Courtesy of Mashery

Chipzilla is on a big software push, (as shown by Wednesday’s switching announcement), and as part of that news broke on Wednesday that the company is acquiring Mashery, a privately held firm that develops technologies for securing, exposing, and managing APIs.

Mashery employees received an internal email on Wednesday telling them they’d been acquired, according to Read Write Web. Intel and Mashery execs subsequently confirmed to The Register that the acquisition is going ahead and is expected to within this quarter.

“The plan is that Mashery will be a key tech element of [Intel's] overall service strategy, and Mashery employees are critical to that,” Mashery marketing veep Julie Gibbs said.

Mashery makes tools for managing APIs. Companies can use its tech for API key management for partners, publishing interactive API docs, and running support forums. Functionally, its technology is equivalent to that pioneered by venture-backed startup Mulesoft.

“This acquisition is the next step in building an integrated Intel suite of services (cloud services, digital store fronts, location services, network services and security),” an Intel spokeswoman told The Register. “Mashery brings technology and expertise in the management and exposure of enterprise APIs.

Mashery’s expertise in key verticals will enable Intel to further provide user experiences enhanced by service capabilities.” Intel used Mashery’s tech for its Intel Expressway API Manager, which was announced in November. The manager paired Mashery’s API management portal with Intel’s security/service gateway to give enterprises what Intel termed a API management system “for enterprises looking to maximise security, performance, and developer adoption”.

Other Mashery customers include CBS Interactive, Argos, Best Buy, Channel 4, Comcast, and Coca Cola. Its technology is a cloud-based multi-tenant software-as-a-service platform, and is also available in an on-premises variant dubbed “Mashery Local”. The company’s tech is compliant with Payment Card Industry standards, and compatible with OAuth 1.0 and Oauth 2.0 for secure API deployment.

As part of the acquisition, Mashery will become a part of the Intel Service Division, which sits inside Intel’s software and services group, Gibbs said. One area of focus for this group is delivering software “products and services that promote Intel Architecture as the platform of choice for software development”.

Mashery’s current employees are likely to go over to Intel, with few redundancies expected, El Reg understands. The financial terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed, but we assume there’s be champagne corks popping among Mashery’s management team and investors.

Written by Jack Clark and published in The Register

The API, which has been rumored for weeks, would let larger ad agencies create more sophisticated campaigns, a la Facebook. Twitter’s current ad platform, introduced in April 2010, lets advertisers and their agency partners upload ads. However, the ads can only be loaded one at a time.

By expanding the palette for advertisers, Twitter could exponentially increase its ad revenues. Such revenues hit $259 million last year, according to eMarketer. Facebook released its advertising API in 2009.

Sources tell Mashable that Twitter is lining up partners for the announcement, which is set for Wednesday, though that could change.

Twitter reps could not be reached for comment.

Written by Todd Wasserman. Originally published in Mashable.

Last September, Twitter released its REST API v1.1 which was a result of the company’s issuance of its Rules of the Road policy. As we reported back then, Twitter had begun limiting a small set of clients to 100,000 user tokens who were replicating the core Twitter experience. With the new API, rate limiting is enabled, with 180 requests per rate limit are allowed. All authentication requires user context and the response format is set for JSON.

The demise of the @anywhere framework isn’t new — Twitter had announced it last September, especially since API v1.1 was released. However, it was still available, but today we know that it won’t be for that much longer.

With the upcoming retirement, Twitter says that those site owners who use any of the older “goodie” widgets, such as the profile, favorites, search and list, should move to its Embedded Timeline feature. Additionally, those developers who have built widgets using “unauthenticated client-side API calls”, or those that consume data from RSS or ATOM feeds, should also make the same move.

Starting on March 5, 2013, Twitter is going to be conducting the first in a series of blackout tests. It says these tests are needed to help developers better understand the impact of the retirement on applications and users. They will be conducted at various times of the day and on different days of the week leading up to the actual D-day. The first test will take place from 9:00am to 10:00am PST and will be limited only to unauthenticated requests.

