Digital Media

Social music start-up iLike has come a long way from its early days as the way to "dedicate a song" to your friends on Facebook.

On Wednesday, the Seattle-based company plans to unveil some fresh new features for the set of tools it offers to artists who want to connect with current and potential fans. It's hooked up the application program interfaces (APIs) of Twitter, YouTube, and MySpace to allow for more extensive content syndication from artists' iLike pages, and has released an iPhone app-creation product to boost their mobile presences.

"Marketing and communication are the primary things that artists are still in need of a third party's help in," CEO Ali Partovi told CNET News. "Music production and distribution, I think, there are pretty successful and well-established services right now that essentially let you do it yourself."

The Twitter, YouTube, and MySpace add-ons are understandable supplements to the existing "artist pages" feature that iLike says more than 300,000 bands and artists now use. With Twitter's API, artists using iLike will be able to embed a Twitter widget on their iLike pages as well as syndicate iLike updates out to their Twitter feeds. They'll also be able to automatically publish a video to YouTube when they publish it to iLike, and vice versa; with the News Corp.-owned MySpace, they can add iLike "RSVP" links to MySpace concert listings and cross-post blogs and videos to both services.

For iLike, which got its start as an iTunes plug-in and now specializes in developer applications for social networks like Facebook, Bebo, and Hi5, this move is another step toward making it a more flexible, distributed alternative to simply running a MySpace band page. iLike, in addition, recently rebranded its Facebook app to simply "Music."

As part of the new feature package, it's also selling artist analytics about where fans are located, how much they interact with iLike pages, and how well individual pieces of content like videos and blog posts perform. That'll cost $99 per year, Partovi said.

But the center of the new iLike offering is the "turnkey system" for creating custom iPhone apps. Basically, this is a relatively quick way for an artist to create an iPhone app that gives fans access to tour dates, iTunes Store purchasing, videos on YouTube, blog entries, and related content.

It's also a new revenue stream for iLike, which will take a cut of the sale of each iPhone app if an artist chooses to charge for it, and will charge an activation fee if the artist chooses to offer the app in the iTunes Store for free. As a launch promotion, that activation fee is currently $99; a formal price will be announced next week.

There might be some advertising down the road, too, though Partovi declined to say when or how. "Our plan in terms of the business model, like everything else we've done, is (to) put it out there and develop adoption, and over time to figure out the best way to monetize it."

Not everyone's going to want to download iPhone apps to keep tabs on every single one of their favorite artists, and while Partovi said that a sort of universal iLike "favorite artists" app isn't yet on the company's iPhone roadmap, he expects there are enough artists with rabid fan bases for the apps to be a success.

"I don't anticipate a whole lot of fans downloading a hundred different apps for their favorite artists," Partovi said, "but for a fan that has a small group of artists that they're really passionate about, there are fans who will want everything that they can get their hands on from that artist."

And what happens if one of the artists pulls a Nine Inch Nails and gets rejected by Apple due to "objectionable" content? iLike is responsible for the submission process, and hence also responsible for what happens in the event of rejection, but Partovi implied that he's keeping his fingers crossed that there won't be an issue. "We're going to take care of the submission," he said. "We can't guarantee approval, per se, but there's common elements from app to app. We're hoping that once we get some traction that it'll be generally easier."

Facebook plans to announce at a developer event Monday that it will open up user-contributed information to third-party developers, according to a report Sunday in The Wall Street Journal.

The move would allow developers to build applications and services that--with users' permission--access user videos, photos, notes, and comments. The move would be a significant change for the social-networking site, which had previously retained tight control over the site and how developers interact with it.

To allow developers to take advantage of the free feature, Facebook users would have to give the companies access to their data, and users' privacy settings would extend to new services built, according to the report.

Allowing developers to track shared data would be another salvo in its assault on micro-blogging site Twitter, which allows third-party developers to build applications and services on top of its service.

The move seems a continuation of APIs (application programming interfaces) Facebook launched in February that let developers access content and methods for sharing in Facebook apps including Status, Notes, Links, and Video.

Of course, all this hinges on persuading Facebook's 200 million users to share their personal data, a topic that ruffled some feathers in February. Facebook users threatened to revolt after the company announced changes to its terms of service that had meant that its license on user content--a longstanding but little-publicized claim to an "irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license" for promotional efforts--would no longer expire if a member deleted his or her Facebook account.

