API Archive

Today was the first TimesOpen day at the NY Times headquarters in NYC. I was able to attend the morning sessions and I’d like to share my notes and a couple of photos. I think the event was very professionally run and the room was completely packed. It’s interesting that they didn’t hold the event in what appears to be a beautiful theatre next door to the HQ building. Check out my notes and slides from the Tim O’Reilly keynote as well.

In the audience were people from Google, Yahoo and a good number of other large tech companies. I also saw a variety of bloggers in the crowd but it seemed like there were more large companies than say indie developers in attendance.

The big news coming out of the morning sessions was that there is a new API launching next week called TimesNewswire. This will give developers access to live headlines. Attendee Kellan called this new api a New York Times firehose and noted, "NewsWire API is the paper’s stream of consciousness."

President and Chief Executive Officer Janet Robinson welcomed everyone to the event and she said that everyone in attendance is part of the past history of the paper but a very important part of the future of the Times.

The concept of the day was to bring technology and the future of the newspaper together.

The other executive who spoke noted that they have an intense desire to make sure the content is personalized going forward.

They gave me a black t-shirt (size L) with the TimesOpen logo on it. If you would like the t-shirt, just leave a comment and I will pick one comment at random.

Video hosting service Viddler is out today with a new Facebook application which I have to admit is pretty damn slick. It replicates the majority of functionality from Viddler.com into Facebook. Viddler’s lead social developer Kyle Slattery was the man behind the application. The app uses Viddler’s new open API and is a great way to show off the power of their API. There’s no poking here!

The Viddler Facebook app shows your videos plus the latest videos from Viddler and the daily highlighted videos. It appears to handle widescreen videos as well. Developer evangelist Colin Devroe tells me that soon search functionality will be added. You can also add videos into Viddler directly from inside Facebook.

The only weird things I’ve noticed so far are:

• while you can view both Facebook comments and Viddler comments, if you comment on the Facebook application, the comments go to the Facebook side. I’d like to see these integrated somehow – you know how I feel about comments all over the place!
• when the first video ends and you navigate inside the video — the page doesn’t update which could cause some weirdness when you try to comment and it ends up on another video incorrectly.

If you would like an invite, you need to be my friend on Facebook – click here to friend me. Once you’ve done that, send me a message on Facebook and I will get you an invite straight away. Facebook limits invites to 15 a day so it might take a few days to get to everyone – be patient!

AOL is announcing the launch of their Open Voice API today. The Open Voice API will work with the AIM Call Out service which allows users of AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) to call out worldwide. I guess AIM Call Out could be considered a Skype competitor though it’s not as feature rich or as polished an application.

The new API will allow developers to create applications that build on the AIM Call Out functionality and use devices including softphones and mobile devices with WiFi capabilities. Steve Murphy, Senior Vice President, AOL said, "We’re building on the popularity of the Open AIM program and opening up the AIM Call Out platform, enabling open standards voice communication services to proliferate in the marketplace." Check out the developer guidelines for the API.

Both AOL Call Out and Skype’s "Skype Out" service charge per minute and offer monthly unlimited plans. 

Early this morning Orli Yakuel who runs the Go2Web20 startup directory had all of her direct messages (aka private messages) on Twitter exposed to her 600+ followers. Michael Arrington has a good recap of the issue on Techcrunch. The instant that I read about this trouble I thought it could be one of the large number of third-party apps built on Twitter’s API. Arrington has since updated his recap to note that it looks like it was a third-party app, GroupTweet that caused the direct messages to be shown to the public.

In this case, everyone seemed to immediately blame Twitter for the issue. As more platforms (Twitter is a platform) launch and more applications are built on top (e.g. Twhirl, FriendFeed, GroupTweet, etc.), we will need to determine methods and techniques to determine when the issues are with the platform and when they are with the application. By default, that isn’t an easy proposition.

Furthering the issue and making it more complex is the issue of installation and updates. For example, you install x app to work with Twitter today. You read the terms and are satisfied so you install. A couple of weeks go by and you are bored with it so you leave and move on to the next one. When the first app updates, you may get hit with the updates and not even remember that you installed the first app and blame the issue on the second app or the platform. See how complicated this can get? Where’s Columbo when you need him!

Here’s a startup idea: a tracker for Web apps that you’ve installed and their current status (installed, active, not active, deleted, etc.)

Of course with all of the issues Twitter has faced, I can see why the immediate blame went to them.

Web strategy firm Howard Baines has just released to the public their FriendFeed API application named AlertThingy. It uses Adobe AIR to run as a desktop application and basically shows you whatever is in your friendfeed on your desktop. That’s about it. I won’t even ask how they will monetize it (see below) or how FriendFeed will monetize themselves because it’s the same issue as Twitter has. It seems everyone loves FriendFeed these days.

This is a smart idea and more Web agencies should be creating simple Web apps built on other platforms to keep their agency top of mind. While the traditional Howard Baines client may not give a hoot about FriendFeed, it can be a great sales strategy. It can also help build very valuable inbound links like the one above.

I noticed that the customization is very limited. For example, the screenshot below is the smallest you can make the window. There are no color selections or transparency settings and when minimized in Windows, you can’t click to bring it back, you are forced to right click and select Show.

Update: NicoleSimon notes on Twitter: #alertthingy: does not use my "hide" settings, does not have the links, colors hurt my eyes, hate opaque – ping me again with version 5.0.

Sobees launched a FriendFeed app last week and you can read our initial Sobees review as well. You don’t need the full Sobees installation to use it. Here is an example:

Coming off their big country win in the online video usage today, Canadian design collaboration tool ConceptShare has launched an API. Co-founder Scott Brooks explains why they created an API, "We want to enable our clients large and small to leverage our platform to further improve their projects. The API will allow users to customize the ConceptShare experience for their organizations, teams and clients."

Looks like the first usage was from a design agency who wanted customers to submit files through a web form directly into a new ConceptShare workspace.