The company says that over the next few weeks, more blackout tests will be announced along with a detailed schedule regarding API v1′s retirement.

Written by Ken Yeung. First published in The Next Web.

Alfred Nobel was an inventor with 350 patents to his name, who among many other things invented dynamite. Nobel was also a successful businessman and when he died he stated that most of his fortune should be awarded to the most important discoveries in science, outstanding work in literature as well as the best work to promote peace.

The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901 and in 1903 the first woman (Marie Curie) was awarded a Nobel Prize. In 2013 an official Nobel Prize API was created to make it possible to get detailed information about prizes and laureates. To know more about who was awarded those first Nobel Prizes in 1901 just call api.nobelprize.org/v1/prize.json?year=1901, and to know more about the female Nobel Laureates you can instead use api.nobelprize.org/v1/laureate.json?gender=female.

Hans Mehlin, Director of Technology at Nobel Media says, “By making Nobel Prize data accessible, we offer powerful exploration tools which can create new ways to present Nobel Prize content. We are excited to see how developers all around the world will use this access, the possibilities are numerous.” All the data in the API is available under Creative Commons Zero license, and there is no need to use any API keys or authentication. If you prefer Linked Data instead of an API all the data in the API is also available in RDF format.

There are 3 methods in the API – Prize, Laureate and Country. With Prize it is possible to filter prizes based on parameters like year and category. There are 6 categories of Nobel Prizes, the 5 that was described in the will of Alfred Nobel, i.e. Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature and Peace as well as the prize in Economic Sciences created in 1968 in memory of Alfred Nobel.

To list all the Peace Prizes between awarded between 2000 and 2010 the call would be api.nobelprize.org/v1/prize.json?year=2000&yearTo=2010&category=peace for example.

With the Laureate method it is possible to search for Nobel Prize Laureates based on name, where they were born or died, what University or institution they worked at, gender etc. An interesting detail is that there are actually 3 possible genders, the traditional male and female, but also “organisation”. The latter is used when the Peace Prize is awarded to an organisation as a whole (the Red Cross for example) rather than to an individual. There are a lot of interesting uses of the data from this method, for example to list all Nobel Laureates from a certain country or all Nobel Laureates from a certain University. This is data that has previously been unavailable in easy to use machine readable form.

To find all the Nobel Laureates that worked at Stanford University the call would be api.nobelprize.org/v1/laureate.json?affiliation=Stanford%20University.

The last method is Country that lists all the countries used in the API. Most of these countries are the standard ones like Germany, USA or Sweden. But since the geopolitical map has changed quite a lot during the last 113 years there are also a lot of countries that do no longer exist in this list. This was one of the challenges in developing the API and was solved by providing both the original name of a country as well as mapping to the current country that occupies that geographical area.

For example “Ottoman Empire (now Turkey)” and “USSR (now Russia)”. It is possible to search for original country in the Laureats method using either the original country name (“USSR”) or the country code of the current country (“RU” for Russia).

The best way to get started with the Nobel Prize API is to play around with it in the API Explorer and read the code examples. To get started with the Linked Data there is a D2R Server set up to make the data easily browsable.

Disclosure: Andreas Krohn and his company Dopter has developed the API for Nobelprize.org

Originally published in Programmable Web

The InternetDJ API opens this electronic music site to your app.  Since 1997 (not a typo!) composers and fans have been able to share and mix  music and videos. According to the API’s website, requests are limited to 5,000 a day, responses are in JSON and an auth key is required.

Founder Michael Bordash started off in his dorm room with a passion for creating electronic music and,

“16 years later, I’m still running the site, upgrading code and creating new social music sharing features. My brother Bill writes articles often and a bunch of people help me maintain the site and refine the design. Some of the hardcore members love the site because I change something or add a new feature just about every weekend.”

