API news…
- Yahoo! not only announced unlimited storage for their Yahoo! Mail service recently, but - according to GigaOM - is also going to add an API to their mail-platform soon, enabling third-party developers to build on top of probably the most popular mailing-product on the web.
- TechCrunch reports on upcoming extensions to the Twitter API, which will allow developers to send SMS-posts to single, targetted Twitter-accounts (currently its only possible to send to all followers of an account). the implications might be profound, as TechCrunch and others have noticed:
Currently, it costs a lot of money to launch a start-up in the SMS/mobile space - you have to license a shortcode monthly ($500-$1000/mo), pay a SMS gateway provider, and then pay anywhere from $0.03 - $0.05 per inbound or outbound text message. It adds up. But now, if a start-up chooses to use Twitter as a command line to their web service, it’s free (until Twitter starts charging for it).
however, the upcoming API-features haven’t been announced officialy yet.
[...] is all about personal micro-blogging and basically a waste of time, think again. with their recent API-extension, it’s now possible to integrate Twitter as a cost-free SMS gateway into your own applications [...]