Web Development

This week we had 38 new APIs added to our API directory including a weather data service, national digital library, personalized restaurant recommendations and photos, U.S. political contributions database and remote home heating control service. In addition we covered an API that helps simplify event marketing. Below are more details on each of these new APIs. AniDB API: AniDB (Anime DataBase) is an extensive database of information on Japanese animation that includes shows, movies, episodes, characters, and more. This database is freely available to the public, and all AniDB users are able to add or edit information. Users can also create and maintain a "MyList" to keep track of which anime they have and haven't seen before. The AniDB API allows users to retrieve information from the database programmatically using REST, TCP, and UDP protocols. Appery.io API: Appery.io is a mobile application building and management platform. Users can use Appery.io to build, manage, and cloud host their mobile applications. The Appery.io API allows developers to access and integrate the functionality of Appery.io to build and create applications. Some example API methods include building applications, pushing data, and managing account information. BIPS API: BIPS is an online payment service that allows users to buy, sell, trade, withdraw and accept Bitcoins as payment. The BIPS API allows the users to send bitcoins, get the balance of the user's account, and export transactions. The service uses REST calls. An account and an API Key are required to use the API. Bitcoin Sentiment API: Bitcoin Sentiment is a polling site where users vote on the future price of Bitcoins. The site also offers charts of the sentiment data, and makes the data freely downloadable. The Bitcoin Sentiment API allows users to send votes to indicate bullish or bearish prospects for the Bitcoin economy, and get data from Bitcoin Sentiment. The services uses REST calls and is free to use. Block Chain Roulette API: Block Chain Roulette is a Bitcoin game that rewards users who correctly guess a random number that is generated by solving a new Bitcoin block. The Block Chain Roulette API gives users access to URLS to enable them to create their own roulette playing bots. The API has queries that can get a list of all possible bets, get a list of all bests made on the table, get a list of the last 50 bets, and get a list of blocks processed and spin results. CampBX API: CampBX is a United States based Bitcoin trading platform that offers low-latency automated trading, as well as manual trading. The site offers basic and advanced trading including margin account and short sales. The CampBX API allows users to call for historical data, access ticker and depth table information, fund transfers, execute quick buy or sell orders, as well as place other advanced orders including margin and short selling. An account is required with service, the API returns JSON and JSONP, and requires SSL for trade activity. Digital Public Library of America API: The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is designed to bring together content from America’s libraries, archives, and museums and make them freely available online. Its goal is to make the written words, art, historical records, and science of the U.S. available as widely as possible. DPLA users can search the millions of items in the catalog, save items in lists, and share those lists with others. The DPLA API provides a programmatic method for accessing the metadata for items stored by the DPLA. Among other information, each metadata record contain a link to the object's location on the content provider’s website. Elophant API: Elophant is a service for League of Legends (LoL), a free online game in which players take on the role of a summoner who can summon champions to fight for them. Elophant provides information on summoners (player stats), champions, and items within the game. Developers can retrieve info

Two years after introducing its social network, Google Inc is struggling to win over the brands and businesses that have been its most loyal customers in the Internet search market.

Of the many APIs we published this week, ten were highlighted on the blog by our team of writers. In this post, we’ll shine a spotlight on those ten, which included the Cloudera Developer Kit. This kit will help developers build applications in Hadoop environments by providing them with API tools and reducing the barriers to entry. Meaning the rather expensive environment will be more open due to efficiency tips and tools provided by the CDK. To learn more about what exactly the Cloudera developer kit does, visit the Cloudera site as well as the Cloudera API blog post. The Toma.hk API is a music lovers dream. The open source, cross-platform music player allows users to play music from multiple sources. This functionality is all possible due to their search APIs, which search for streaming services that best cater to a specific users audio search. Furthermore, if this streaming service isn’t compatible, Toma.hk provides content resolvers that fix those pesky issues. To learn more about the Toma.hk API visit the Toma.hk site as well as the Toma.hk API blog post. Planspot gives developers access to its marketing tools via the Planspot API. The Planspot platform acts as an all in one event promotion and marketing tool. Functionality includes web pages, mailing campaigns, social media marketing, and help and support the entire way. Planspot even allows for ticketing companies to forward clients over to the intended event website for marketing purposes. To learn more about the Planspot API visit the Planspot site as well as the Planspot API blog post. The Weather Source API provides data on weather conditions, but with a twist. The data caters towards businesses, providing them with weather data that could affect foot traffic, event attendance, product viewership, sales, and etc. This data can be integrated with other applications through the use of the Weather Source API. It even allows for interactive reports, spreadsheets, and PDFs to be highly customized for differing businesses. To learn more about the Weather Source API visit the Weather Source site as well as the Weather Source API blog post. If you are looking for a simple way to quote  those who say it better, look no further, the They Said So API does just that. The They Said So website holds an extensive database with over a million quotes from a hundred thousand different authors. Developers can access all these quotes through the API, which also categorizes the quotes to find them easier. To learn more about the They Said So API visit the They Said So site as well as the They Said So API blog post. Boxfish is an up and coming television discovery company specializing in the ability for users to search and discover the exact area of television they want to. Meaning users can use basic language searches to identify topics currently discussed on TV. The Boxfish API simply makes this functionality accessible for developers who wish to integrate it into their third party apps. To learn more about the Boxfish API visit the Boxfish site as well as the Boxfish API blog post. Glympse is a service that allows users of GPS-enabled mobile phones to share their location temporarily, in real time. The Glympse API allows developers to integrate real time sharing of GPS locations to their third party applications and websites. Users can specify how long they want to share their location as well. To learn more about the Glympse API visit the Glympse site as well as the Glympse API blog post. The USDA Farmers Market Directory API provides developers access to the directory database. This database consists of over 7,800 farmers market listings, as well as information about locations, operating times, accepted forms of payment, and product offerings. Data can be accessed by calling to the API and developers are encouraged to create apps that spread the knowledge. To learn more about the USDA Farmers Market Directory API visit the USDA site as well as the Farmers Market API blog post.

