views:

268

answers:

8

Web services and web APIs have managed to increase the accessibility of the information stored and catalogued on the internet. They have also opened up a vast array of enterprise power functionality for smaller thin client applications.

By taping into these services developers can provide functionality that would have taken them months perhaps years to set up. They can combine them into single applications that make life generally easier for its users.

Whether displaying information about the music being played, finding items of interest in the locale of the user or just simply tweeting and blogging from the same application - the possibilities are growing everyday.

I want to know about the most interesting or useful services that are out there, especially ones that most of us may not have heard about yet. Do you maintain an API or service? or do you have a clever mash up that provides even more benefits than the originals?

+7  A: 

YQL - Yahoo provide a tool that lets you query many different API's across the web, even for sites that don't provide an API as such.

From the site:

The Yahoo! Query Language is an expressive SQL-like language that lets you query, filter, and join data across Web services.

...

With YQL, developers can access and shape data across the Internet through one simple language, eliminating the need to learn how to call different APIs.

Oded
I do think this is a good api seen as it effectively turns almost any url into a queryable data set.
Matt Smith
+3  A: 

It's very niche, but I happen to think the OpenCongress API is amazing.

Less niche: Google Translate has an API which will guess the language of something. You'd be AMAZED how frequently this comes in handy (even though it's not as tweakable as you'd like and is not trained on small samples).

Arkaaito
+2  A: 

I was just about to have a stab at using the SoundCloud API

I know many people who already use for sharing their musical masterpieces and its a pretty good site. Hopefully the api will be as well!

Addsy
Wow, this site (SoundCloud) is really cool! How do they fund themselves? I thought of building something in that vein some time back, but decided storage costs would be too high.
Arkaaito
+5  A: 

The World Bank API is pretty cool. Google uses it in search results. My favourite implementations are the cartograms at worldmapper. Tourist Destinations

grenade
This is a very interesting API the potential is very good, It's quite specialised which is why I have accepted YQL but you get a vote from me for pointing it out.
Matt Smith
A: 

I like the RESTful API for weather.com. It's free and very useful for the new age of location-aware apps: https://registration.weather.com/ursa/xmloap/step1

It does require registration, but they don't spam you or anything - it's just to provide you a key to use the API.

jckdnk111
A: 

Ah yes - here's another one I've been meaning to check out but haven't tried yet

The BBC offer a bunch of apis/feeds that look very promising

http://ideas.welcomebackstage.com/data

They include apis for accessing schedule data for both TV and Radio listings along with all kinds of news searches. It even looks like they'll be offering some sort of geo-location service soon so it will be interesting to see what that has to offer

Addsy
I had no idea the BBC offered so much information from their service. I especially like the extra links they have especially to `http://www.nearby.org.uk` I've used this in the past the information is fantastic for anyone mapping stuff in the UK.
Matt Smith
A: 

Another interesting one for liberal brits! ;)

The Guardian news paper have their own api

http://www.guardian.co.uk/open-platform

Addsy
A: 

MuiscBrainz
Excellent service for music mashups.
Not so many knows that Last.FM initial database was scraped from this service.

Sug