Archive for: api

WWDC 2011 By Numbers

Here are all the vital numbers from the WWDC 2011 keynote by Apple.

• 5200 developers are attending WWDC this year
• The Mac App Store is now the #1 retail channel for PC software over Best Buy and Walmart
• Mac sales rose 28 percent year-over-year during Apple’s last quarter, while PC sales declined 1 percent
• There are now 54 million active Mac users around the world.
• Mac sales have outpaced the broader PC market for 5 years, 22 straight quarters
• Apple has sold 200 million IOS devices to date …
• … which accounts for more than 44 percent of the mobile market
• 25 million iPads were sold in the device’s 14 months of availability
• 15 billion songs have been sold from the iTunes store …
• … making Apple the #1 music retailer in the world
• 130 million books have been downloaded from iBooks
• There are 425,000 apps in the app store
• 90,000 of them are designed specifically for the iPad
• 14 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store in less than 3 years
• Apple has paid some $2.5 billion to developers building apps for the app store
• There are 225 million iTunes Store accounts, all of them with associated credit cards and 1-click purchasing
• There are 50 million Game Center users. XBox Live, which has been around for a lot longer, only has about 30 million
• IOS users send more than 1 billion Tweets a week
• To date, about 100 billion push notifications have been sent to iOS devices
• The iPhone 4′s camera is the second most used camera on Flickr
• OS X Lion boasts 250+ new features and 3,000 APIs
• iOS 5 has 200+ new features and 1,500 APIs

Pingdom API Has Gone Public: Track Your Sites From Anywhere

Pingdom have just launched their API to the public. The Pingdom REST API is currently in beta and will remain there for a few weeks while public testing.

The API gives Pingdom users full access to their accounts via the API.

The new Pingdom API at a glance

• It’s a RESTful API.
• It uses JSON-formatted responses.
• You can access all your monitoring results and monitoring history.
• You can read, write and modify all your settings.
• You can add and remove things like checks and contacts.

Basically, anything you can do in the Pingdom control panel, you can do via the API.

Popcorn.js: Free HTML5 Video Framework

Have you been looking for a great HTML5 video framework? Then Popcorn.js is the framework for you. Popcorn.js provides an easy-to-use API for synchronizing interactive content. Popcorn.js uses the native HTML video properties and puts them into a simplistic API.

There are many functions provided for controlling the video like getting the duration, setting the playback rate or changing the volume.

Twitter Introduces Hovercards to Make Twitter More Social

Over the past few months Twitter has made several changes such as the introduction of Lists which means that we see tweets from people we don’t directly follow. This annoyed me for quite some time as I was never really bothered to see who the person was, but still had them congesting my Twitter page. Now, Twitter aims to solve that problem by introducing ‘Hovercards’.

This means, that when you hover your cursor over someone username or avatar, information will be displayed about them as well as other options such as Reply, DM or Retweet. All of which don’t load another page, it’s done there and then.

“On any timeline, as its namesake suggests, Hovercards are cards which appear when you hover over a username or avatar. The cards display additional information about the person and allow you to interact with them while staying within the context of your page.” say Twitter on their blog. ”

“One way we’ve found these cards to be useful is to find out more about retweeted people and follow them right there. You can also see more information with an expanded view of the card. Sending direct messages to people you follow will also be possible with Hovercards so you can interact with tweeters without having to move off the page.”

This feature is currently in the process of being rolled out so we won’t all have it right away. However, within the coming days and weeks it will be the standard for all Twitter users.

Flightcaster: Find Out If Your Friends USA Domestic Flight in Real Time

I’ve got family that commute to work abroad, and there’s nothing more boring than cutting laps around the block or sitting in the short term parking waiting for them to show up only to find out that their flight has been delayed 2 hours, and you could have been at home watching videos on Crunchyroll.