This past week 6 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 Baidu, dlvr.it, Google Closure Compiler and Sina Weibo. The most often used APIs this week are Google Maps, Twitter and YouTube. And the most commonly used types of APIs were Mapping (4 APIs, 6 mashups), Social (4 APIs, 6 mashups) and Music (3 APIs, 3 mashups). The list below shows which APIs were used by which mashups: Baidu used in H7N9 avian flu distribution and updates Billboard used in uKoel Social Jukebox Bing used in PropertyWala.com Bit.ly used in PropertyWala.com dlvr.it used in PropertyWala.com Echo Nest used in WoMEn index ESRI ArcGIS JavaScript used in H7N9 avian flu distribution and updates FeedBurner used in H7N9 avian flu distribution and updates, PropertyWala.com Google Analytics used in PropertyWala.com Google Base used in PropertyWala.com Google Closure Compiler used in PropertyWala.com Google Earth used in PropertyWala.com Google Geocoding used in PropertyWala.com Google Maps used in H7N9 avian flu distribution and updates, JobKaster, PropertyWala.com Google Plus used in PropertyWala.com Last.fm used in WoMEn index PayPal used in PropertyWala.com Sina Weibo used in H7N9 avian flu distribution and updates Twitter used in H7N9 avian flu distribution and updates, PropertyWala.com, uKoel Social Jukebox YouTube used in PropertyWala.com, SOUNDRENALIN, uKoel Social Jukebox Mashups of the day:And each day there is one mashup selected to be Mashup of the Day. Here are last week’s winners: H7N9 avian flu distribution and updates JobKaster PropertyWala.com SOUNDRENALIN uKoel Social Jukebox WoMEn index Sponsored by

"What if, instead, you had a map that?s unique to you, always adapting to the task you want to perform right this minute?"

Welcome to YUI Weekly, the weekly roundup of news and announcements from the YUI team and community. If you have any interesting demos or links you’d like to share, feel free to leave a comment below. This week saw two new releases for YUI projects. First up was YUI 3.10.1, a patch release to resolve a vulnerability detected in the .swf files used in the IO utility and Uploader components. Please see this security bulletin for more details on the issue and steps to ensure your applications are secure. Also released this week was YUICompressor 2.4.8, which includes improved compression results as well as general fixes. At this week’s Open Roundtable (YouTube) we invited our friends at Wells Fargo to join us. After some quick intros, we began a discussion about their products and interest in YUI, then dove a bit deeper into some talking points regarding DataTable, Skinning, and Tooling. If DataTable development is something interesting to you, you’ll find quite a bit of discussion in the video about details of the component and its upcoming roadmap. YUI’s Shifter build tool got a version bump to v0.4.0 this week and you can upgrade via npm -g install shifter. This update fixes an issue that was discovered after our migration to Grunt for building releases. The version bump is a minor version (as opposed to a patch version, e.g. v0.3.9) because this does introduce a backwards incompatibility. If you are using a copy directive in any of your component build.json files, the 2nd parameter is now relative to your component’s build path as opposed to the source path, so you’ll need to make the appropriate update when you upgrade your copy of Shifter. An example of this change can be seen in commit 609f7d, which includes updates to /src/io/build.json and /src/uploader/build.json. Thanks to the AlloyUI crew for our awesome new t-shirts! If you are unfamiliar with AlloyUI, it’s a self-described “UI framework built on top of YUI3 that provides a simple API for building high scalable applications.” Their website is full of goodies, such as examples, Tutorials, and API docs. Check it out! Do you have experience with JavaScript, Java, Internationalization, and love solving complex problems at massive scale? Yahoo’s internationalization team is hiring! New and updated Gallery modules include: debounce, dd-momentum-plugin, task, scrollspy, io-utils, and affix. Links of the Week (thanks to JavaScript Weekly ) Draft Specification for ES.next (Ecma-262 Edition 6) Introducing Augmented JavaScript Introduction to Map and Reduce in Javascript JavaScript Regular Expression Enlightenment … and more

