIs for companies like Microsoft and Yahoo. Interesting news- the geolocation revolution has been largely driven by APIs and we're interested to see what Apple does with Poly9 now.

New APIs and Opportunities

• The Health 2.0 Developer Challenge, an initiative supported by the US Department of Health and Human Services, announced a developer competition for apps built off Practice Fusion's new open API for real-time health data between patients and providers. APIs for healthcare are a big space to watch. 
• Microsoft released its developer tools beta for the Windows Phone 7 and announced that the API available with it is in near-final form for the official launch.
• Sekai Camera, an augmented reality app by Tonchidot, has added an API that makes it possible to deliver content within the application. Augmented reality is the new hotness- go Sekai Camera!

If we missed something great, hit us up on Twitter!