The site features news, a forum, and has music organized by new releases, mixes, song of the day, and many genres. Once a user signs up they can post reviews that contribute to the ranking system. Search can be done by the usual categories one would expect, genres and ratings, but also can be filtered by download rights (private or broadcast), and even type of software used to produce.

Written by Greg Bates and originally published in ProgrammableWeb

Image courtesy of Trulia

Google Maps Android API version 2 features vector-based maps that allow users to navigate through 2D and 3D dimensional views, as well as tilt and rotate via gestures. Google also tacked on a few other notable features for developers, including flexible user interface designs for larger Android devices like tablets. (We could see this also benefiting handsets with gargantuan displays, like the Droid DNA.) Google also added a new layer called indoor maps, which will help users navigate major airports and shopping centers. Developers can now create markers and pop-up info boxes without needing to use as much code as before, and the API will work on devices running Android 2.3 Froyo or later.

Apps like Trulia, Expedia Hotels, and FlightTrack all utilize the Google Maps API, though none have the update. Several screenshots show the API will produce a lot of what Google has already done with its browser-based Maps service, which should allow third parties to produce some beautiful and functional apps.

By Florence Ion. Originally published in arstechnica.com

The company also patched 29 security vulnerabilities, two-thirds of them marked “critical,” Mozilla’s highest threat ranking.

The main thrust of Mozilla’s trumpeting of Firefox 17, however, was what it called “Social API,” an application programming interface (API) that allows developers to bake connections to social media services into the browser.

The first result of the API, Facebook Messenger for Firefox, displays a sidebar that shows Facebook chat sessions and updates, including new comments, without requiring the user to steer to Facebook’s website. Additional tools range from message notifications to friend requests, accessible through new icons in the browser’s toolbar.

Firefox 17 users can enable Messenger at this Facebook page, and the social networking giant has posted a short FAQ on the integration with Firefox.

Firefox 17 also debuts a new security feature that automatically blocks outdated versions of the most popular Web browser plug-ins — Adobe’s Flash Player and Reader, Microsoft’s Silverlight, and Oracle’s Java — from executing content.

Dubbed “click-to-play,” the added protection bars content from running in plug-ins Mozilla determines are unsafe or seriously out of date. (The company posts a list here.) Users can override the block, or before doing that, investigate by clicking a new icon that appears on the left edge of the browser’s address bar.

Click-to-play is only the latest in a series of steps Mozilla has taken this year to stymie attacks, including blocking outdated Java plug-ins on Macs last spring when the Flashback malware infected several hundred thousand machines, and wrapping up work on silent updates to emulate Google’s long practice of removing updates from users’ responsibility.

Along with the new additions, Mozilla also subtracted: It pulled the plug on support for OS X Leopard, Apple’s 2007 operating system.

The move had been in the works for almost a year, with the final decision coming in August. Firefox 16, which shipped Oct. 9, was the last version able to run on Leopard.

According to Web metrics firm Net applications, only about 9% of all Macs still run Leopard; nearly two-thirds run either its successor, Snow Leopard, or that edition’s follow-on, Lion. Most of the rest are powered by 2012′s Mountain Lion.

The open-source developer also patched 29 vulnerabilities, 19 of them critical, with nine of the remaining labeled “high” and one pegged “moderate.”

Nearly a third were reported by Abhishek Arya, who goes by the nickname “Inferno,” of the Chrome security team, Mozilla said in an accompanying advisory. He was also credited with reporting five more vulnerabilities that were “introduced during Firefox development that were fixed before general release.”

Another four were submitted by “miaubiz,” a long-time contributor to Google’s bug-bounty program.

By Net Applications’ estimates, Firefox accounted for 20% of the browsers that went online last month. Irish measurement firm StatCounter, however, pegged Firefox’s global share for October at a slightly higher 22.3%.

Windows, Mac and Linux editions of Firefox 17 can be downloaded manually from Mozilla’s site. Installed copies will be upgraded automatically.