Fed {API} to provide curated Government data sets. Stremor Corp releases Content Summarization API. Plus: Apigee launches a research and strategy organization for the app economy and 2 new APIs. Fed {API} aims to Collect, Corelate and Catalog Government Data The Data sets that are being released by Government agencies presents a challenge to developers due to their sheer numbers. It would be great if the data was aggregated from multiple resources and cataloged for consumption via APIs, so that developers could focus on their applications and surface up important visualizations and reports. Fed {API} is a project to do just that for the developer community. As per their site “Fed {API} is an experiment, a proof of concept to begin to intersect the many public government data sources to give developers the ability to use this data to use in their applications, reports and analytics to showcase Government operations.” Access to Fed {API} is available only via a private invite and interested developers can send an email at jobrieniii@540.co and also join Fed {API} Google Group. Stremor releases API to shorten Content Given our busy lifestyles, the trend towards summarizing content in small snippets that are easy to digest is picking up. Recently, Summly, the app that provides pocket sized news was acquired for more than $30 million by Yahoo. Stremor Corp, has made available its Liquid Helium Search and Summarization APIs that help create short versions of long content. The Liquid Helium Platform is the engine that converts written content into mathematical values and algorithms for predictable analysis, extraction, and manipulation. One of those applications is towards summarization of content. The API is available on the Mashape Cloud Platform and the Summary API converts text or HTML of any length to a single paragraph of approximately 75 words. API News You Shouldn’t Miss Apigee Institute Launches, Research Points to Apps, APIs and Data as Key to Competitive Success Google announces new payments API for Chrome browsers Crosswa.lk Aims to Let You Download iOS Apps Directly from Websites 2 New APIs Today we had 2 new APIs added to our API directory including a cambridge university press collections service and a u.s. farmers market information service. Below are more details on each of these new APIs. Cambridge Journals Online API: Cambridge University Press publishes over 300 peer-reviewed academic journals covering research across a range of subject areas. In addition to journals, Cambridge Journals Online also keeps their metadata and supplementary materials like video, images and datasets. The RESTful API gives developers access to all of the data for use in third party applications. USDA National Farmers Market Directory API: The USDA National Farmers Market Directory provides the public with self-reported information on U.S. farmers markets. This includes the locations, travel directions, operating times, product offerings, and accepted payment methods for the listed farmers markets. The accuracy of this information cannot be guaranteed and, for listings that have not been recently updated, prospective market-goers are advised to contact the listed market representative or check the market's website (if available) before visiting. The USDA National Farmers Market Directory is maintained by AMS Marketing Services. The directory's contents can be accessed programmatically using SOAP calls issued in XML format. Sponsored by

The news of data visualization provider Tableau’s IPO on Friday is yet another sign that the movement behind data and analytics continues to gain steam. With that in mind, today we’ll take a look at recent mashups that allow users to perform data analytics of some kind and often show the results through interesting visualizations. Read below for more information on each. World Statistics – Powered by the Google Fusion Tables API, this service visually displays world statistics on a map. Statistics include: Population, GDP, and currency unit. APIs used include: GoogleFusionTables. More at our World Statistics profile. Noodler Car Comparison – Noodler makes vehicle comparison easier for car buyers. See similarities and differences at a glance. Data from Edmunds.com, the highly reputable research site. APIs used include: Edmunds.com Vehicle. More at our Noodler Car Comparison profile. Energy Usage Analytics – View and compare Monthly, Daily and Hourly Electricity usage using interactive charts. APIs used include: GoogleChart. More at our Energy Usage Analytics profile. WoMEn index – Measuring world’s musical energy average emission intersecting user data from last.fm and song energy data from echonest. APIs used include: LastFM, EchoNest. More at our WoMEn index profile. Sponsored byRelated ProgrammableWeb Resources Google Chart API Profile, 87 mashups

