api – StartUpArabia

Watwet Opens Up Their Platform Through Public API

July 22, 2009July 22, 2009 MMM

Watwet, the Arab social networking and micro-blogging platform, has gone on and taken another big step forward by releasing a public API covering the different methods and functionalities of the service.

Methods covered include ones to get user and friend timelines, search, follow and unfollow users, retrieve lists of followers and friends, and of course send updates, among others.

This means that developers can now easily integrate the different Watwet functionalities into other web, mobile and desktop applications.

The full documentation for the Watwet API is available at developer.watwet.com.

This comes not long after them providing users the possibility to link their Watwet and Twitter accounts, in a way that anything posted to Watwet gets automatically posted to Twitter and vice versa.

On another note, Watwet also went ahead and changed its interface moving to a simple “following/follower” model, instead of the previous “friendship” model that was based on reciprocal agreement from two people to become friends.

G.ho.st Launches API To Enable Third-Party Web Applications

May 18, 2009May 18, 2009 MMM 6 Comments

G.ho.st, the free open web based operating system / virtual computer, has launched an API aimed at allowing third party application developers to add any web-based application to G.ho.st easily and with a tight integration to the system’s data and preferences.

The API allows the following specific functions (all subject to appropriate user consent)

Allow a user to launch a third-party web application visually integrated in a window on the G.ho.st Desktop
Allow the third-party to rely on G.ho.st authentication to effect single sign-on
Allow a file to be passed to the web application for viewing/editing and to be saved back to G.ho.st Drive
Provide a full file system to the web application by offering full read/write access to the user’s G.ho.st Drive using Webdav
Pass user preferences like language, font, etc. from G.ho.st to the third-party application

The API is designed to be very light weight with a simple convenient approach to launching third-party applications by a URL and passing data as parameters to that URL.

The API was also built to be completely technology agnostic; accepting any web application with any backend as long as it is launched in a web page through a URL.

These web applications have to be hosted at the web application developer’s own expense on any server or platform of their choice, as G.ho.st currently don’t provide any hosting for these third party applications. A special case exists for applications that can be compiled into a single file.

For more details on the API, check the G.ho.st API Page.

Yamli Officially Releases Free API Allowing Easy Integration of Arabic Transliteration Into Any Website

October 9, 2008October 9, 2008 MMM 4 Comments

Yamli has officially released its free API that allows the easy integration of its award-winning Arabic transliteration technology into any website. Yamli’s Smart Arabic Keyboard allows users to type Arabic using Latin characters by converting their words in real time into Arabic text. Third-party websites using the API can reach a larger group of Arabic speaking visitors who would otherwise find typing Arabic difficult.

According to co-founder Habib Haddad, “We are very excited about making this technology available to any website for free. We hope it will encourage every user to be more engaged with the Arabic language not only on Yamli.com but on all Arabic sites and blogs. Our approach makes a significant contribution to the Arabic web by actually reducing the proliferation of transliterated Arabic words and converting them into real Arabic words,” concluded Haddad.

Various studies show that a large portion of Arabic internet users shy away from typing Arabic, choosing instead to write Arabic phonetically using Latin characters in an ad-hoc and informal fashion. The transliteration of Arabic words and the limited availability of Arabic keyboards have stymied the use of Arabic on the web. By making it easy for everyone to type in Arabic, Yamli.com is making the Arabic language more accessible for every day users, and helping to promote Arabic content on the web.

According to George Akra, Co-founder of Ikbis, the popular photo and video sharing service, “I think Yamli is one of the most innovative and useful services in the region, plugging the API to our site was easy and lead to the increase of Arabic comments on Ikbis.com. The simplicity and accuracy of the service is just remarkable,” concluded Akra.

The technology allows users to fully engage with Arabic content on blogs, e-commerce, social networking, education, government, video and music websites. The API, which has been undergoing testing since March with selected partners, such as Maktoob, Annahar, Moheet, ART TV, 3alarasi, and Babnet, has already been used by hundreds of thousands of users already.

According to Sami Tueni, the General Manager of Naharnet, a leading Lebanese news and services portal, “Yamli is the best contribution to the Arab web. So easy to implement, it was the long awaited tool to help the Arabic language flourish online,” concluded Tueni.

You can get more info about the API at www.yamli.com/api

The Arabic version of StartUpArabia has been using the Yamli API for quite some time now, integrating the very useful Arabic transliteration functionalities in the user comments area. It was really easy to setup and integrate, and only took a couple of minutes time.

