Mashup management service Mashery launched a new API for WhitePages.com today, allowing developers to fold extensive "people search" into almost any other application. Sample applications included in the release include tools to integrate WhitePages.com lookup into OutLook as a toolbar, a Javascript/Ruby on Rails reverse phone number lookup widget and an integration of location lookup and the Google Maps API.
Zoto is a highly regarded photo sharing site with lots of AJAX, social features and blogging plug-ins. It's been getting good write ups since Om Malik covered it in 2004. Late last year the company switched to a paid-only account model (like Smugmug) and last week it put the codebase up on the Google Code open source repository. Non-commercial use is free and commercial licenses are available.
Is this a sign of Zoto's immanent demise? Possibly, but in a world with lots of niche photo sharing sites, there may be no meta-lessons to learn here. At the very least, there's some very nice photo sharing software now available for use on your site.
Google announced today that they would be adding the ability for users to work offline in their popular web office suite Google Docs. Offline support will be powered by the Google Gears API, which is a browser extension that allows developers to store application data offline and sync it back up again later when users are reconnected. Some lucky Docs users will get access to the new feature today, with offline support being rolled out to all Google Docs users over the next few weeks.
Chumby Industries, makers of the Wi-Fi video and widget displaying device, the Chumby, have just announced $12.5 million in Series B funding today. The company notes that this new financing is going to be used to "accelerate growth of the company, and expand and broaden the Chumby Network to other screen-based Internet connected devices." How did this little gadget get so popular? And why would you want one? Read on to find out.
Email media management application Xoopit launched in private beta today (invite link below) and announced a $5m venture round from some big backers. Would a good feature set and reputation be enough for you to hand over your Gmail username and password to this application? It's not good enough for me.
Xoopit is aimed at the widespread practice of sharing media like photos, vidoes and PDFs by email. If anyone but the big webmail vendors is going to launch an "inbox 2.0" type product, though, there's going to have to be a better API that lets me access content without giving up my password.
Observing April Fools Day has become a time-honored tradition for many web companies. Much like changing your logo to celebrate holidays, pulling a fast one on your users on April 1st is something that many web services and applications have really taken to heart. But keeping creative year-after-year is tough, and some companies have learned how to consistently deliver. Below, based on past performance, is a list of the top 10 places you can go to get fooled tomorrow.
Our network blog has just announced an annual 'Day Without Google', starting tomorrow April 1st. ASE editor Charles Knight writes: "All we’re asking is that for One Day you try one of the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines". He implores us to "Choose one, choose several, but for One Day give the Alternative search engines a fighting chance and see what life would be like without Google." He also hastens to add that ASE "is not anti-Google", they just want us to explore alternatives. It's a great idea, however for some of us it will impact our daily work...
Popular social networking site Hi5 is launching its implementation of the OpenSocial platform today, the first apps go live at noon PST. The company is rolling out the apps very slowly, 1% of users will be able to access them at noon, 10% by the end of the day. The first 100 approved apps (there are 53 approved for launch today) will receive 1 year of free hosting from the Joyent Accelerator (who may or may not have been dumped by Twitter as a scalability problem) and free translation from English to Spanish or vice versa.
The only apps mentioned on the company blog so far look pretty silly. OpenSocial doesn't seem to be working out like at least tech-centric users were hoping.
Today, social music site Last.fm announced that they would be sponsoring a new music category in Mozilla's Extend Firefox 3 contest. The contest, which encourages developers to build add-ons for the Firefox browser, began on March 17th, 2008 and will continue until midnight on July 4th, 2008. This cycle of the contest will reward apps that take advantage of the new features in Firefox 3 as well as those that apps that are updated for Firefox 3, while also showing significant improvements in user experience and performance.
Following on from our Q&A with Benjamin Joffe about how Facebook compares to top Asian social networks, Kaiser Kuo from Ogilvy China Digital Watch reported today that Facebook users in China "received a message on their main pages this morning asking them to help out with the translation of the site into simplified Chinese". Kaiser calls this a "a very Web 2.0 approach to the arduous task of translating the site." This is the latest example of speculation that Facebook is about to enter the booming China market.
