The mainstream media backed social news site Mixx announced today the availability of its new Application Programming Interface and the offering gives developers an opportunity to do things that no other social news site has done so far. The API will allow news items and media to be viewed, submitted and commented on from any other site around the web.

Mixx is a service that lets users vote on top news stories. Though far, far smaller than Digg, Mixx has innovated at a pace that makes Digg look like it's standing still.

Mixx has taken investment from the LA Times, it's integrated into that company's site, has a submission button on the New York Times and is on a growing roster of other sites around the web.

The Good News

A read/write API is quite unusual, particularly in the social news market. Digg's API, for example, only allows other sites to read data from Digg, not to post new data to the site from off-site.

Prolific API developer Matt King, co-founder of services like Unthirsty, Knitmap and the very useful Twitterlocal, told us he's intrigued. "It's a pretty sweet idea," he said. "I can see that submitting or commenting via Facebook would be interesting or building a bot that can pull stories down and do stuff with them."

Story continued below.

The Not So Good News

In addition to his interest, though, King articulated what will undoubtedly be some common concerns. "I don't like that you have to post XML data to get multiple tags - you should be able to pass tags in the URL just like the other methods," he told us. "In the end, it's another API you have to get familiar with, which sucks. I'm tired of learning new APIs - we need API standards."

John Musser of API mega-blog ProgrammableWeb says the company gets points for thinking about versioning at the API's launch, something few API providers think of. He's critical of Mixx's lack of support for data formats like JSON and OAuth too, though.

Unfortunately the Mixx API launched with just one example app built on it, the fabulous new service YackTrack. YackTrack, which we wrote about here, is a great idea but is a relatively simple application and doesn't leverage the write-capabilities of the API it's demonstrating. In our post on the pros and cons of APIs and developer platforms, API management service Mashery's Oren Michels said that two key steps to launching a good API was to have plenty of example apps at launch and to make API keys available immediately at no cost. Mixx keys are available immediately for free.

How The Future Could Look

Hopefully Mixx will be responsive to its developer community and the API will only improve. Given the nature of the company, that seems quite likely. If the service can continue to mature, we may see some pretty sophisticated Mixx functionality creeping into all kinds of different websites. Even before this API launched, Mixx has had everything Digg has and far more - except the network effect and traffic. The API will make the Mixx experience all the more fantastic for users new and old.

Someday a big destination site like Digg may look like just an early example of a far more complex social news market. Either way, competition is a very good thing. For further discussion of the Mixx API, check out the latest episode of Mixx fan-podcast SocialBlend, where fans and Mixx staff discussed the API launch.

Because police don’t have enough ways to ruin my weekend, a company called AcuNetx (I spelled that right) has developed a device called the HawkEye, a non-invasive device that scans the eyes of drivers to tell their intoxication levels.

It’s not meant for field stops so much as checkpoints, which are illegal in many states, and requires a laptop and hand-held device to operate. It detects movements of the pupils as they react to certain stimuli to determine sobriety levels.

The HawkEye itself can’t exactly determine the BOC, something needed as evidence, but will give probable cause for a full field test.

You teetotalers have nothing to fear, but those of us with lives are keeping a wary on the fun-killing Big Brother. Personally, I find it offensive that they would attempt to interfere with my goal of endorsing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happy hour.

What it does

Streamzy.com is a very fast and easy to use search engine that searches for music that can be streamed directly in your web browser making it unnecessary to download anything. They also claim to be working on some additional functionality that will allow users to also search for and stream videos in the near future. A quick test of the site proved that it is very fast, easy to use, and gives an impressive number of results for a wide variety of music. Anyone can use Streamzy to listen to music in their browser and those who register for free can also save music that they have listened to and organize it into playlists that are playable in any web browser.

In their own words

“Streamzy is a media search utility (powered by Seeqpod) that allows users to search for media, stream it, and create and save playlists. For more information regarding the media provided by this site, please refer to Seeqpod.com.”

Why it might be a killer

The player itself is well-designed and the search engine is effective and quick. The ability to make playslists and play them from anywhere will certainly be enjoyed by users as well.

Some questions

When will streaming video be incorporated? Video would allow them differentiate themselves from the many mp3 sites and give the site a better chance of surviving.

Updates


 » original news

Tomorrow we welcome those with emailed invites to Red Sky at 47 E. 29th Street between Park and Madison.

We’d like to thank our sponsors again. If you got an email for the wait list spots, congratulations. If you didn’t, there’s always next time. See you tomorrow! Hopefully Marvel doesn’t shut us down. After all, Matt Hickey is coming dressed as No-Pants Spiderman.

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A little NSFW near the middle. Be warned.

It’s business time, TC readers. Tomorrow we welcome those with emailed invites to Red Sky at 47 E. 29th Street between Park and Madison.

We’d like to thank our sponsors again. If you got an email for the wait list spots, congratulations. If you didn’t, there’s always next time. See you tomorrow! Hopefully Marvel doesn’t shut us down. After all, Matt Hickey is coming dressed as No-Pants Spiderman.

Gold Sponsors

(more…)

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and deep-pocketed financier of a number of Web businesses, including Linden Lab (Second Life) and 37signals, has invested $3 million into the company whose focus is social online gaming.

The lucky recipient of the funds is Kongregate, a site which started in June of 2006, and which currently has more than 4,000 games from 1,600 developers all over the world. According to Scott Harris at SiliconValley, Mr Bezos invested the funds via his personal investment company, Bezos Expeditions.

Currently the site is trying to work on a revenue-sharing system for its developers that would allow the creators of the more popular games to receive a larger portion of the revenue.

Correction: We erroneously said the site was self-funded up until now, but this has been corrected and they had received a previous funding of $5 million from Greylock.

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GTA IV fever is far from over, and the controversies are still pouring in. But for one organization, it’s not the sexual content or graphic violence of the game that they find objectionable, it’s the in-game drunk driving.

MADD, or Mothers Against an Average Weekend, released this statement today:

Each year nearly 13,500 people die in drunk driving crashes and another half a million are injured in alcohol-related traffic crashes. This is why MADD is extremely disappointed by the decision of the manufacturers of the game Grand Theft Auto IV to include a game module where players have to drive drunk. Drunk driving is not a game and it is not a joke. Drunk driving is a choice, a violent crime and it is also 100 percent preventable. MADD is calling on the Entertainment Software Ratings Board to reclassify Grand Theft Auto IV as an Adults Only game, a step up from the current rating of Mature and for the manufacturer to consider a stop in distribution – if not out of responsibility to society then out of respect for the millions of victims/survivors of drunk driving.

True enough, but does it really qualify — over the other, more obvious questionable material in the game — as something that should have a dreaded AO rating?

When Devin skewered the MacBook Air some time ago, he was summarily insulted and burned in virtual effigy; we all laughed at him in the chat room. Far from being useless, however, one valid criticism against the MacBook Air was that it wasn’t portable enough. How could Apple leave out built-in EVDO, no one said? Rather than complain about, one Jordan Bunnell took the Apple by its core or some other stupid metaphor and installed his own damn EVDO module. Hello, world indeed!

The man, armed only with a Veriozn USB727 Aircard, a soldering iron, the heart of a lion and the free time of a loaf-about, managed to get the card working as clear as day.

I have zero engineering ability, so I won’t even pretend to re-tell exactly what he did, but all the pictures are dynamic.

Pretty neat, deep and otherworldly cynicism aside.

via MacNN

Filed under: Digital Cameras

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