Archive for September, 2009
One of the problems with music sites and APIs on the web is that they have been known to run into trouble with the lawyers. Worse yet, often the only real way to monetize is to take a teensy percentage of an already low-priced track. BandsInTown wants to help your music site stay up and even make money.
Alexis Rodich of BandsInTown says the site itself lists nearly 200,000 individual events from 60 ticket companies in 140 countries. And its API is available to filter through to the events you care about. Find shows by artist, location or date. Or, get recommendations for which events to show (details at our Bandsintown API profile).
Where does the money-making come in? BandsInTown has launched an affiliate program, which it calls the first and only program available to the general public. The company has agreements with ticket companies to share revenue. Then, whatever share BandsInTown gets, you get half of it. Not bad, compared to your cut of a single song (and better revenue opportunities than you get with most of the other 55 music APIs in our directory).
Another reason to be excited about BandsInTown is as an example for other APIs. The site found a way to take its considerable database and open it up in a way that still makes it money. Better yet, it found a way to make developers money, too. And that’s bound to encourage use.
Related ProgrammableWeb Resources
Filed under: Fun
Every once in a while, someone actually sneaks something cool into the YouTubes. Tetris lovers of the world, unite!
via @arnteriksen
Don’t try this at home – Tetris tribute on tiny wheels originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 27 Sep 2009 06:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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This week we had 9 new APIs added to our API directory, 5 of which are outlined below. These include Google’s Sidewiki API for commenting across the web, an API for predictive content analysis that includes plugins for major CMS platforms like WordPress and Drupal, an online storage API designed to protect files as a type of virtual deposit box, and an API for a specialized search engine focused on “many to many” user generated sources like forums, discussion groups, mailing lists, answer boards, and opinion sites. More details on each there are below:
Ecordia API: The Ecordia API provides a way for content management systems to “integrate predictive content analysis within their applications – providing their users with advanced keyword and content analysis and recommendations. The Ecordia Content Optimizer will also be available for WordPress, MoveableType, Joomla and Drupal.”
Estate++ API: Estate++, a subscription-based “virtual safe deposit box service to provide reliable access to information for planning and emergency purposes. Whether via natural disaster, theft, or even death and incapacity, the users’s data is always available. The free public API which allows developers to upload files directly into a subscriber’s account. SDK includes C# and Java examples.”
Foldier API: Foldier offers users tools for “searching, aggregating, organizing and sharing personal content. The foldier API is a RESTful interface that allows external applications to request services from foldier.”
Google Sidewiki API: The Google Sidewiki Data API is designed to allow applications access to Google Sidewiki content. Developers can use the Google Sidewiki Data API to request a list of Sidewiki entries and query Sidewiki for data that match particular criteria. Data is returned in the form of Google Data API feeds. Functions allow retrieval of Sidewiki entries written for a specific web page, listing Sidewiki entries written by a specific author, or embedding a custom gadget onto a web page to display Sidewiki content about the page.
Omgili API: Omgili is a specialized search engine focused on “many to many” user generated content platforms including forums, discussion groups, mailing lists, answer boards, opinion sites and others. It provides a way to find subjective information. As the describe: “Most technical questions out there have been answered and this service is designed to find those answers. The Omegili API allows developers to build applications that can access the Omegili data collected from discussions across the web.”
Linus Torvalds shocked the crowd (well, the group) at LinuxCon this week with three words.
“Linux is bloated.” He added it’s even gotten “huge and scary.”
(This fat penguin, by Squiggums at DeviantArt, can likely be licensed by the Linux Foundation for a reasonable fee. Just change the fish in the thought bubble to a Microsoft Windows logo.)
Part of the problem here may be just how close Linus himself is to the project. He was there at the beginning, and here he is with something bigger than any conglomerate’s Unix ever got. The whole world depends on Linux — servers, clients, phones. That’s got to weigh on a person.
Or it could be nostalgia. I get this way some days driving around Atlanta. I remember when that mall was an empty lot, I see the store where that skyscraper now stands. I remember when the Peachtree Road Race course had just a half-dozen skyscrapers on it, before Elton John and Jane Fonda and the Olympics, back in the 20th century.
Imagine if Bill Gates managed the original Windows project 25 years ago and were still managing that architecture today, with every fix or improvement coming personally past his desk. I get tired just thinking about it.
