WebServiceable » API http://webserviceable.com Mashups, APIs, Custom APIs. Information Shared. Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:10:32 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 Introducing Google Friend Connect API – 15 Tutorials/Resources and AJAX Playground Examples! http://webserviceable.com/2009/03/13/introducing-google-friend-connect-api-15-tutorials-and-ajax-playground-examples/ http://webserviceable.com/2009/03/13/introducing-google-friend-connect-api-15-tutorials-and-ajax-playground-examples/#comments Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:13:41 +0000 electBlake http://webserviceable.com/?p=141 Google Code Labs

Google + OAuth + OpenID = Google Friend Connect.

They’ve done it again, the boys over at google has released a full javascript API for their Friend Connect services. Which uses services like OAuth and OpenID to authenticate users on your website, and then provide all of the social networking features they want!

taken from official homepage:
“Google Friend Connect lets site owners instantly awaken and strengthen the community that visits their web site. Friend Connect:

  • Makes it easy for every site owner to add Friend Connect to their site regardless of their technical capabilities.
  • Uses open standards to let visitors control their own data and freely share it with sites and services as they see fit. Services include OpenID providers like Yahoo, social network providers like Twitter, and update aggregators like Plaxo Pulse.

Friend Connect APIs enable developers to:

  • Integrate social flows and data directly within a page’s markup, via the OpenSocial standard specification.
  • Integrate existing login systems, registered users, and existing data with new social data and activities.
  • Create social gadgets & services that are embeddable within millions of Friend Connect enabled sites.”

The factsheet, code examples, tutorials, and more after the turn!

Google Friend Connect API Factsheet

Google’s first foray into social networking with their network “Orkut.com” has had mixed reviews. With ups and downs over the years its never been a SMASHING global breakthrough (thats probably because its isolated to one country, heh)

With Friend Connect going API, Google seems to be creating a decentralized social network, using the entire internet as your homepage instead of on tiny and annoying mini-feed on your profile.

Imagine a world where 85% of the sites had Friend Connect on their site, you’d never have to register on a site again, simply type in your google creds and you’d be off to the races. I myself am a little scared of this, in recent years I’ve moved away from the google train – fearing what they will do with my personal information. I’ve been searching for a truly neutral (and yes, trendy) OpenID service that simply provides everything I need w/out tapping into my information.

Google has had many ghost stories over the years – Google Analytics results affecting Adsense Revenues, or Search Engine Optimzation. Even in my gmail I fear that google will figure out I’m Canadian and change my profile to match accordingly.

So with great power, comes great resposibility. And I know I am not going to jump full blown unto the Friend Connect train. I imagine myself registering a simple jailed user on there, to utilize the features, but I am uncomfortable putting my entire life into google’s hands…

Be sure to checkout the original news post at our friendly programmableweb.com
Google Friend Connect API

Google Friend Connect API Plugins, and CMS Related Talk

Google Friend Connect Examples

Google Friend Connect API Tutorials:

OpenSocial Wrappers and Libraries for Google Friend Connect (GFC) Serverside

If you have any specific requests or topics you’d like me to cover let me know! I’m looking for components and libraries for CodeIgniter and CakePHP now, but.. seems like people from those camps are opting to use their own ACL’s for social aspects.

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]]> http://webserviceable.com/2009/03/13/introducing-google-friend-connect-api-15-tutorials-and-ajax-playground-examples/feed/ 4 Doing the Green Thing API – Planting the seed of green into my new venture ideas. http://webserviceable.com/2009/03/01/doing-the-green-thing-api-planting-the-seed-of-green-into-my-new-venture-ideas/ http://webserviceable.com/2009/03/01/doing-the-green-thing-api-planting-the-seed-of-green-into-my-new-venture-ideas/#comments Sun, 01 Mar 2009 21:06:46 +0000 electBlake http://webserviceable.com/?p=135 green thing



Yesterday programmableweb finally made me go signup over at dothegreenthing.com, a website who’s inspirational stories, videos, and simple actions can help anyone live a greener life.