Hackers across the country are getting ready to participate in the first annual National Day of Civic Hacking which will take place in over 80 cities on June 1st and 2nd, 2013. The two day event will bring together citizens, developers, government agencies and entrepreneurs to create applications using publicly available APIs and datasets, to help solve a civic or social problem impacting the local community. At the time of this writing, the National Day of Civic Hacking features over 85 locally organized events, 19 government partners, 37 data sets/resources and 5,000 participants are expected. There are three main types of events that cities participating in the National Day of Civic Hacking can choose to organize and host; block party, hackathon and brigade meetup. The type of event will vary from city to city and will depend on the needs of the local community. There are currently over 20 challenges submitted by federal government departments and agencies. The White House has even submitted a challenge to the event (registration now closed), that involves the recently released We the People API. Here are just a few of the challenges that will take place at the National Day of Civic Hacking: Hacking the Digital Public Library of America – Use the DPLA’s dataset of over 2.4 million records of digitized cultural heritage from our nation’s libraries, archives, and museums to create visualizations, mapping applications and data enhancement tools. The Location Affordability Data Challenge – Create an API that helps consumers, planners, policymakers, and researchers to leverage a new database (currently in development) of neighborhood-scale housing and transportation costs. Farmers Market Directory – Creation of mobile applications to enhance the Farmers Market experience and make trips easier by using USDA’s Farmers Market Directory. We Love Data – How can we encourage people to interact with space data in new and meaningful ways, in effect promoting space enthusiasm, education, and a stronger human community? The Census American Community Challenge – Leverage statistics about every neighborhood in the nation to create useful tools that look at everything from commute times to median income to poverty rates. The organizing partners for the National Day of Civic Hacking are Code for America, Random Hacks of Kindness and Innovation Endeavors. Government agencies participating include White House Office of Digital Strategy, Census Bureau, NASA, Department of Labor, USDA and many others. Are you a civic hacker? According to the National Day of Civic Hacking website FAQ, “Civic Hackers” are defined as: “Civic hackers” as we think about it for the National Day of Civic Hacking are engineers, technologists, civil servants, scientists, designers, artists, educators, students, entrepreneurs, community members – anybody – who is willing to collaborate with others to create, build, and invent open source solutions using publicly-released data, code and technology to solve challenges relevant to our neighborhoods, our cities, our states and our country. To find National Day of Civic Hacking events near you or to view the complete lists of challenges and events, visit hackforchange.org. Sponsored by

Hey, it's HighScalability time: (Earth sized solar flare, some more flair) Google I/O to world: Just try to keep up with us. You can't. But go ahead and try. Nah na na na nah... 17 billion: Google Cloud Messaging messages per day with 60ms latency; 1B page views: 500px; 121 billion: edge graph using Titan; 4 billion hours: hours watched on Netflix per quarter; 4.5 trillion: BigTable transactions per month Quotable Quotes: to3m: As with any time you make plans for the future, sometimes you get it wrong. Ars longa vita brevis, and all that. Callaghan’s law: a given row can’t be modified more than once per RTT Josh Haberman: I had an epiphany one day when I realized that the kernel is nothing but a library with an expensive calling convention. fread2281: Insane speed calls for insane measures. Luke Gorrie: hardware really wants to run fast and you only need to avoid getting in the way -- not too hard if you write the whole stack to match your application, but very hard if you depend on abstractions and misunderstand what's going on. Francis Stephens: This exposes an important, and to me non-obvious, property of concurrency. That it's not the locking that's really hard, it's how to be sure that every piece of related data is included in the lock (or STM). @jamesurquhart: "Complexity is a characteristic of the system, not of the parts in it." -Dekker Colin Scott: out of all the datacenter links types, the average downtime was 0.3 days. This translates to roughly three and a half 9’s of reliability, an order of magnitude greater than WAN links. @adocortes: GPU vs CPU 40x faster for image processing in clusters Really fast growth really does happen says someone somewhere: Dots game from Betaworks hits 100 million game plays in first 2 weeks. If you love something you should set it free or lose everything. Fred Wilson observes: This is a classic case of the innovator's dilemma. RIM felt that letting BBM out in the open would make it easier for Blackberry users to leave. So they kept it proprietary. For way too long. Now they no longer have a dominant smartphone franchise or a dominant mobile messenger franchise. When Big Data ecosystems start merging it's not the end of the world, but building a different world: Amex to tap big data (TripAdvisor) to expose fake reviews. Don't miss all that the Internet has to say on Scalability, click below and become eventually consistent with all scalability knowledge...