The next version of Firefox is scheduled to ship the week of Jan. 7, 2013, a slight delay from the usual six-week cadence to account for the end-of-year holidays.

Written by Greg Keizer and originally published in www.computerworld.com

As APIs rise in importance, so has the need for better practices in their creation, development and management. All the major API management services have built strategies that they use as guiding principles when working with customers.

Image: Roland Tanglao/ Flickr/CC BY 2.0

Mashery CEO Oren Michels provided me with an overview of API management that I think also applies to other service providers such as Apigee, Layer 7, Mashape and SOA Software.

These five rules are by no means the final say on API management, but they do provide context for the overall market:

1. Design

Make the APIs accessible to different classes of developers and partners. Develop security policies, usage policies, selective access to data and services. Both Layer 7 and SOA Software cite the need to serve the different constituencies of the enterprise.

Layer 7 Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Dimitri Sirota:

It needs to address each constituency or user group engaged in building and running an API. These include API Architects / Developers, Security Architects, IT Operations and Business Analysts (API marketers). The Layer 7 platform has a product component that addresses each of these stakeholders (API Gateway, API Identity Broker, API Service Manager, API Developer Portal).

A platform by definition needs to be extensible. There needs to be a way to build on top of it. This requires both product APIs and SDK (developer toolkit). Layer 7 supplies both.

Michels adds that it is less about the IT person than the partnerships between IT and the business groups:

Enterprise API Management must include the entire Enterprise, not just the techies in IT. The SOA solution, and the other gateways as well, is focused on the IT person and not the business owner of the API program. This is reflected in the UI that they present in their free version as well as their language that includes things like “policies”; too much of the business rules are codified in complex policies that require a technical expert to really use.

The latter point is particularly important. We’ve been selling API management into the enterprise for five years, and we have yet to see a situation where the tech people are not partnered with business people who have a vested interest in – and will need to manage a big part of – the API management platform.

2. Documentation

To make APIs accessible, offer documentation and communication tools to make it easy to create and manage the applications built on the API itself. Twitter did this very well as a young company but has faltered in its developer communications.

API Evangelist Kin Lane:

Communication, communication, communication! Twitter started fumbling here in March 2010….and continued to do so with each release.  What Twitter is doing is speaking to their developer ecosystem, not communicating with.  We are in the age of social media, we need to have conversations not just an outward broadcast of information.

Include developers in the API roadmap.  If your going to do an API, have a process for bringing the heavy consumers into the product development process.  You don’t have to do everything they say, but make the process inclusive.  Otherwise they will revolt.  Twitter used to be good about this until Dick took over.

You can’t reap the benefits of an API ecosystem, and not return value to the community.

3. Analytics

Michels said to think about the collection and processing of all the statistics associated with the use of the API, with an eye toward supporting and encouraging effective usage and discouraging/limiting usage that is counter to your business or technology goals.

Apigee has focused significant efforts on its data analytics practice as illustrated in its most recent focus on building APIs for software-defined networks. Here is what I wrote earlier this Fall about the Apigee strategy:

Apigee’s API platform for multi-vendor SDN is stand-alone software that can integrate network management systems with SDN controllers from multiple vendors through real-time API transformations. This software includes network analytics, enabling dynamic policies on the controller itself, as well as network-based programs that can use trends to trigger a change in network behavior. Apigee’s software reads network traffic into a domain model and publishes network traffic analytics as an API.

Sam Ramji, vice president of strategy at Apigee, maintains that analytics will help determine how the infrastructure adapts to different data flows. It’s a view that reflects how software is replacing hardware and the role that data plays in the way apps are calibrated.

Mashape takes a different view, seeing itself as a Google of APIs, offering analytics as a commodity service. CEO Augusto Marietti:

For us the analytics, and all the management things are more like a commodity that we give it for free, just to have more and more distribution and more and more consumption. It’s like Google, that gives you Google Analytics for free, because it helps AdWords as side effect. We’re like an object broker for the cloud computing era. We unify the jungle that the API world is. API consumers have one single API key, consumer console and credit card to consume them all, in the same way.