Although I have seen their logo around the net for a little while now, I’ve regretfully never taken the leap into really digging into it. With the announcement of their “Labs” and the API that it provides, green thing officially interests me.

as described at dothegreenthing.com:

“Green Thing is a public service that inspires people to lead a greener life. With the help of brilliant videos and inspiring stories etc. from creative people and community members around the world, Green Thing focuses on seven things you can do – and enjoy doing. Join people from 196 countries doing their green things and making a difference.”

With stories, help, and inspiration around our consumption (gas, heat, electricity, consumer goods, and even food!) – green thing looks to be the homebase for going green, the trendy web 2.0 and now webserviceable way :)

Lets hit a factsheet (after the turn) about green thing and take this time to credit: The programmableweb.com

green thing FactSheet

  • Homepage: dothegreenthing.com
  • API Homepage: dothegreenthing.com/labs/homepage
  • API Access Control: Open for anonymous pulling of data (stories, green actions, etc). You do need to use their user api to authenticate to add stories and manage the various content on site.
  • API Abilities: Get All Content on Site, Comment on Items, Get Lists of Green Actions, Add “Likes” to Content, Manage Stories, Report Content.
  • ProgrammableWeb API Listing

I’ve done my classic research again and found a few little gems that green thing has been doing.

Current green thing mashups and projects

  • green thing facebook app! – yes, its true. I deleted facebook a couple of months ago, so I’m not sure how glorious it is, but if anyone has an inside look, let me know! This is an official app made by dothegreenthing.com and in a reply to a thread on their forums by what looks to be a staffer, it looks like this was the first encarnation of the green thing api (I guess thats why we see v2.dothegreenthing.com in the urls ;) )
  • embedit.me – Video Upload and Mirroring Service. Not really a green thing mashup, but its listed as the first API that the green thing developers made while creating this v2 of greenthing.

Now, I did say that this has sparked a few ideas. Right now, the first things that come to mind are services in a support capacity to the greenthing site itself. I’ll run through some now.

  • green thing life stream - your going to hear more about it, and I’m trying to figure out how I want to get into this myself, but life streams are basically an aggregation of your life online. Generally they take your last.fm favourites, flickr photos, youtube favourites, twitter posts etc (whatever services you use to express yourself) and put them into a little stream of events that make up your online life. (freiendfeed is an early adopter of this)

    For green thing, I imagine a very simple system that you insert your green thing id, and your twitter id and it cross-posts. Using a common tag like #greenlife (as can be seen with #tcamp09)

  • green thing badges – its bound to happen from the official site, but if your quick you can jump on this now. Give basic updates from your green thing profile with links to stories, comments, etc.etc.etc.
  • green thing + kiva.org? – thats right, I posted abunch about Kiva.org’s Person-to-Person lending API last month and I think its about time we bring it back. A marriage between these services could be the final installment to a long road of activism. Poverty + Green Living. Having a site that lent money to people who were making a real attempt to lower their carbon footprint and live a greener life seems like a juste cause.

    What if a small business signed up on green thing and got indivual funding by people who supported their green goals in the business world? Hrrrrrrm….

  • green thing + green.cbc.ca – Here in Canada we have had a national program called “One Million Acts of Green”, a website and program whose goal was to accumulate one million acts of green. It is currently at 1.2 million acts of green with a greenhouse gas savings of: 70 MILLLION Kg.

    So how about a marriage of greenthing’s api and a custom api for green.cbc.ca to report a group or a challenges’ stories and progress.

I hinted at the begining of this post that although I do recycle, I am not incredibly involved in the green movement. That being said, and truth being told, I was really into it as a child – I actually went to “Environmental Camp” while my friends were at Hockey Camp. (Yes, I played hockey too, but I sucked)

I know there are tons of people who ARE very green and who live their lives by many of the goals of green thing. Please comment and fill me (and you readers out there) in on what we’re missing. I’ll leave you with some links.