But facing a rebellion from thousands of users and a possible federal complaint from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the social-networking service returned to its previous terms.

Twitter is working to convert its popularity into a business, and Google has shown that search can make money. So it's notable that Twitter is giving its search function new prominence.

Rather than consigning its Twitter search page to a separate corner of its Web site, Twitter has begun testing its use on the main Twitter.com page. "We've placed Search and Trends into the signed-in home pages of a limited set of accounts to get a better sense of how it works for folks before we release the feature completely into the wild," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said Wednesday in a blog posting.

Twitter has begun testing search from its home page.

(Credit: Twitter)

Google has taken measures to make its search technology more responsive, with the Google News entries mixed into search results and the index able to include new sites within hours of their arrival. But Twitter search, while vastly more limited, is nevertheless a strong reflection of what people collectively find interesting in the moment. That, in turn, could be a nice avenue for advertisers trying to catch the latest trends.

Search guru Danny Sullivan likes what he sees, concluding that Twitter actually has something the big search engines lack, even if it's not enough to slay the rivals.

"I'm real big on Twitter search," Sullivan said last week at the Search Marketing Expo. He called Twitter search a "hyper-real-time tool to see what's being buzzed about."

Stone agrees. "Searching over Twitter messages is like a filter for what is happening right now--it's an interesting look into the real-time thoughts of people and organizations around the world. Whether you're curious about something specific or you just want to browse the trending topics, we've found that Twitter Search adds a new layer of relevance," he said in the blog post.

But here's the big caveat. Twitter has built a thriving community in part through its use of an open API (application programming interface) that lets people use a wide variety of software to publish and read tweets. Personally, I use Tweetdeck, Twhirl, Twidroid, and Twitterific.

That's great for letting people find the interface they prefer. But it also means that Twitter's Web-based interface, which changes at a glacial pace, is not the hub of activity for many active Twitter users. The more active you are, the more likely you are to use a third-party tool that can perform handy functions such as spotlight replies, track favored contacts, shorten long Web addresses, and show pop-ups of recent tweets.

The consequence: a lot of Twitter activity takes place beyond the confines of Twitter's Web site. That makes built-in Twitter search less directly useful as a potential avenue for revenue.

(Via Search Engine Land.)

Media giant Viacom plans to restrict the embedding of music videos from MTV Networks.

Justin Tormey, a staff member for MTVN developer services, announced in a blog posting Friday that starting next month, the company would no longer make video embeds available through MTV's API:

We've got a number of changes coming on the MTVN Content API. If you're currently using the API for your site or application please take note of the changes and the timeline.

First, we want to thank everyone for their involvement with the API. You've provided valuable feedback and insight through your usage, forum posts and comments.

Going forward we'll no longer be making our embeddable video player directly available to third-party developers. Specifically, starting in early March the nodes, which contain our embedded player, will no longer be published in any returns.

We'll also be updating our returns to include links to our videos on the new MTV Music site. The node will now contain these links.

While developers won't be able to incorporate MTVN's video content, apparently end users will still be able to use an embed code, but there's no word on whether this will change, according to an exchange TechCrunch had with MTVN.

Corporate communications representative Mark Jafar told the site:

All of our online video is and will remain embeddable for end users, just like Hulu. That includes music videos, clips, and full-episode content across MTV.com, VH1.com, ComedyCentral.com, and our entire Web portfolio.

The only thing we're pulling back is fully open access to our music video API, and it's purely an issue of economics. Every music video we stream through the API costs us money due to our deals with the record labels, regardless of whether an ad is attached or not. So, allowing developers to use the open music video API can be a money-losing proposition for us. However, we're absolutely open to extending the music video API to third-party publishers who are willing to work with us to monetize. It's all about striking that right balance between innovation and commerce as we continue to move forward and try new things.

As TechCrunch notes, when other TV media companies are embracing the distributive power of the Internet, it's sad to see a company resisting that opportunity.

After booting applications from Facebook this summer for violating user privacy, the social-networking company is gearing up to vet apps for trustworthiness as part of a voluntary validation program.

