ReadWriteWeb

FIIIINALLY! Google released a Chrome beta for Android! GODDDDD. What took them so long? All the Ice Cream Sandwich users have been waiting, like, FOREVER!

Finally, Tweetbot for iPad came out. I've only been asking them for, like, EIGHT MONTHS! Jeez.

Apple fiiiinally released iTunes Match after a whole month, and it didn't even work right!

Listen to how this sounds. How do we, the tech bloggers, get away with headlines like this? Where do users get off complaining impatiently about updates to a service that costs them $2.99? Or a free service? Let's have a reality check. Remember how awesome technology is?

Today, Yahoo posted on their developer network blog an announcement of a new content analysis API. Its aim is to rank content by overall relevance, point to particular Wikipedia pages and annotate the results with extensive meta-data. The service is available as a Yahoo Query Language (YQL) table and more information can be found here. You can try out a sample query request and see the XML code that is returned in response, as well as documentation for the particular fields that are part of the interface.

Yesterday's story about the iOS developer who exploited a security vulnerability ostensibly to bring it to Apple's attention created some passionate debate within the ReadWriteWeb virtual offices. Should he be lauded for his fierce efforts to get Apple's attention? Should he have been removed (as he was) from the Developer Program? What do you think?

We asked and culled your responses from Facebook, Google+, Twitter, the original post and we used Storify to present it all back to you. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.

Despite a number of cogent arguments against it, Apple is going through with the requirement for apps in the Mac App Store to be sandboxed. A number of Mac developers have already spoken up about the policy, but Apple's going through with it anyway. Initially set to go into effect this month, Apple has moved the deadline to March 1, 2012. Does Apple really know better than independent developers here, or is it just being a bully in its own sandbox?

Regardless of the size of the regulatory hurdle that the Google takeover bid for Motorola Mobility may be for the United States, the hurdle for Europe will be a formidable one. This despite the fact that both are American companies; they do business on a global scale, with global telecommunications partnerships. While the standard that any merger or acquisition must meet for U.S. regulatory approval typically boils down to, "It's good for business," the standard for Europe is, "It increases competitiveness."

That's hard to prove, especially given the fact that mergers typically result in one less company. But for the E.U., prospective merger partners must conclusively demonstrate that the state of the market following their combination would be more competitive than the state of that market if they had merely partnered. If Google was interested in aiding its case, it could decide to postpone many of the Android platform's planned improvements until after the merger. That could be at least 18 months, perhaps longer. We ran this theory past the mobile industry's leading expert, NPD Group Executive Director of Industry Analysis Ross Rubin, to get his reaction and to see whether he agreed that such a lull, were it to occur, could send the wrong signal to Android developers. (Part 1 of our discussion appeared in RWW last Friday.)

I don't know about you, but when I hear the word "Lollapalooza," I think about beer, grunge rock and application programming interfaces. Wait, what?

Okay, so maybe an API isn't exactly what comes to mind, but this year, the rock festival that once helped propel bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pearl Jam is looking to launch something else entirely: an open API chock-full of real-time scheduling data, stage geolocation and more.

Last month at SXSW, Infochimps, the self-described "Amazon of data," unveiled thousands of new API calls. The API calls, or plug-and-play bits of code that developers can insert into their applications, were released in hopes of soothing the headaches inherent in making data-dependent applications.

This weekend, a few developers took three headache-free days to make three awesome Twitter apps built on the Infochimps API calls.

Check 'em out.

While Twitter's "days of imminent technical meltdown" may be in the past, the company has run into a host of other troubles in recent months. As a part of its efforts to monetize and stabilize its once shaky servers, the company has sent signal after signal that developers should watch where they stand, lest they be squashed in future developments. The effect has been one of creating a great deal of fear, uncertainty and doubt amongst those - the developers, founders and CEOs - who have elevated Twitter to the height it enjoys today.

This week, however, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey announced his return and these self-same members of the Twitter ecosystem have renewed hope that they and Twitter could work together again.

This morning TwapperKeeper, the Twitter-based service that allowed users to create and export archives of Tweets around certain words or hashtags, announced that it would be shutting down a number of key features of the service to remain in compliance with Twitter's Terms of Service.

According to the company's blog post, the archiving and API features will be shut down by March 20. While TwapperKeeper may be just one service among many to be forced into compliance, is its fate indicative of a larger movement in the Twitter ecosystem?

Last night, Twitter made official what many members of the developer community had long suspected - there would be no more whitelisting for data-hungry apps. For some developers, this either means that they have to come up with creative work-arounds or, for others, that their projects are dead in the water.

So why did Twitter kill the exception to the rule and what does it mean for the future of Twitter apps and the developers who create them?