But to make things even easier and straight-forward for website developers to integrate the Yamli functionalities into their websites, a new easy setup page has been added that enables developers to configure the Yamli API and generate the bit of code needed to integrate it exactly the way they need it.

On another note, in a recent conversation with Yamli co-founder Habib Haddad, he shared the info that Yamli is working on an exciting big new project that aims to take Arabic search to a whole new level, making it much more relevant for Arab search users. More details will follow about this project as they become available.

Dwwen Arab Blog Aggregator To Launch API Soon

June 22, 2008June 22, 2008 MMM 4 Comments

Dwwen, the popular Arab blog aggregator, almost shut down recently due to financial and resource burdens. Luckily a flow of supportive messages, and a generous offer by an Arab blogger to help the service out with the necessary server resources changed the aggregator’s destiny and gave it a new lease on life.

Now Dwwen are working on an API that they’ll be releasing very soon, in a move to open up their service and make the information aggregated in it more available and usable to everyone.

We got to play around with the inside beta of the API, and it’s really easy and simple to use. The API currently allows the pulling of articles directly from Dwwen; it provides the possibility to specify the number of articles you want to pull, the language of the pulled posts (Arabic, English or both), and whether you want to get the latest articles or the most popular ones.

A number of applications are also being built around the API, one of them using Adobe AIR, which is proving to be a pretty popular choice for internet applications on the desktop.

# Dwwen

The Importance Of Having An API For Arab Startups

May 30, 2008May 30, 2008 MMM 15 Comments

Over the past few years, one of the really important trends and directions we’ve been seeing with online services is the move towards opening their platforms, mainly through APIs (Application programming interfaces), so that people can build a set of tools around them, pull or push information through them easily, and so as to make it easier for other platforms to talk to their platform as well.

When it comes to the tools developed around these platforms, we find tools that use the base functionalities provided by the platform, just making them easier to use by providing different interfaces and clients for the application; and other tools that extend the application further by providing complimentary functionalities that make it even more interesting for more users.

In both of these cases, having people developing these kinds of tools, and users adopting them, can only be good for the service, mainly because it helps build a community of users around the service, spreads it even further into the mainstream, and because it also provides clearer ideas for growth through the different uses the application is being used for.

On the other hand, having the possibility for other platforms to talk to their platform provides users of both platforms with an added-value, which can only be good, building user loyalty and growing both services’ user bases.

In the Arab online startup scene, we can’t really find that many examples of services opening up their platforms through APIs, even though I think it’s even more important and crucial in the Arab internet context.

Arab startups don’t have as much access to funding as their US or international counterparts, meaning that they have less flexibility and ability to grow their service into a central point that can be everything for everyone, so it’d be more interesting if they could just concentrate on one area, that they could fully develop and do very well, and then open it up so that other specialized services can plug in and communicate with it, in a way that we end up with a group of online applications that compliment each other and work together successfully.

Just taking the example of Yamli that recently opened up their linguistic service through an API, we can see that the online services that have integrated the functionality in their systems have easily provided an added-value for their users without having to invest a lot of time into developing a solution of their own, leaving them the time to concentrate on their main business, while Yamli see a growth in their user base and can continue to develop their solution even more.

In the end it’s a win-win situation for both the providing service and the consuming one.

Language Analytics Release Yamli API

April 28, 2008April 28, 2008 MMM 6 Comments

Language Analytics, the company behind Yamli, the really cool web-based tool that solves the problem of Arab users who don’t have an Arabic keyboard or who aren’t as comfortable typing in Arabic, by enabling them to type Arabic words out phonetically using English characters, and then converts these transliterations into Arabic characters, have recently released an API for the service.

Language Analytics previously released a Yamli facebook application that lets users plug in Yamli features into facebook textboxes for message writing. And now to further open up their service comes the API, which should be pretty easy to setup and integrate with any other service.

This is a great move from them, giving developers the possibility to tap into their technology and use it in their own platforms; Something I wish more and more Arab startups would start doing.

I also hear the Yamli team are working on a WordPress plugin to bring its functionalities to WordPress blogs; which is really cool, and something I was going to ask for when I launch the Arabic version of this blog.

The API is in beta now; If you’re interested in testing it out to integrate their functionalities into your own service, you can apply for an invite to the beta; and check out the API documentation.