The validation badge will give Facebook members a gauge to use in deciding whether to add a particular app or not. Experts praise Facebook's effort, but say apps posing security risks will still be around despite that, partly because of the popularity of the network.

Facebook gives a tremendous level of access to its APIs, which has enabled developers to create more than 24,000 apps for the platform since spring of 2007, many of which are routinely used by millions of people every day.

The company has erred on the side of permissiveness in its development environment so as to foster fast growth, and it has succeeded. As a result of the app deluge, it has had to kick some applications off the site and suspend others until they fixed the problem.

Facebook representatives declined to say how many or what proportion of the total apps have been suspended, but said it was a small number and that most were not intentionally malicious. "In some cases it was an improper security of data and longer retention than was allowed on their servers," said Chris Kelly, chief privacy officer at Facebook.

The barriers to entry on the site are low for developers. Pretty much anybody with a Facebook account can submit an application; they just need a valid e-mail address and a certain number of friends on the network in order to release an app, Kelly said, adding: "We do want to make it reasonably easy for the kid in the dorm room to create an app and have it spread virally throughout the network."

Then there is oversight of development, he said. Each app is assigned an application key that is used to track its requests for access to user data and developers must follow terms of service that set technical rules. For example, the API forbids access to contact information and only allows apps to retrieve data from user's who have agreed to add the app to their profiles, Kelly said.

Applications have access to a user's full profile and friend list. However, users can change their settings to not provide access to particular data and then make exceptions for specific apps as desired. Developers can keep user data on their servers for only 24 hours and are encouraged to do real-time data requests instead, he said. They can, however, keep the randomly generated user ID indefinitely, but it can't be tied back to a specific person, a Facebook representative said.

Researchers who successfully created a botnet through a Facebook app recently, suggested that social networks should be more restrictive in the interactions they allow between their sites and the rest of the Internet, and that they should restrict the use of JavaScript.

Upholding tech culture
Facebook does impose some restrictions on what the apps can display through JavaScript to prevent the spread of malware, Kelly said. He disregarded the rest of the advice, though, saying it was "counter to an innovative technical culture."

"The mere fact that something bad can be done with the technology doesn't mean you should hobble the technology," he said.

Another potential security risk comes from Facebook allowing developers to host the apps on third-party servers. "If there's a security defect on that server the data could be exposed," said Nitesh Dhanjani, senior manager and leader of application security services at Ernst & Young.

But hosting all the apps itself isn't the answer, either, Dhanjani said. That "would diminish the value of some of the apps," he said. "Some of these apps are really, really cool. They feed your data to a flash object that gives you a visual representation of your friend list and things like that."

Facebook tries to limit any threats that might come from outside its network by requiring developers to use the Facebook Markup Language for data that will be displayed on the site.

"We think we have good security measures in place such that we don't necessarily need to say that everything has to be run on our servers in order to deliver a good and consistent user experience," Kelly said.

Apple may take a look at all the iPhone apps before they are released, but that's not a reasonable expectation for Facebook, Dhanjani said. "There are hundreds of Facebook apps every day and they won't be able to audit all of them," he said. "From a practical perspective they can't vet them all.

Instead, Facebook plans to launch within weeks a Facebook Verification Program that will subject submitted apps to a more thorough review of things like whether the data they are requesting matches the purpose of the app and how securely they are managing the data. "Their privacy policies need to be as strict or stricter than Facebook's," Kelly said.

This doesn't mean the unchecked apps can't be trusted; it just means that users can add the verified apps with a higher level of assurance than the apps that haven't been checked, he said.

Facebook is also taking steps to stop the spread of spam and worms through postings on peoples' Walls on their pages. The company released a new security feature on Friday.

"I have to give credit to Facebook for trying, but I think it's a very difficult problem to solve and make everybody happy at the same time," Dhanjani said.

One Web application security expert points the finger at the browsers, saying they should protect Facebook users by restricting dubious activities based on policies set out by the social network.

"I would place the blame or responsibility on the browser vendors," said Jeremiah Grossman, chief technology officer at White Hat Security. "Facebook should be able to describe to the browser what these apps are allowed to do programmatically. But it can't because the browsers have no facilities for that."

Mozilla has a prototype project called Site Security Policy that could resolve this problem, he noted. "This is something that is really, really needed," he said.

No question, Facebook wouldn't be what it is today if it had taken a hard line with developers.

"Any (extreme) steps to lock down the development environment would cut down the number of apps and may devalue the platform," Robert Phan, chief technology officer at RemoTV, which is working to extend its video programming channels to Facebook, said at DemoFall this week.

"There's always the chance that an unscrupulous developer will attempt to abuse the system," said Justin Smith, editor of the Inside Facebook blog. "By allowing developers access to user information Facebook has enabled creation of entirely new classes of Web applications, many of which never existed before."

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--On Friday, 300 programmers will descend upon Sunnyvale, Calif., to plant the seeds of what Yahoo hopes will be an answer to Google's Internet might.

Yahoo co-founder and Chief Yahoo David Filo

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

The event is called Open Hack Day 2008, and at it the coders will be the first from outside the company to get their hands on a number of programming interfaces Yahoo is releasing in an attempt to enliven its stodgy but still powerful Internet properties.

There's no guarantee that the release, a key step in what the company calls its Yahoo Open Strategy, will improve Yahoo's financial misfortunes. But it holds promise a strategy that could help Yahoo without having to try to out-Google Google.

That's because YOS marries the best of what Yahoo is with the best of what's happening on the Internet today. More than 500 million people come to Yahoo sites each month, 300 million of them registered users who log on, and they're coming for Yahoo's content and services. Yahoo may not be able to match Google's search engine and accompanying search ad money machine, but YOS ultimately could help improve Yahoo's assets, attract new partners, and bolster the company's advertising revenue.

"We believe openness is going to happen with or without us. We'd rather be at the center of it," said co-founder David Filo in an interview.

Here's an example of YOS in action that Ash Patel, head of Yahoo's audience products division, showed Thursday. The Yahoo home page, which is being revamped to show content customized for each user, houses an application from Netflix showing the movies a user ordered and new recommendations. Yahoo search is augmented to let people order more movies straight from the search results. And an application within Yahoo Mail could let users rate their movies and chat with Netflix members on their buddy list who've already seen it.

Ash Patel, head of Yahoo's audience products division

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

The pressure's on
Here's the rub, though: YOS will take time to build, and time is not on Yahoo's side.

Yahoo, faced with near-term pressures from Microsoft and activist investor and now board member Carl Icahn, would have preferred a quick fix to its business, and perhaps a cash infusion from Yahoo's search-ad partnership with rival Google will help in that regard.

YOS is a longer-term strategy, though. It's taken months to rewire the company's infrastructure to accommodate the vision. It'll take more months to coax programmers and business partners into using it. And still longer to attract Yahoo users to adopt the new features.

As Yahoo languished in recent years, new online services squarely in Yahoo's back yard, such as Facebook and Twitter, had time to put down serious roots. And of course Google has encroached, too: its search-ad revenue has funded any number of affronts to Yahoo, including Gmail, Google Docs, Google News, Google Finance, Orkut, and Blogger.

Of course, Yahoo believes that its clout on the Internet will give it the necessary leg up. So the next start-up, for example, could get traction quickly by drafting off Yahoo's page views and user base.

Yahoo CTO Ari Balogh

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

"Yahoo allows developers to create applications for the world's biggest audience," Patel said. "And they're able to do monetization for advertising. Those two are huge value propositions."

The company is betting the money will come its way, too. Yahoo expects to gain better insight into what users are doing, and consequently better predict what sorts of content or advertising the users want. "The better signals you have, the better you can serve the right content," and being able to target ads better means Yahoo can charge higher rates, said Chief Technology Officer Ari Balogh. "We expect lots of material benefit."

What's coming Friday
So what will be new on Friday? For those programmers who made the Hack Day cut, a pizza- and soda-fueled opportunity to toy with two broad categories of new Yahoo APIs (application programming interfaces), said Neal Sample, chief architect for Yahoo's platforms.

First is a collection of social APIs that let programmers use data such as a Yahoo user's address book contacts, status messages, profile information, and news feed items. Second is the Yahoo Application Platform (YAP), which will be used to write the applications that actually will run on Yahoo Web pages. YAP has some similarities to the OpenSocial project initially begun by Google but now supported by several others, including Yahoo.

The first Yahoo property to get the application support will be a redesigned profile page, a "control panel" site where people can record personal information, update their status, and see their social connections, Sample said. "We're going to get to the point where all our profiles can start coalescing so you have the concept of a single identity on Yahoo."

Neal Sample, Yahoo's chief architect for platforms

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Over this year and into 2009, the support will extend to the My Yahoo personalized home page, Yahoo Mail with its 270 million users, and the Yahoo front page that's being redesigned with a customization feature called the content optimization engine.

If all goes according to plan, the collection of new interfaces and applications will "light up a user's social graph," building Yahoo more deeply into a person's online interactions, for example by spotlighting a person's most important contacts in Yahoo Mail.

Fresh air
Yahoo will call Open Hack Day a success if it produces developers happy with the company and feedback about the interfaces, said Chris Yeh, head of the Yahoo Developer Network. But there's something in it for Yahoo, too: a breath of fresh air. "Big companies do become insular at times...We do everything we can to try to avoid that."

Programmers not at Open Hack Day will only be able to see the API documentation at first, but the final APIs will be public soon. "In a few weeks, we're making them generally available," after Yahoo gets feedback from the early testers, Sample said.

These new programming interfaces will join other parts of YOS already released recent months: SearchMonkey lets people write applications that spruce up search results with elements such as LinkedIn profiles or restaurant reviews. BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service) lets others build their own search engines on Yahoo's, reordering or modifying results however they want and sharing search ads or revenue if they get popular.

Chris Yeh, head of Yahoo Developer Network

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Newest is Fire Eagle can keep track of a person's location information, including a mechanism to let users control what services may employ that information.

A few other APIs are planned for later release, Sample added, including some for geographic services.

Proceed cautiously
Embracing openness--standards, open-source software, open interfaces--is a tried and true way technology companies try to leapfrog incumbent competitors. But retrofitting openness to a company that's been closed is difficult, and Yahoo clearly is concerned about breaking what it's built by moving at start-up speeds.

"Getting it right with hundreds of millions of users is harder than if you're starting from scratch," Filo said.

And it's not just about revealing APIs and doing some marketing. "We have to get the platform right so we can ensure the applications don't degrade the user experience," Patel said, for example by caching applications on Yahoo servers so pages load fast. "It is stuff that does keep us up at night."

Consequently, Patel said, the company will vet applications before letting them onto Yahoo sites--especially for Yahoo Mail site, where so much personal information resides.

Venkat Panchapakesan

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Yahoo also wants to ensure users are in control when it comes to the permissions they grant to applications, said Venkat Panchapakesan, leader of Yahoo's audience technology group.

So it's tricky work for a lumbering giant. If successful, though, Yahoo will be able to reclaim some of the Internet initiative it once had in spades, potentially rearranging today's competitive landscape.

"Yes, we have lots of competitors," Filo said. "In some ways, we're opening up new level of competition by letting people build on top of us. Ultimately, this is good for the consumer and the Internet."

See also:
• Yahoo gives a taste of its 'open' overhaul
• David Filo: No browser for Yahoo
• Yahoo makes the case for Google search ads
• Yahoo 12-month price target cut
• Yahoo announces social networking app for iPhone
• Top Yahoo sales execs: One in, one out

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--Yahoo showed its vision for what its Yahoo Open Strategy makes possible, demonstrating how it hopes to engage users more by enabling its existing sites to grow beyond their current confines.

Yahoo's Ash Patel showed this Netflix application running within Yahoo's main Web page.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Ash Patel, head of Yahoo's Audience Products Division, showed an example that endowed the company's home page, search, and mail sites with the ability to deal with the Netflix video rental site.

The home page was endowed with a new Netflix application that showed movies Patel has ordered and those recommended for him. A search results, augmented with SearchMonkey technology, let him add new movies to his movie queue. And a mail application let him rate his movie directly within an e-mail.

The demonstration was designed to show what can be done by retooling the company's properties to provide a better experience for users--and more opportunities for advertisers.

"Yahoo allows developers to create applications for the world's biggest audience," Patel said. "By engaging developers to create experiences we can get the right experiences across the Web and bring those experiences into the Yahoo front page."

The demonstrations took place the day before Yahoo's Open Hack Day 2008 , in which about 300 outside programmers will see what they can do with Yahoo's technology.

Yahoo CTO Ari Balogh started off the discussion with members of the press at the company's headquarters talking about Yahoo Open Strategy (YOS). "This shows that Yahoo really wants to drive innovation for industry itself," he said. Yahoo plans on Friday and Saturday to let the developers play around with the YOS application platform, Yahoo Mail developer platform, and social programming interfaces.

Yahoo CTO Ari Balogh speaks of his company's coming open-door policy to outside programmers.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Update 10:45 a.m. PDT: "These developers will have preview access to YOS," Balogh said, including Yahoo Mail and My Yahoo. "They'll be able to see their stuff right there on the page."

Yahoo hopes customizing the Yahoo front page will make it essential for Web users, 300 million of whom visit the site monthly.

"For those 300 million people, that front page is very relevant and engaging," Patel said, but making it a foundation for new applications is important. "A couple other things would make that front page perfect for them. But what those one or two things are is different for me, different for you, different for everybody."

Update 11:05 a.m. PDT: Yahoo emphasized that the company will make changes, such as adding new widgets to Yahoo sites, only with users' permission. Balogh showed an example of a pop-up that lets users permit or deny a new application.

"It all comes back to creating a model where users can get to what they want to do quickly, with trust," Balogh said.

Update 11:26 a.m. PDT: Yahoo also is banking on bringing a programming foundation to other ways to use the Internet: mobile phones and televisions. Marco Boerries, head of Yahoo's Connected Life division, touted those efforts.

"We want to enable a mobile ecosystem for billions of users," Boerries said.

For mobile devices, Yahoo hopes programmers will use its Blueprint foundation, which Yahoo announced Wednesday now can be used to create standalone applications on mobile devices.

For TVs, Yahoo is working with Intel and other undisclosed partners to bring widgets to TV. Those widgets could run along the bottom or side of the screen or take it over completely, augmenting a TV show or replacing it completely with, for example, a Yahoo member's Flickr photos.

Programmers will soon get access to tools to write TV widgets. "Over the next few months, you will see an SDK," or software development kit, said Oliver Petry, a director of product management working on the TV program.

Among those who've expressed interest in the TV widget program are eBay, Twitter, ABC, CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, Plaxo, and Joost, Petry said. A demonstration featured many of those logos.

Dan Farber of CNET News contributed to this report.

This is a Netflix movie-scoring application running within Yahoo Mail.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Yahoo has released an API (application programming interface) that lets outside Web sites automatically extract information such as top 10 lists from the Yahoo Music site.

(Credit: Yahoo)

For example, a programmer can use the service to search for the numeric ID that Yahoo gives a particular musician, then use that ID to retrieve all the albums by that artist or to retrieve a list of artists Yahoo deems similar, according to self-described Yahoo music nerd Jim Bumgardner on the Yahoo Developer Network blog. The item ID for a particular video can be used to retrieve a thumbnail image for the video or the video itself.

There's a limit of 5,000 queries per day with the API.

The API is an example of Yahoo Open Strategy, the company's effort to open up its infrastructure to use by outside Web sites and to permit more third-party developers to build software that runs directly on Yahoo's sites.

For full details, see the Yahoo Music API site or its developer guide

National Public Radio, the home of humorist David Sedaris and the popular show All Things Considered, is opening up its API.

What NPR wants is for developers to help make it easier to share its content on Web sites and blogs, including those owned by the 860 NPR member stations.

Want to build a widget that will play Morning Edition on desktops or on Web sites or create mashups with NPR content? The nonprofit media organization will welcome you.

"This launch represents one of the first comprehensive Open APIs introduced by a major national media organization," the company said in a statement on Thursday.

NPR is like a lot of media companies. Managers are sitting on popular content but need ways to broaden the distribution, said Zach Brand, NPR's chief of technology strategy. They decided to seek help from developers.

"With six people here, we have a limited idea capacity," said Daniel Jacobson, NPR's director of application development. "Developers will come up with a lot of brilliant ideas."

Members of NPR's Open API development team will demonstrate its capabilities at the O'Reilly Open Source Conference in Portland, Ore., next week.