All posts tagged ‘APIs’

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Nov
11
2008

Build an App With Yahoo Pipes

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Yahoo PipesYahoo’s data plumbing application, Pipes, lets you turn RSS feeds and output from APIs into data you can use. It’s extremely powerful.

One cool feature I hadn’t noticed is that it has the ability to output to a web service. So, you can set up a page on your own server to accept input from Pipes when the result changes. While I love the RSS output option, if you’re building an app on top of Pipes, you’d need to ping the RSS feed often. The web service feature means always having the latest data available to Pipes.

The Pipes team posted a brief tutorial showing how to use Pipes with AppJet and Google App Engine. In these cases, you don’t even need to have your own server to accept the output–and do something–with Pipes data.

If you’re brand new to Pipes, be sure to check out my Pipes tutorial.

[via Amber Case]

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File Under: Uncategorized
Nov
3
2008

Google Data Visualization Opens a New Web

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Google Visualization APIThe Google Visualization API is now open to any data source, as long as it is connected to the web. Previously only Google Spreadsheets could be used as a source. With the announcement, enterprise CRM provider Salesforce.com released tools for working with its data.

Given the enterprisey feel of this announcement, it’s easy to miss the big picture for the web. Google is encouraging companies to open up their data. The future of the web is one big mashup, but that requires every service to have an API. It helps to have Google encouraging that behavior.

When the Visualization API was first released, it looked like a replacement for Excel charts. Now it’s bringing these charts, and the data inside them, to the web at large.

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File Under: Uncategorized
Sep
4
2008

Three Great Calendar APIs to Keep You on Schedule

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CalendarIf you’re incorporating date and time data into a website, it may not make sense to roll your own calendar system. Using someone else’s service can cut down on development time and may give you more features than you’d have if you did it on your own.

Here are three free APIs to look into if you want to build a calendar or event tool.

30 Boxes – The basics are covered: programmatically add, retrieve, update and delete events on this popular calendaring site. The API also lets you search events by full text or tag. 30 Boxes also has todo data available through the API.

Google Calendar – Does everything that 30 Boxes does, minus the todo stuff. It’s hard to deny the power of ubiquity. If your app needs to access your user’s data elsewhere, you’ll probably use Google Calendar.

Spongecell – This event promotion service also has a surprisingly complete API. If you’re looking to create private calendars, this might not be the one to choose. If you organize events yourself, check out Spongecell. In addition to normal calendar stuff, you can send invitations, check on responses, and more.

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