On the other hand, maybe Linus is right. He’s the doctor. Maybe it’s impossible to build something that works on any machine, that works clean, that’s scrubbed regularly for bugs, that has enormous amounts of functionality, and doesn’t get bloated. A modular architecture can only get you so far.
Now it’s true that, as our Matt Asay notes, there’s Linux and then there’s Linux. The Linux that loads onto a Moblin phone bears little resemblance to, say, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. What they have in common is compatibility, a common way of looking at the world, so they can work seamlessly together.
As Linus’ personal blog notes, he does take vacations and has a good, happy family life. But has he thought of, like, a sabbatical? Take six months off and chill, do something else, travel, really get away from it for a while? This project is too big to depend on one man at the center — maybe that’s the problem.
So I want to hear from the real Linux geeks out there. Is Linux bloated? Are there things that can be done, from an architectural or development standpoint, to make it less bloated?
Linus sounds tired. Why don’t you be the boss for a while?
Filed under: Windows, Macintosh, Google
SketchUp remains a free download – though if you’re wanting to use some of the extra Pro features in version 7.1, you’ll need a $500 licence – and requires Windows XP / Vista or Mac OS X 10.4+.
The folks from Google have also put together a video of the new version in action which we’ve embedded after the jump!
Continue reading Google releases SketchUp 7.1
Google releases SketchUp 7.1 originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 26 Sep 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Web services, Social Software, web 2.0, Web, Microblogging
Last week the folks at Tumblr hinted that some changes were coming for the platform, and the first signs of that are emerging with a huge update to how users can customise the look and feel of their Tumblogs.
For the less-technical minded there’s now support for customised fonts, and images in themes that can be edited directly within Tumblr’s Customise window and if you’re a code-minded user, then the new options for Booleans will definitely come in handy, Having built a fair few Tumblr themes myself over the last few years, there’s new options are some great additions to my favourite blogging platform.
As an aside, just last week competitor Posterous rolled out support for Tumblr’s theme syntax. If you’re using a Tumblr theme on Posterous, it might be a wise idea to check that the theme isn’t using any of these new options as they won’t work when ported to Posterous.
Tumblr rolls out even more theming options originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Microsoft announced a new Spark program targeted at small Web development shops with fewer than 10 employees. WebsiteSpark provides the following Microsoft development and production software licenses:
Each week a number of new mashups are added to our directory of 4,300+ mashups. Some catch our eye more than others. Here is a quick overview of some of the best recent additions:
Did we forget your favorite? Leave it in the comments.
Related ProgrammableWeb Resources
Hewlett-Packard is quietly lending its support to a new Oregon State support portal for Linux, Communitylinux.org.
The site is hosted by Oregon State’s Open Source Lab and, while its content is HP-centric, it is pointedly not part of the HP domain.
(This happy little penguin is supporting the Linux Foundation’s annual membership drive. Are you?)
The idea is that non-commercial Linux distributions running on HP hardware can find support, even though it’s not officially coming from HP. We’re talking about server versions of Asianux, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE and Ubuntu.
All these programs can now be run on HP servers without violating their hardware warrantees.
Bdale Garbee, HP’s Linux head, indicated at LinuxCon that HP’s support over time will include loading tests and certifications it has done with Linux onto the site so the community can use the data.
It’s a small announcement, but LinuxCon is a small show.
Filed under: Productivity, Web services, Social Software
If you use Google Apps on your domain, you can share and collaborate with other users through a new service called Socialwok. It enables sharing calendars, docs, spreadsheets and presentations amongst accounts, and adding media from other sites like YouTube and SlideShare. It also offers Facebook-like activity streams, and lets you publish to Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook or LinkedIn.
Socialwok allows you to send email to specific feeds on your network, and share those feeds with people outside your domain as you see fit. Socialwok also promises mobile support for iPhone, Android and Blackberry, and integration with the as-yet-unreleased Google Wave. Socialwok seems designed for business, but also looks like it could be useful for any kind of collaborative project. It’s free, but the service’s business model involves selling premium accounts that will support custom apps.
Socialwok adds a social layer to Google Apps originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Facebook – Google – YouTube – Twitter – iPhone
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