Flightcaster.com has recently received $1.3 million dollars to help them develop and market a piece of software that will help avoid this situation: their service (currently only available on US domestic flights) runs a consistently (90% so far) accurate, real-time update on how late any given flight will be on arrival. Departures are harder to predict, due to the greater number of variables – did the luggage guys go on a smoke break, did Mr. Johnson in 26F check in online and then miss his ride to the airport, did a gentleman in a Djellaba walk past the terminal building, that kind of thing – but once an airplane is on the departure runway, Flightcaster uses data from:

• Bureau of Transportation Statistics
• FAA Air Traffic Control System Command Center
• FlightStats
• National Weather Service

to predict and monitor flight progress, meaning that you’ll never have to orbit the arrivals terminal again. You can also download their software as an iPhone or Blackberry app, so you can (pull over and) check the flight on your way to the airport.

Google Wave Federation Begins Testing – Start of SPAM

Google Wave has not been a big hit so far – everyone though it would be…but it hasn’t. The interface is complicated, buggy and unpractical. People aren’t staying long enough to build a community and worst of all – nobody is quite sure what exactly it’s for yet. However the development team are still making strides.

They have just opened up Wave to third party companies by releasing an API package. This allows companies to host their own Wave like services on their own servers and interact with other companies API Waves. This is currently only in sandbox testing and isn’t live on the internet as of yet.

One thing which concerns me is that this could mean the start of SPAM on Wave. Since its launch people have been confined to specific waves but now we’re seeing a growth in access. Although this growth isn’t enough to start a spamming campaign it could be the start of it. I’m pretty sure that soon the hackers and spammers will descend on Google Wave – then it’s up to Google to stop them on a platform which will supposedly be more open than e-mail.

Zemanta Launches Public API

Zemanta has long been a favorite addition to my blogging processes. This interesting little addition to the browser builds in the ability include photos, links, and tags for all of your media inserts. By installing Zemanta, I have reduced the time it takes to track down information to include, and by setting up some personal settings I’m sure to find what I need when I need it.

The New

Zemanta has always offered what it thinks you will need in terms of photos and links, but today Zemanta is launching their public API which will now allow users to build a “user suggestion engine.”

Funding for the company has come from Union Square Ventures, Eden Ventures and The Accelerator Group, along with its win at the fist SeedCamp, this announcement has come out of LeWeb in Paris, France. This announcement is sure to increase not only the number of users, but also the dependency that online writers will have on this dynamic tool.

The Future

Zemanta has now opened itself to a huge reception in the world of online content creators. By opening their API, they can approach content creators to leverage their unorganized with the system, and the users are able to access the content for various needs.

In an article by TechCrunch, they state that “usage of the API is free for up to 10.000 API calls per month, and for a subscription fee above that.” So not only has Zemanta found a way to integrate user input, but they also find a way to monetize their efforts for content creators to get organized.

Zemanta has a bright future ahead of it. I have just recently connected with one of the Founders for Zemanta on Twitter @andraz. He’s easily approachable and seems to be keen on connecting with users around the world.

Use Tweetrush for Your Twitter Addiction

Like any good addiction, the first step is always admitting you have the addiction. For many of us, Twitter is that addiction. We find ourselves Twittering from work, twittering from parties, from events, from weddings, from bar mitzvahs, from the car, from our mobiles, you name it, we addicts are Twittering from it. On the other hand, there are still a few that remain of the mindset that Twitter is a time waster and provides no value.

Well for the addict like you and me, we are introduced to Tweetrush. A very systematic web app that provides you with your Twitter usage metrics. Now, after typing in your handle in the search bar, you can receive a breakdown of your usage and find out just how addicted you are.

Tweetrush was built on the analytics engine called Rush Hour, which basically looks at actions taken by a user, such as typing and sending a message via Twitter. Tracking can be done via the website and also through the various API‘s that exist for the web application.

Information can be tracked for the last 7 days of usage:

The tracking can even break down by the hour of usage:

No matter how you slice, it, Tweetrush is an excellent tool for measuring your addiction, providing useful information on usage, but ultimately also reveal just how much of your life Twitter has taken over. Give it a try and learn to live with the addiction, Twitter is not going anywhere soon!