Follow green thing in the socialsphere (some of the ways, they have them all)

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]]> http://webserviceable.com/2009/03/01/doing-the-green-thing-api-planting-the-seed-of-green-into-my-new-venture-ideas/feed/ 0 Yahoo BOSS Goes Commercial + SearchMonkey – Get Started Now – PHP/JS/Ruby API Wrappers and Tutorials! http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/13/yahoo-boss-goes-commercial-searchmonkey-get-started-now-phpjsruby-api-wrappers-and-tutorials/ http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/13/yahoo-boss-goes-commercial-searchmonkey-get-started-now-phpjsruby-api-wrappers-and-tutorials/#comments Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:47:15 +0000 electBlake http://webserviceable.com/?p=78 Yahoo BOSS - Build Your Own Search ServiceYahoo SearchMonkey Yahoo

In an indepth preview and announcement by Yahoo, we see a big move in the tiered pay/free API ecosystem. No doubt fueled by the current economic climate and the fight for Yahoo to make a comeback, Yahoo’s BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service) will go paid in Q2 of this year.

Not all is lost, there are open pricing schemes and from what I can see up to 10k requests a day will still be free, so – you can still get your Kiva.org search engine going for free, but if it actually works out, you’re going to need to pay for it.

There is even more good news,
I swear I heard about this earlier this week (very shortly after the Kiva announcement) but I can’t find the post, but anyway… Yahoo will offer SearchMonkey integration into BOSS! This is very cool, and my mind has been flying through ideas since this annoucement. SearchMonkey is basically a service for “enhancing” yahoo search results with additional metadata. Ex. a search for a movie showing showtimes and rottentomatoe links right in the search!

Now that you’ve herd all about news with these API Services from Yahoo lets throw down some factsheets, explanations, api classes, and tutorials to help out some of the non-know’rs after the turn.

Yahoo BOSS - Build Your Own Search Service

What is Yahoo BOSS

“BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) is Yahoo!’s open search web services platform. The goal of BOSS is simple: to foster innovation in the search industry. Developers, start-ups, and large Internet companies can use BOSS to build and launch web-scale search products that utilize the entire Yahoo! Search index. BOSS gives you access to Yahoo!’s investments in crawling and indexing, ranking and relevancy algorithms, and powerful infrastructure.”
basically, you can build your own search engine using yahoo’s resources

Yahoo BOSS Factsheet

  • Also Known As: Yahoo Build Your Own Search Service
  • What is it: Yahoo has offered for awhile now the ability for users to create their own search engines, giving the ability to tap into the Yahoo Index’ed pages based on your own Keyword search.
  • API Home: http://developer.yahoo.com/search/boss
  • API Signup: developer.yahoo.com/wsregapp/
  • API Requirements: YahooID
  • Pricing: First 10k Requests Free, Tiered pricing based on search category + peek hours etc. This is new with the annoucement preferenced at the top of the page. With each unit costing 10 cents, we can see the pricing chart below taken from the Yahoo BOSS Pricing page

read full coverage here on Yahoo BOSS announcement here, or grab php,ruby,js wrappers and tutorials below!

Yahoo BOSS Programming Wrappers, Tutorials, Resources and Links!

What is Yahoo Search Monkey?

Originally developed as an add-on to the yahoo.com search results, SearchMonkey is now available to BOSS! Which means that you can create a SearchMonkey and then use it on your own site and offer it to the public doing searches on yahoo.com. A play on “GreaseMonkey” (which is designed to rock your work by offering javascript plugins for your browser, I reccomend it heavily! userscripts.org), SearchMonkey writes plugins for your Yahoo Search.

“Using SearchMonkey, developers and site owners can use structured data to make Yahoo! Search results more useful and visually appealing, and drive more relevant traffic to their sites.

How does it work?
The SearchMonkey developer tool helps you find and construct data services that you can use to build apps. Once you’ve built your app, you can use it yourself and share it with others.”

