Yahoo: Create Apps for Our Services

As the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference gets underway this week, "mashup" has become the buzzword of the Web. Yahoo is opening up four APIs for developers to create mashups, along with an Application Gallery to showcase third party solutions that have been built atop Google services.

Mashups are Web sites or applications that take two different content sources and combine them into one experience. For example, a developer could integrate Craiglist apartment listings with Google Maps to enable users to visually see nearby rentals on a single screen.

To that end, Yahoo is offering up its Photo, Shopping and Calendar APIs for those interested in building such mashups. The Shopping API includes a browse function to narrow searches within a specific product category, while the Calendar API exposes Yahoo's service to any Web site.

Yahoo also plans to open the API to its MyWeb 2.0 service in the coming months. MyWeb serves as a bookmark sharing service.

"Developers play an important role in helping to enhance Yahoo!'s vast network of services," said Yahoo chief product officer Ash Patel in a statement. "These new APIs along with new tools available on the Developer Network will continue to foster an environment of creativity and innovation that ultimately benefits Yahoo!'s users."

To help users discover applications written for Yahoo services such as Maps, Flickr and Search, the company has opened a new Application Gallery that provides a centralized location for established and new applications. Applications and plug-ins written for Yahoo! Music Engine will also be highlighted on the site.