Thursday, November 12, 2009

Introducing GeoAPI.com From Mixer Labs

V2 of the GeoAPI
We recently launched a first version of the Mixer Labs GeoAPI. The GeoAPI makes it fast and easy for developers to generate a variety of location services (e.g. everything from annotation of tweets with nearby points of interest to FourSquare/GoWalla/Brightkite style check-in apps).

Since the launch, we have gotten an enormous amount of interest from a wide spectrum of developers - everything from mobile app developers working on iPhone and Android location broadcast apps through to social media apps and even from large enterprises with geo-tagged datasets.

You told us what features you think are most important to add to our GeoAPI. We are really excited to let everyone know that we have put out a new rev of the API with some of the highest priority features including:
  • GeoAPI.com domain. We are re-launching and re-branding as GeoAPI.com to make it easy for developers to find and access information about the Mixer Labs GeoAPI.
  • Media Layers. We have added the ability to search additional media layers such as Twitter and Flickr by geo-location. For example, want to see all the Tweets restricted to the Mission District polygon? You can do it. Want to see all the Flickr photos with lat/lon coordinates bounded by Dolores park? You can do that too.
  • Attribute search on entities. We make it even easier to search our API for businesses or POI across multiple categories or attributes. For example, you an do a point radius search for "dive bars open past 2am within 2 miles of Houston and Mott in NYC" for your "late night in NYC" app. If you want to see only the nearby movie theaters for a movie app - it is now a simple query away.
  • Tiny URLs and Link Open Data for places. We have added the tiny URL domain geo.am to provide a short hand by which you can canonically refer to locations based on our GUIDs. This means a single entity will always be findable within the framework we provide.
  • iPhone SDK. We have added a library to make it easy for developers to use our API in your iPhone app.
  • Higher Queries Per Day limits. We have raised our QPD from 5,000 to 20,000. This give more room for you as a developer to grow on our service. If you need higher QPD, feel free to just email us.
  • Intersection Data. We have added data for over 10 million intersections in the USA. You can see a sample view of an intersection here inluding nearby Tweets and Flickr photos.
Demos
We have added two demos (each written in a few hours, which shows how much the GeoAPI simplifies geo-app development.)

Demo A: Media Layers - Tweets and Flickr Photos Organized by Neighborhood.
This demo highlights the new media layers we have added to the GeoAPI. We make it easy for you to see the Tweets, Flickr photos, and other media associated with any polygon stored in our system (e.g. neighborhood, city, parks, etc.) .

In this demo you can restrict a tweet stream by neighborhood polygons. This allows you to view e.g. all the Tweets in the Mission District, or Flickr photos from SOMA, in San Francisco.
See demos Tweets, Flickr Photos.




Demo B: What's Near Me app in Javascript for the iPhone.
In this demo (written in literally a few hours) you can access a page using your iPhone's Safari Browser. The iPhone sends us your lat/lon coordinates, and then we give you a categorized view of nearby businesses. This is similar to early iPhone location apps like iWant except instead of a client app it is written entirely in JavaScript/HTML. Similarly, someone could use the same attribute search aspect of the API to very easily write a "Nearest Parking Lot" application.

Access the demo: Go on your iPhone to:
http://geoapi.com/demos/wnm/ or http://bit.ly/31ZABT.


You can see other demos of the API here:
  1. "Nearest POI to a Tweet" (this demo also has a mobile version if you use your iPhone http://bit.ly/46pls2)
  2. Twitter neighborhood annotation. (this was purely done in a few lines of javascript)
  3. Check-ins app done solely in javascript.

Sign up for the API here.

Follow us on Twitter here.

We'd love to hear more of your feedback, so please drop us a line in the comments below.

10 comments:

  1. I do all of my work in the international sector; specifically in developing countries. Although technology penetration is sometimes very low, new media is becoming more widely used, including 3G-level media sharing.
    The one problem, however, is that most of these locations are not properly (or just not very well) geo-coded.
    So I guess my question is - where are you getting your geocoding database data, and is it constantly learning/expanding?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Does this work with other countries? (Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, etc?)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for the questions on internationalization. We are working on adding international data and will post another announcement here when it goes live.

    If people are interested in specific countries, please list them here or email api at geoapi dot com.

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Elad,

    I'm developing several mapping/LBS services for Israel. Problem is Google Maps has no 3rd party support for Israel in map display or geocoding.

    see http://code.google.com/p/gmaps-api-issues/issues/detail?id=664

    Will your service include Israel?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi Gil,
    We will be adding simple support for Israel soon. This will be country/city polygons for basic reverse geocoding and some POI data.

    Feel free to email me with your specific needs - info at geoapi dot com

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi,

    I am developing an application for iPhone.I need to know the keywords for Bar,Banking&ATMs,Gas Stations,Shoping,SuperMarket,Parking.Please help me.


    Thanks in advance

    ReplyDelete
  7. where are there 2 location dots in the map view

    ReplyDelete
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  9. Hello
    how about Japan? are you going to add support for this country soon?
    Thanks in advance

    ReplyDelete
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