Bwana.org » API

Google Comes Out Swinging At IO ’10

Bwana — Thu, 20 May 2010 14:58:35 +0000

We expected a lot of announcements related to Android (more coming today), but yesterday’s barrage of Google news was downright overwhelming. Google IO is a developer’s conference hosted by Google in California to … well this:

Google I/O features 80 sessions, more than 5,000 developers, and over 100 demonstrations from developers showcasing their technologies. Talk shop with engineers building the next generation of web, mobile, and enterprise applications.

Quick breakdown of highlights:

That’s just some of the news.

The most exciting ones for me were Google Buzz API and WebM. When Google Buzz came out, Google promised us an API in the future so that developers could write custom applications and consumers could mingle with Google Buzz’s data. That day has finally come and based on the partners that have launched Google Buzz support, the future looks great.

WebM, however, has me excited on a whole new level. Why? Because it could mean a Flash free browser for me.

[WebM is] an open web media format project and open-sourced VP8, a high-quality, web-optimized video codec, that we are contributing to the project under a royalty-free license.

Hear me out. Even though Adobe has already announced that they are going to implement this new WebM/VP8 codec into Flash, we really don’t need it. Based on what I’ve gleaned from this new open sourced video codec, it’s perfectly compatible with HTML5. (although not in the official specification…yet) Anything that gives me a way out of Flash is excellent news.

I’ll have many more thoughts as Google IO progresses, but for now, these are my two favorites. Look for more Google announcements today at approximately 10:30AM EST on their live stream.

Twitter User Streams: Real-Time Is Back?

Bwana — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 19:24:20 +0000

At Twitter’s developer conference, Chirp, they announced a new (or old) feature that has caught my interest: User streams. This new API will allow developers to stream twitter activity to end-users in real-time. This was demonstrated at the conference using the web version of Twitter and TweetDeck. As activity occured in the web browser, TweetDeck updated automatically without polling or refreshing.

Seems cool right?

I thought so too since Twitter neutered real-time tracking a while ago and I thought it was back. Then they did a quick segment on the “firehose” and kind of glossed over it. This segment mentioned partners like Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo, but said nothing about how it could possibly tie to this User Stream API.

I got to wondering: Is the User Stream API using the firehose or some sub-set of it? Hmmmm.

At any rate, the technology does look good from the demo, but as with anything Twitter, I will wait and see the final implementation before making a judgement call. You can continue to watch Chirp live on http://justin.tv/twitterchirp.

Update: Added a video of the demonstration at Chirp for you all to enjoy!

iPhone 3.0 Preview Reactions

Bwana — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 02:13:21 +0000

Today, I watched the Apple Live Event concerning the iPhone 3.0 software. Many things were discussed at the event as you can read online, but here are my reactions as I watched today:

Apple covered 3 out of 4 of my “must haves” list. That’s pretty good. The only thing they didn’t mention is Safari stability, but I’m still hoping it’s addressed in some fashion.

Now it’ll be interesting to see all the *new* reasons the haters will say the iPhone is garbage. Here’s to you, haters!

Twitter Phishing Exploits Are Here: A New Variant

Bwana — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 21:40:15 +0000

Yesterday, I first saw Chris Pirillo’s tweet about a phishing exploit on Twitter. It had a message that stated:

PLEASE, DO NOT CLICK THESE LINKS!!

If you are sent this message by one of you Twitter friends, please let them know they have been compromised and to change their Twitter password immediately. This is no time to relax however, since there is a new variant which is circulating today:

Again, DO NOT CLICK!! As soon as I saw it, I let my followers know and you should do the same:

Let your friends know this is a phishing scam and is out to steal their credentials. Twitter is now an official phishing pond. There will be many more variants, copycats, and more destructive behaviors.

Hey Twitter: It’s time for an API authentication fix. Now. Users have become accustomed to giving their Twitter usernames and passwords to any and everything. It’s only going to get worse.

Tweetree’s Value Is Embedded Media

Bwana — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 15:56:13 +0000

I’ll admit, when I first saw Robert Scoble‘s Tweet on FriendFeed about Tweetree, I was immediately skeptical. Robert posted that it was a decent app, but not going to replace TweetDeck for him. I saw the name, and I thought: “Great, another Twitter application that’s going to try to hack conversation context“. You may recall, I wrote about Quotably back in March 2008, and their attempt to capture Twitter conversations in a nice format.

I went over to tweetree.com and saw threaded conversations which met my expectations, but I also saw something else:

Embedded media.

Dave Winer has been begging Twitter to do something like this for quite some time. Dave has went on record to state Tweetree is on the right track:

This is brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant. And exactly what I asked for, which of course makes me happy!!

These guys are brilliant. Great stuff. They’ll be rich next week so be nice to them

We’ve seen threaded Twitter before. Heck, even Twitter search has a “Show conversation” link which tries to give the complete conversation context. What we haven’t seen (or at least I haven’t seen) on Twitter is embedded media.

Tweetree supports the following:

Youtube
Flickr
TwitPic
FriendFeed (Yup!)
Seesmic
Qik
Lala
Blip.fm
xkcd

So if you link to any of the above, Tweetree shows you the associated media right on the website. If you would like to see examples, just search for the service in Tweetree’s search box.

Now I know we saw very similar functionality in Pownce (may it rest in peace), Rejaw, Plurk, and others, but this is Twitter. The big kahuna. The main squeeze. That’s the reason why it’s a big deal. I’ve been using Tweetree for less than a day, and what keeps me coming back is the embedded media.

I’ll be following this one closely. You can check out my timeline on Tweetree at http://tweetree.com/bwana.

*** UPDATE: I’ve asked FriendFeed what they think is more valuable at Tweetree. Join the conversation here.

*** UPDATE 2 I’ve performed a quick walkthrough of the interface in this video:

Youtube API is nice but…

Bwana — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:29:01 +0000

Youtube recently announced details of their video API (Application Programmer Interface), allowing developers to create their own concoctions powered by Youtube technology. The wildly anticipated game, Spore, is already on board to use the API in their game to send videos of the game straight to Youtube:

Youtube is a massive entity, one of the top 5 websites on the web, and it deserves some praise, but I have a void that I long for.

High definition video.

Vimeo does it and does it well, so why can’t Youtube? They have the massive data capacity of Google behind them as well as the capital, so where is it? I already know about the “higher quality” videos that are coming, but they are hardly HD. I want 720p!

Don’t get me wrong, I like the fact that the API is here and developers can develop, but high definition is here people. I was in Best Buy the other day and MANY ordinary consumers (not like you and me) were buying HDTVs and high definition camcorders. They were flying off the shelves. The age of pixelated telephone videos is passing and higher quality video is here. Another example, look at the top live video shows on Ustream.tv. Almost all of them have a high quality picture to accompany their content. I get many praises and subscribers on my Youtube channel solely based on the quality of my videos. Most people could care less what I’m saying in the videos, but they love the fact that I produce great quality videos with my Canon Powershot TX1 (and also with my Canon HV20).

So while I praise Youtube for their API (because APIs are always awesome), I can’t celebrate too long before I utter the words, “but where’s HD”. Let’s hope it comes sooner than later. Here’s the announcement video of the new API in case you haven’t seen it: