Developer tools

Ribbit on Monday announced details of its Web-based telephony business, which includes a developer platform and plans for a voice service for consumers next year.

The company has built a telephony switch that can connect Web-based phone calls to a variety of phone networks, including voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, services like Skype.

As previously reported, developers can access those voice services through Flex-based application programming interfaces (APIs) and with Adobe Systems' Flash browser plug-in.

Through the APIs, developers can add the ability to send and receive calls from a Web application and transcribe a voice message into text. … Read more

Update 2:20 p.m. PST: I added some more details and a reaction.

Amazon.com has begun publicly testing a third element to its online computing services: a database capability called SimpleDB.

The new Web service joins two others the online retailer launched in 2006 that anyone can pay to use: computing horsepower called the Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) and data storage called Simple Storage Service (S3). SimpleDB works in conjunction with those services, letting customers store, modify, and query data, the company said Friday.

"Amazon SimpleDB provides quick, efficient storage and retrieval of your data to support … Read more

When Google unveiled its OpenSocial developer initiative at the end of October, observers hailed it as the future of the social Web.

But is the search king already too late to the party?

It's been over six weeks, and OpenSocial--which uses open-source code to allow any participating social media site to implement a common set of application program interfaces (APIs) and create "universal" applications--isn't finished, though developers believe it will be ready early in 2008. In the meantime, a number of partners have launched independent developer platform strategies, and Facebook has announced that other social … Read more

This post has been updated with information about Bebo's implementation of Facebook's code.

And now, for something we didn't see coming: Facebook has announced that the architecture for its developer platform will be made available to other social-networking sites, potentially rendering moot the criticism that its strategy is too "closed"--and potentially dealing a huge blow to Google's yet-to-launch OpenSocial initiative.

Facebook senior platform manager Ami Vora posted a blog entry Wednesday with the announcement. "(We) want to share the benefits of our work by enabling other social sites to use our platform … Read more

This post was updated at 10:18 a.m. PST to add information about Bebo's plans for OpenSocial.

SAN FRANCISCO--When Bebo co-founder and CEO Michael Birch took the stage in a theater at the Metreon complex here to announce the social network's Open Application Platform, he made the eyebrow-raising claim that the new initiative was, "dare I say it, 100 percent compatible with the Facebook platform."

Bebo representatives had hinted at Facebook compatibility last month when the social network officially joined Google's OpenSocial initiative. The new platform officially goes live on Wednesday night. "There'… Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Right now I'm in a theater at San Francisco's Metreon complex, awaiting the official launch of social-networking site Bebo's "Open Application Platform." The announcement has not yet been made, but from what I gather, this will be exactly what we think it is.

The Social Times reported Tuesday that the youth-oriented Bebo, which has made its strongest inroads in the U.K., would be "announcing a number of partners including the usual suspects: iLike, Last.FM, Vampires, Where I've Been, Flixster, Horoscopes by RockYou, My Music by Qloud, Super Comments by RockYou, … Read more

How green is your Web site? CO2Stats will add up the time visitors spend at your site and then estimate how much carbon dioxide is expended in powering the personal PCs and servers involved.

The CO2Stats widget can be added to a Web site or blog just by cutting and pasting some code. Based upon visitor traffic, the service's ticker will count the carbons and then pay the equivalent in offsets to Sustainable Travel International. That nonprofit funds renewable energy and development in the developing world, in addition to green power projects in North America.

However, CO2Stats doesn't … Read more

The Affero General Public License, a new variation of the seminal General Public License (GPL) specifically for one situation the regular GPL doesn't address, is now final.

The Affero GPL contains a provision specifically for situations when software it governs is accessible as a service over a network. Where the GPL treats that situation as a private use of software, permitting the user to keep any changes private, the Affero GPL lets programmers include a requirement that users of the software must be able to download it when it's offered as a network service.

The Free Software Foundation, … Read more

It's a good time for talented developers. Architects of Web and client-side apps have their choice of dazzling users on not one, but three cutting-edge mobile platforms. There's no shortage of opportunities to create custom Safari apps for the iPhone, and add them to our growing collection of iPhone apps, of course. Developers can also now download the Android SDK (for Mac or Windows) to start measuring and mixing an app for Google's new mobile platform. Inspired developers have a chance to earn a share of the $10 million in prizes offered in the Android Developer Challenge.… Read more