RunKeeper is taking another step forward with its HealthGraph API initiative by updating its user reports feature. New, simpler Fitness Reports incorporate more health data. As the number of health-related gadgets and apps grows, RunKeeper’s HealthGraph API is becoming the glue to track such data. Read more »
London-based startup Pusher began life in unusual fashion — but now, thanks to its tools to let developers build real-time services quickly and easily — it is hoping to become the foundation for a new generation of online apps. Read more »
Google Plus now offers its users an option to fine-tune their social feeds with volume sliders. It’s an interesting first step towards a more personalized social web. Now let’s make these kinds of filtering functionality available to developers so we can finally have a Tebow filter. Read more »
HipGeo is an iPhone app that passively tracks your location and can easily turn your trips into travel diaries. On Thursday, the company will release its first public API and location widgets so that any application or website can mimic some of HipGeo’s geo-location features. Read more »
Sincerely, the startup best known for the Postagram app, has launched a software platform to let iPhone developers add the company’s “print and ship” functionality into any app. Sincerely took a hit earlier this week when consumer electronics giant Apple announced its own Postagram-like app. Read more »
Building at scale doesn’t just require new tools, it requires a new mindset, said Google’s CIO Ben Fried, who spoke at the Surge conference in Baltimore today. That mindset is more general than specialized, and requires a developer to admit that some things aren’t solvable. Read more »
Xignite, which is offering financial data that’s hosted on Amazon’s cloud to its clients, has raised $10 million to become the big data repository for financial market information. The company, which was formed in 2004, is betting on the trends of mobile, cloud and big data. Read more »
Diffbot is trying help developers build apps that read the web like humans. The company’s technology uses visual learning robotics and artificial intelligence to view web content visually, helping apps analyze web data like humans. The company is releasing its first APIs to developers today. Read more »
Alistair Croll’s post on O’Reilly Radar this week may have been titled “There’s no such thing as big data,” but Croll believes the exact opposite. Rather than just collecting data, he argues, you have to ask the right questions of it. Coincidentally, DJ Patil joined Greylock ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Twilio, which provides a service so companies and web services can add voice or SMS to their menu of options, now will offer developers the option to use all IP communications as well as the old-school phone and mobile networks. Read more »
More than 10,000 developers behind some of the hottest mobile apps are using Foursquare’s application programming interface to tap into its location and places database, the company said Friday. The most popular apps running on Foursquare’s API include Instagram, Tweetdeck and Gowalla. Read more »
Last month, Facebook came under fire for enacting new spam controls that disabled developer apps without prior notification. Facebook has softened its spam control policy and is now giving developers tools with more insight into when their apps are setting off spam alarms. Read more »
Twitter is using a service provided by a telco spin out to access telco APIs for its new photo service. As part of this move it–and other developers– may have found a crucial key to making money for themselves and even for telecommunications providers. Read more »
Steve Jobs joked about MobileMe when he announced iCloud, noting that it wasn’t the company’s “finest hour.” The new iCloud, instead, looks to be a major improvement, without automatic syncing between devices. And it’s free, for the core product at least. Read more »
Twitter is expected to offer a photo-sharing feature soon, something that seems so obvious it should have been added a long time ago. While this will spark renewed concerns about Twitter bulldozing its ecosystem, the big question is whether it will help Twitter monetize its network. Read more »
PlayOn users will soon get a lot more content options, as the software maker has opened up its API, enabling users to build channels for their own favorite content sources. Already users have developed 20 new channels, including some for Food Network, Lifetime and TV Land. Read more »
Applications represent a gigantic leap forward in terms of mobile functionality. They have opened up new ways of accessing data, connecting to services, and interacting with people. Why, though, are mobile applications so dumb as to what is going on in the rest of your phone? Read more »
Rdio, the social music subscription service built by Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, is one of the later entrants to the digital music space. But it’s working hard to catch up by tapping developers to make its service widely available. Read more »
According to a news report, Twitter is in talks to acquire the U.K.-based developer of Tweetdeck for as much as $50 million. Although the deal could obviously still go off the rails, buying Tweetdeck would be a smart move for Twitter on a number of levels. Read more »
You don’t need to be a software developer or hardcore techie to use APIs. In fact, some web APIs, like the Twitter API, are relatively easy to use, and you can use them get access to useful and otherwise hidden data. Read more »
LinkedIn has launched a series of website plugins that effectively duplicate the features of the “open graph” platform Facebook launched last year — a move that throws the business-oriented network into what looks like head-to-head competition with Facebook for the clicks and identities of web users. Read more »
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is taking on an expanded role at the company, in what seems to be an attempt to show that Twitter is putting more emphasis back on the product after some recent mis-steps. Can Dorsey help put things back on the right track? Read more »
Twitter unleashed a firestorm of concern and criticism last week with a change to its API policy for apps that enable users to read and write tweets. But this is always the case with platforms – they focus on what is core, and over time that grows. Read more »
Ebook-lending service Lendle, whose access to the Amazon API was just cut off, has become the latest poster child for a simple maxim: Building your service on top of someone else’s API — no matter how “open” it is — can be a very dangerous road. Read more »
There are common patterns in API programs that succeed – in planning, management, and organization. Programs that fail have commonalities too. Here’s a nine-box model for API program management that helps track how both strategy and execution must come together to build a successful API effort. Read more »
Netflix is currently looking at redesigning its API to improve performance for the hundreds of streaming devices now using the service — thanks to a sharp uptick in requests and inefficient software interactions. What this means for users? A potentially speedier and smoother streaming experience. Read more »
Last week, Google changed the way it allows third-party services to pull the info from your address book automatically, in what was a clear shot at Facebook’s closed approach to such data. Now the giant social network seems to have found a way around the blockage. Read more »
Using the APIs really isn’t as hard to use as people seem to think. In this post, I’m going to show you how you can make use of APIs (perhaps to gather data, or to carry out some automation) with no programming. Read more »
It’s very easy to wind up with very different tools for tasks like project management, customer relationship management and team communication. That can mean spending time copying information from one tool to another, and constantly having to switch from one tool to another. Read more »
As your team and your projects evolve, it’s easy to find yourself in a position where tweaking your tools would make life a lot easier. If you choose tools with APIs, you’ll have far more options in terms of tweaking down the road. Read more »
The Guardian isn’t the tech-savvy enterprise one would normally look to for guidance on digital issues or Internet-related topics. But the 190-year-old newspaper company is doing something revolutionary with its business, and it’s worth looking at what that is and what lessons other companies might be ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
App Store developers now have more to contend with than just the fickle tastes of the humans Apple has reviewing submissions. Now, submissions also go through an automated filter that determines whether or not the app is obeying the rules and not using any of Apple’s […] Read more »
I have been using Mobile Fotos since its initial release for uploading photos to Flickr. It’s both easy to use and powerful. However, since purchasing the iPhone 3GS, the one feature I’ve been really excited about is uploading videos to Flickr without using email. Prior to […] Read more »
Joost has announced that it is going to allow third-party developers to add Flash widgets to its video player soon. The Joost Labs blog this week previewed a widget that adds keyword-based Twitter search results to a video. Joost wants to eventually release a widget API […] Read more »
Snow Leopard is starting to settle down into a relatively stable piece of software that will likely resemble the final release version, according to Engadget. Some speculate that it could receive retail release alongside iPhone OS 3.0 as soon as WWDC, which takes place in early […] Read more »
Do-it-all media software Boxee just got a new update that should have Apple users jumping for joy. It incorporates elements from recent test releases and is now relatively bug-free compared to early antecedents. Those elements include Hulu and Pandora integration, as well as other App Box […] Read more »