Yahoo Search Monkey Factsheet

Yahoo SearchMonkey Tutorials, Resources, Links

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]]> http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/13/yahoo-boss-goes-commercial-searchmonkey-get-started-now-phpjsruby-api-wrappers-and-tutorials/feed/ 0 The Kiva.org Update – KivaCloud Webapp & Ruby Kiva API Wrapper? http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/11/kivacloud-view-kivaorg-datasets/ http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/11/kivacloud-view-kivaorg-datasets/#comments Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:42:57 +0000 electBlake http://webserviceable.com/?p=64 Kiva.org
Thats right, I just posted about its launch yesterday, and already Kiva.org developers are hawt to trawt. I’ve been following the Kiva.org Google Group and I found that one dedicated and altruistic developer is creating a Ruby Wrapper for Kiva! (you can find it at the almighty github)

Now, thats not is, another developer created a “KivaCloud”, designed to show and navigate through the Kiva.org datasets. A great little webapp created by smoovej on the build.kiva.org google group

viewable at: http://www.frazao.org/kivacloud/

viewable at: http://www.frazao.org/kivacloud/

Not bad for a days work right? People are really jumping on Kiva.org! I look forward to what happens next!

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]]> http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/11/kivacloud-view-kivaorg-datasets/feed/ 0 Kiva – Person to Person Lending (now API) http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/11/kiva-person-to-person-lending-now-api/ http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/11/kiva-person-to-person-lending-now-api/#comments Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:36:30 +0000 electBlake http://webserviceable.com/?p=61

Kiva.org is the worlds first person-to-person lending services who’s goal is to alleviate poverty. Nice huh? Recently covered and added to the programmableweb directory, Kiva’s will allow developers some great access to their site and services allowing normal joes and janes (such as yourself) to help build a socially concious application!

Introducing its developer blog, and developer homepage, Kiva looks to support its developers with a wiki, great documentation and more!

There have already been 2 visualizations of the Kiva network, check them out below!

Factsheet

Kiva Tutorials, Resources, and Links!


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]]> http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/11/kiva-person-to-person-lending-now-api/feed/ 0 Free File Storage & Sharing API – Drop.io http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/04/free-file-storage-sharing-api-dropio/ http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/04/free-file-storage-sharing-api-dropio/#comments Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:52:10 +0000 electBlake http://webserviceable.com/?p=8 This is the first installment of a series of free file storage/sharing apis where I will look at all of the free file storage services that offer an api. Whether your looking for a place to send songs, collaborate in a meeting scenario or create mass mirrors, these apis will help you! At the end I will do an overall roundup for you where I briefly overview the content in these detailed reports. Up first?


drop.io being a relative underdog (in terms of market saturation at least) to the well established and rather exploded scene of online file sharing made free drop.io is where my money is at.

Fact Sheet

  • allowed: anything
  • space allocated: 100mb per “drop”, unlimited drops.
  • retention: “about a year after the last view” aka infinite aka duration of drop.io lifespan (thus – hopefully infinite)
  • api home: http://api.drop.io
  • key features: private (no google indexing), full management / creation of files through api, great retention.


drop.io allows you to create “drops” which can store files without any sort of registration or email requirements and in most cases files can be added in 2 clicks. Including all of the social features we come to expect from a normal blog drop.io distinguishes itself by offering commenting, embedding, geo-location services and services to give EVERY drop for a specific conference call, dedicated fax, and even a voicemail box (to add voice messages via a standard phone call to your drop as an mp3)

A comforting feature of drop.io is that the shared files are private and not indexed by google, so you don’t need to worry about your shares getting into the wrong hands – you can even set passwords and permissions for commenting, deleting, expiration, etc!

The Drop.io API

Its clear that api is a on the forefront for drop.io and is putting a lot of effort to bring all of the features a mass mirror hunter is looking for awhile offering the security of a company looking to send a large file to a controlled group, the best part is, drop.io exposes all of this through their api.

With rate limits up to 2000 per 15 minutes drop.io is ready to handle a LOT of traffic from you and your webapps.

Verdict.

I’ve been looking at a many free file storage solutions for an array of the websites I’m creating and drop.io has kicked my ass and taught me how to love again. With features that no other free file sharing service provides and seemingly limitless access to all of those features drop.io has stayed under the radar because their links do not flood google with files that get chopped and shopped around the internet. We all know an api is usually as popular as the sites they create, so I suspect we’ll be hearing a lot more form drop.io in this coming year.

Service Yourself! – We Approve Drop.io


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]]> http://webserviceable.com/2009/02/04/free-file-storage-sharing-api-dropio/feed/ 0