3scale StartupBus API contest winners announced. Zapier creates an App a day--for a month! Plus: Digital banking API deployment models, Payfirma unveils universal payment API, and 7 new APIs.
Trippin'in, Zeebox Among Winners in 3scale StartupBus API Contest
3scale, an API platform company, has announced the ten winners of its StartupBus API contest. They are: Bitcasa (a 1 T drive in the cloud); Evercam.io (connecting cameras); FullContact (beefing up contact info); Kairos (facial recognition APIs); Kii (mobile app backend solution); Nutrionix (food data); Tripin'in (featured in the graphic, finding cool hang out spots); UN Data API (social entrepreneurship, international projects); and Zeebo (social TV platform).
These tools are being used right now by StartupBus hackers--people competing to build apps on, get this, a three day bus ride now converging in Austin at SXSW. The final travails of the bus riders can be followed at #startupbus, including recent news of a bus breakdown--putting the hard back in hardware, perhaps.
Zapier Completes Marathon by Building 28 Apps in 28 Days, Changes World
We last covered Zapier when it revamped its developer platform in January. Now, in what might be the king of "we eat our own dog food" stories, Zapier has turned around and used that platform to build 28 of its own apps in 28 days. Holy February! In the graphic is the most recent one they crafted, making it possible to handle Disqus comments to a spreadsheet, create a message on receipt, and get an IM whenever someone comments.
Here's the impressive list of 28 companies they built apps with:
- Slack
- Balanced
- Sqwiggle
- Etsy
- Kato
- Vimeo
- Zoho Invoice
- Tumblr
- Insightly
- SoundCloud
- HelloSign
- Signals
- Meetup
- Quote Roller
- Wistia
- Intercom
- MongoDB
- WHMCS
- 123ContactForm
- Zoho Creator
- Storenvy
- Snappy
- Braintree
- SurveyGizmo
- Disqus
Discussion of what each app does in on Zapier's blog.
API News You Shouldn’t Miss
- Microsoft to unveil DirectX 12 on March 20th at the Games Developers Conference
- Extend Azure Active Directory Schema using Graph API (preview)
- Retention Marketer Optimove Interfaces With Facebook Via API, Updates Custom Audiences Daily
- Modernizing Legacy APIs | Paul M. Jones
- The Echo Nest Partners With AirPair For API Developer Support
- API Deployment Models that Accelerate Digital Banking
- It's Alive! Facebook's Atlas Ad Server Adds Rich Media API Program
- MetroTwit’s Windows apps are no longer available to download, Twitter API limitations to blame
- Payfirma Unveils One API for All Kinds of Payments
- How Snapchat imitator Puffchat managed to do everything wrong
- Broadcom Specification Urges More OpenFlow Switches
- Winners of the 3scale StartupBus API Contest Announced
7 New APIs
Today we had 7 new APIs added to our API directory including an advertising management platform, a bulk sms service, an indian bulk sms service, a malaysian bulk sms service and a find u.s. neighborhood by geographic coordinates. Below are more details on each of these new APIs.
AdStage Platform API: AdStage is a online advertising platform that allows users to create and manage advertising campaigns. The service offers cross-network ad tools and a flexible platform so users can focus on the campaign. The AdStage Platform API users can integrate new or existing complementary apps into the AdStage Platform directly. An account is required with service.
evamegsms API: Evamegsms provides users with bulk SMS services that can be used to deliver SMS around the world. Possible uses include marketing to customers, issuing general alerts, and sending messages to friends en mass. Evamegsms' SMS units never expire and can be used at any time. Users can even send mass SMS from their mobile phones using the SMS2All feature.
GlobalItWebs API: GlobalItWebs is a software, e-commerce, and website design company based in India. They also offer bulk SMS services for use within India, including long code SMS. Their SMS services are meant for a wide variety of use cases. Users can integrate with GlobalItWebs' SMS services using a RESTful API.
MireZone SMS API: MireZone SMS (MZsms) is a Malaysian SMS marketing service that provides worldwide SMS coverage. MZsms comes with a wide variety of features such as two-way SMS, group messaging, Unicode support, SMS delivery reports, message scheduling, email-to-SMS, sender ID customization, an open source plugin, birthday reminders, and more.
Users can integrate MZsms's SMS gateway with their own website or application via REST API. This allows users to send SMS, receive confirmation or error reports for a sent message, schedule future SMS, and check their account balance.
Neighborhood API: The Neighborhood API is a service that allows users to find the U.S. neighborhood that corresponds with a given set of geographic coordinates (i.e. latitude and longitude). The service is free, unless users wish to donate or want to pay for their own dedicated instance. Users can access the API via REST calls issued in JSON format.
OpenGraph Hybrid API: OpenGraph.io way to get Open Graph information from websites. Many sites still do not provide OG tags so the OpenGraph site utilizers spiders to search sites for graph available data. The OpenGraph API allows users to run REST queries containing a target URL, and get open graph data in return. Registered users will have an API key to use for the search.
Webpage Analyse API: Webpage Analyse is a free website analysis tool that collects, analyzes, and processes domain-related information from a variety of sources. They also offer independent tools for discovering whois information, website load times, IP information, and Google PageRank.
Webpage Analyse comes with a suite of REST APIs that allow users to find similar sites, determine whether a site contains adult content, determine the category of a site, get a site's Google PageRank, and get a screenshot of a site in a specified size.