4. Universal Access

Provide seamless and simple support of the various architectures used by the enterprise, whether public cloud, private cloud, on-premise, or a hybrid of several of these.

5. Uptime

High uptime, easy scalability, and redundancy that handles traffic spikes, works around temporary failures in the enterprise backend, and fails gracefully in the event of a backend outage. SOA Software’s Ian Goldsmith said this for a post I wrote this week about the company’s new enterprise API management platform:

SOA fits the needs of enterprise architects and developers – people who have spent years building extensive infrastructures that can encompass hundreds of software stacks. How to access the data from these stacks is a challenge. Many were architected before APIs emerged as common ways to integrate applications. SOA, as expressed in the name itself, comes out of that age when the principles of “service-oriented architectures” were viewed as the most modern way to integrate multiple on-premise applications into a web environment.

What do you think? What are some other principles to follow when managing APIs?

Written by Alex Williams and originally published in www.techcrunch.com

Without having to jailbreak your phone or anything, you can read all of your App.net statuses and submit your own using the official Twitter app. It’s kind of handy, eh? He calls the hack Apparchy, and he’s set up a site for it as well as a blog post.

If you’re an App.net user and would like to do this, I figured I’d post the steps to make it happen here via Steve himself. It works for the official Twitter app on iPhone and iPad.

———
How to setup:

1) Sign up for a free account on the Apparchy website
2) Add your app.net account
3) Open Twitter.app for iPhone or iPad
4) Add an account
5) Enter the username/password you used to sign up on the Apparchy website (not your app.net credentials)
6) Tap the gear icon on the login screen
7) Under “API root”, enter: https://apparchy.net/api/
Log in

You will then see app.net data loaded into Twitter.app.

You can:

- view the stream of people you follow
- view the stream of your mentions
- view user profiles, including your own
- view follower/following lists for a given user (e.g. view people who follow @dalton or people who @gruber follows)
- view entire conversations
- view how many stars and reposts a given post got
- search for users
- pull to refresh and infinitely scroll
- create new post or reply to other posts
- star or repost
- follow or unfollow

Some caveats:

- if you have a Twitter account and an App.net account with the same username, if you relaunch the Twitter app, it will get confused and forget your proxy. So you will have to remove the Twitter account to make this work (usually by disabling Twitter.app from having access to system-wide Twitter accounts in Settings > Twitter).
- location data does not get included when posting
- photos cannot be posted through the app
- URLs in posts will be added to the beginning of the post, and sometimes aren’t tappable
- you cannot view who starred or reposted a post
- you cannot post something > 140 characters
- search and the discover tabs don’t really work
- Twitter crap like promoted tweets and who to follow and stories don’t work
- nothing will appear in the Interactions tab except for mentions (so no repost or star notifications)

How it works:

A request through the Apparchy API consists of three steps – checking the authorization, calling the app.net API, and transforming the response. Apparchy implements Twitter’s OAuth 1.0a scheme, and sends all data over HTTPS, so requests are as secure as calls to the Twitter API. From this we get the App.net credentials from a database, and make the appropriate call to app.net (so a call to the “mentions” API on Twitter calls the appropriate API for app.net’s “mentions”). Once it has the response, it transforms the response from what the app.net API returns into what the Twitter API returns, pulling data from one and putting it into the other.

The result of this is the Twitter app sends a request in a certain way, and expects a response in a certain way. Apparchy implements an API that understands how the Twitter app sends requests, and understands how to give something back the Twitter app expects its response. Since Twitter has no idea something is sitting in the middle, it thinks what it’s getting back are tweets, so it happily shows them.

———

There you have it App.net fans, go ahead and tweet to your App’s content. Pretty genius, Steve.

[Photo credit: Flickr]

Written by Drew Orlanoff and originally published on www.techcrunch.com