api

OnStar is giving the green light to third-party app developers.

The General Motors in-vehicle concierge announced this evening at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that it's making its proprietary application program interface open for third-party app developers, giving them access to the OnStar ATOMS cloud server. (See CNET's live blog of the OnStar event.)

The first third-party app will be RelayRides, a peer-to-peer service in which users rent out their personal cars to other drivers in the area. A demo of the app showed it helping users find, reserve, and unlock OnStar enabled cars using the … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Ford, BMW, and Toyota have them. Now, OnStar is the next in line to take a stab at the development of in-car apps.

At the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, the General Motors-owned telematics provider announced that it is selecting developers to be given access to an OnStar API for the creation of vehicle-specific and vehicle-safe apps for future OnStar-equipped vehicles.

"We want to give people 1,001 reasons to keep their OnStar subscription active," said Eric Litt, chief information officer at OnStar. "We feel that opening up our proprietary API to developers will ensure that OnStar … Read more

Google is serving up Ice Cream Sandwich with a new base version that promises several improvements and bug fixes for the Android operating system.

Detailed in Friday's Android Developers blog, ICS 4.0.3 is expected to roll out to production phones and tablets in the "weeks ahead," according to Google.

As such, the company is advising developers to test their mobile apps with the new flavor. Though it didn't get into specifics, Google is promising incremental improvements in graphics, database, spell-checking, and Bluetooth, among other items.

Developers can also tap into other features with the … Read more

Because of Apple's partnership with search comparison engine Wolfram Alpha, Siri now has the ability to search the entire Best Buy catalog, a feature added to Wolfram Alpha today.

Best Buy has public APIs that have allowed Wolfram Alpha to leverage the data from more than 35,000 products that Best Buy sells. Because Wolfram Alpha was built on a natural-language interface, as Siri is, the ability to get accurate and informative results using voice recognition is that much more impressive.

Siri, using Wolfram Alpha's access to Best Buy's APIs, has access to pricing information, tech specs, … Read more

Spotify may announce tomorrow the addition of an open app platform to its popular music service.

The "app finder" may include the ability to read reviews of the music as they listen to songs, people "in the music business" tell the Wall Street Journal. One app will reportedly display lyrics to the songs playing, while another will list upcoming concerts of artists in a user's play list and link to ticket sales sites.

The apps are expected to be free and available to users of both the free and premium versions of the service, the … Read more

Google is apparently almost ready to launch its first application programming interface (API) for developing new features on Google+ using photos and videos--at least, according to a Google blog post that surfaced on RSS readers before being pulled again earlier today.

Mike Elgan, a Computerworld columnist, posted a screenshot of the post on his Google+ feed and said it was "accidentally made public for a few moments," which allowed time for distribution via RSS Readers. The post also shows up in a targeted Google search, but displays the "Page not found" message when the result is … Read more

This week, cloud-based advertising company Flite will be launching FliteHub, an ad component marketplace allowing brands and agencies to include applications directly in advertisements.

According to Flite CEO Will Price, advertisers can use FliteHub to "program" their ads via application programming interfaces (APIs) that enable deeper integration and dynamic updates based on metrics, location, or other criteria. For example, if a movie studio wants to push an ad that includes showtimes, theater information, and ticket purchasing, it can easily adjust it to better target customers in real time.

Display advertising remains one of most profitable Internet businesses, with … Read more

The nonprofit Khronos Group standards organization announced a new specification this week for OpenGL 4.2, which brings new graphics functionality to the what's considered to be the most widely adopted cross-platform 2D and 3D graphics API.

OpenGL 4.2 includes specs for enhancing pixel rendering, geometry and efficiency in memory storage and bandwidth, as well as a lot of other very technical specs. In short, OpenGL 4.2 makes graphics looks better across multiple platforms and gives developers a consistent set of APIs to work with.

Neil Trevett, vice president of mobile content for Nvidia, said there were … Read more

Google's new social network, Google+, has only been public for two days, and developers are already interested in access to the service so they can roll out add-ons and improvements.

Fortunately for them, and ultimately for Google+ users, developer access is coming. It's simply a matter of time. As Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of social for Google, told me at a Web 2.0 Summit cocktail party tonight, "I'm a developer guy at the core. It is inconceivable I would build something without a platform."

Gundotra worked for 15 years at Microsoft before leaving for Google. His last job there was as general manager of platform evangelism. It's fair to say he's got the background for building systems that developers can build upon.

But it's not surprising that Google+ launched without developer access. The service is far from fully baked.

"We're just getting started!" Gundotra gushed to me when we talked.

The features and functions of Google+ will likely change substantially in short order. More functions will be definitely be added to the service, as well as increased integration with other Google apps. Giving developers access now might be premature, as some might build products that end up duplicating features that Google itself is just about to layer into the publicly available service.

But opening up Google+ to developers eventually could enable all manner of add-ons and improvements, from third-party access apps, like Tweetdeck was for Twitter (before Twitter acquired it); to Zynga-like games that access the Google social graph; to other utilities and add-ons. Personally, I'd like to see a utility that makes faster work of managing and sorting contacts into circles.

Google is collecting names from developers who want to know when the company launches developer tools. There's an e-mail and Google Group sign-up online now.

… Read more