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    This Week in APIs- July 24-30

    We might be a little obsessed with APIs here at Apigee- here's what made API fanaticism great this week. 

    The Khronos Group released version 4.1 of its OpenGL graphics API, which promises to better support different hardware and software configurations and provide a better 3D graphics experience. It's increasingly important for APIs to address the proliferation of devices and fragmentation of mobile phone OSes, so we're happy to see an open standard making progress- plus, it's 3D! 

    Google announced that they will be working with developers on supporting applications with check-in functionality on its Places API, launched this spring. The check-in app space is increasingly competitive and we're excited to see what devs come up with.

    Twitter has begun testing a new streaming API that lets desktop apps automatically update their streams in real-time. The User Streams API is being utilized by TweetDeck and Echofon. By transitioning to streaming, Twitter will cut down on rate limit and latency problems- major progress! We're looking forward to seeing this roll out more widely.  

    Hot New APIs- 

    • Video search engine blinkx unveiled a new mobile API to give access to its huge collection of MP4 videos- including those from the AP and Lonely Planet.
    • TypeKit, a font startup, unwrapped a new API that lets developers generate kits from its library and build them into their applications. Very exciting for all you typography geeks! 
    • Gamerang is launching a new site to focus on the social side of gaming. As Chris Crum over at WebProNews says, Gamerang is like Netflix for video games- and its new API makes it easy to incorporate the gaming news and social content into sites and apps. 

    Did we miss anything? Shoot us an @ sign on Twitter!

    This week in APIs-June 27th-July 2nd

    All the best info on APIs this week.

    Mozilla's JetPack API Survey: Mozilla is getting ready to release Mozilla 4 beta, and their most anticipated feature is the JetPack SDK. Mozilla did a survey to ask which APIs developers want most. The winner? Page Mods, which allows developers to alter webpages. More browser innovation with APIs is on the way.

    Alcatel-Lucent acquires Programmable web: Alcatel-Lucent acquired API news and directory site ProgrammableWeb this week. A smart move and we're exciting to keep seeing great intelligence on the API economy from one of our fav sites.

    E*Trade Open API: Online trading giant E*trade just announced their first Open API for third party developers! E*trade is hoping their API will lead to innovative investing applications- we're eager to see what they come up with.

    New APIs - Every week a new API is released! Here are three we <3 :

    GroopBuy-GroopBuy is a company that hunts down local deals for people. It was launched this year, and they just released their GroopBuy API. Companies that look for local deals and coupons are becoming hot, and developers using their APIs is an important part of that.

    Drumbone-Sunlight Labs has just released their Drumbone API for data about legislators, bills, and roll call votes. Just adds to mounting evidence that the government is moving towards Web 2.0!

    NakdReality-NakdReality is a company specializing in instant on-location search and augmented reality service. They also just opened up their API for developers, adding to the Geolocation API craze!

    API Tip of the Day: Reduce the Learning Curve

    Be consistent when building your API, and try to use standard conventions when possible. This will reduce the learning curve for 3rd party developers.

    Hooks, Sockets and Firehoses: Streaming API Technologies Getting Us to REALLY Real-Time

    If you rely on Twitter to see what your friends are having for lunch, waiting 24 seconds to get an update is fine. If you're a stock trader who could have lost a few thousand dollars or more while reading this post, 24 seconds is a very long time to learn that your favorite company just got acquired.

    Real-time runs on APIs as much as it runs inside a web browser. This means that the "real-time web" isn't always "real-time"- a web service API is typically a request-response technology, requiring that the client makes a request of the server, waits for a response, and then processes it. This can add critical seconds or milliseconds.
    Earlier this month I attended the ReadWriteWeb Real-Time Summit in New York City. In an "unconference" session on streaming API technologies, we discussed 3 technologies bringing us closer to REALLY real time: 
    HTTP streaming- This technique uses the HTTP protocol, but instead of responding to a request with a single piece of data, the server responds with many small pieces of data that are published as soon as they are available. It's as if you're using HTTP to retrieve a very, very, large file -- the server just keeps pushing out data, one piece at a time. Twitter uses this technique in its Streaming API.
    Since HTTP Streaming doesn't work quite the same way that most HTTP-based services work, the program that reads the stream has to be written to process the incoming data, handle reconnects, and so on. It's also difficult to use in a web browser without doing some JavaScript trickery; HTTP Streaming is mainly suitable for server-to-server communication. 
     
    WebHooks is a real-time tech with a simple concept: whenever something happens on server A, it makes an HTTP POST to server B and sends it the update directly. Like HTTP Streaming, it only works for server-to-server communications, but unlike HTTP Streaming the barrier to entry is very low for the programmer - anyone who can write a program or script that can process an HTTP POST can consume a WebHook. Unlike HTTP Streaming, however, a WebHook uses one HTTP request for each event, which means that with today's servers a WebHook is going to top out at several thousand events per second, whereas HTTP Streaming can theoretically process many more events.

    WebSockets, unlike HTTP streaming and WebHooks, is designed for real-time streaming to the client- useful for creating real-time apps that run in the browser. WebSockets allows a client and server to use the HTTP protocol for some initial interchange, and then agree to communicate bidirectionally. The result is just like a TCP socket -- the client and server can send whatever data they'd like, in any order, in either direction, for as long as they want. WebSockets also supports JavaScript, ensuring you can easily build a high-fidelity, near-real-time application in a web browser using Internet-standard protocols. WebSockets is part of the HTML 5 family of standards, already implemented in Google Chrome and Apple Safari, and will eventually come to all the browsers. It was good to see Kaazing, who is leading the development of WebSockets, hanging out at the RRW Real Time Summit. 

    With some existing technology out there and some new stuff on the way, the stage is set to build a real-time web that's a bit closer to real-time.

     

    This Week in APIs- June 7-11, 2010

    Check out the top news in APIs this week!

    S3 Import/Export API- Amazon Web Services added an Import/Export API for its Simple Storage Service (S3), an infrastructure service for storing data. The new API makes it easier to move large amounts of data in and out of Amazon- a great move for data portability.

    Twitter API Meetup- Twitter held a meetup in its San Francisco offices this week to talk about the Twitter API, showcase some cool apps and celebrate Apple's WWDC. Twitter's Taylor Singletary presented on XAuth, a new authentication method for APIs. Twitter will no longer allow support for basic authentication at the end of the month so Twitter devs, it's time to brush up on the new method! The meetup made it very clear that the XAuth standard was developed to be used across the API community and promises to make authentication safer and easier, so keep an eye out for adoption.

    APIs in the world of PaaS- Over at CloudAve, Krishnan Subramanian has a post and some love for Apigee on why APIs are the oxygen of Platform as a Service offerings- check out the article for some stark examples of how APIs can mean the difference between success and failure.

    New APIs! A number of companies debuted new APIs- here are a few we thought were especially cool:

    • HubSpot, which launched a Lead API to connect HubSpot's lead capture tools to other CRM software. Excellent example of how APIs can be used to connect tools and unleash new functionality. 
    • The New York Times introduced a Most Popular API to track the most viewed and shared content- fodder for mashups here! 
    • Microsoft introduced its Trial API that allows developers to include free trial versions of their apps in the Phone 7 App Market- more signs that the mobile API world is maturing. 
    • As always, ProgrammableWeb's Newest APIs list is a great way to keep on the top of the all the new delicious APIs out there. 

    Anything important we missed this week in APIs? Shoot me an email at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).