Flickr releases new real-time developer tools in time for Photo Hack Day

Just in time for the August 20-21 Photo Hack Day, Flickr has unleashed some new tools for providing real-time photo data to web apps.

That means you can soon look forward to apps that make more extensive — and immediate — use of what’s going on in your Flickr photo stream and those of your friends.

Back in June, the photo-sharing service allowed developers to access photos and favorites from a user’s contacts in their applications using some of Flickr’s nifty PuSH API methods.

As Flickr’s “nils” noted in the Flickr developer blog, those methods were “pretty neat, but that barely scratches the surface of stuff that happens on Flickr that people might be interested in. So we added some more stuff to subscribe to.”

The new APIs make use of Pubsubhubbub (for instant notifications when something is published — say, a new photo) and allow developers to grab a lot more interesting data for their users, including:

Photos of youPhotos of your contactsYour photos and favoritesPhotos from a specific area (using geodata)Photos with a certain tag or tagsImages from the Flickr CommonsAnd, of course, photos and favorites from your contacts

When grabbing photos from the Commons, you can specify a particular institution or institutions to pull from — for example, you could just get pics from the Smithsonian and the White House. Or, you could scrape all photos and updates from the Flickr Commons in real time.

As for geodata, you can specify an area using a point and radius or a set of WOE IDs, the subscribe to images from that area. This would be handy for getting a real-time stream of photos of tourists “holding up” the Leaning Tower of Pisa, to name a terrible example that should never be implemented by anyone.

Etsy developer Kellan Elliot-McCrea was kind enough to post about how to get started with the new APIs, including some lovely PHP snippets.

Flickr will be at Photo Hack Day (or, more accurately, Photo Hack Weekend) in New York City this weekend. Flickr dev Paul Mison will be on hand to talk about the Flickr APIs and answer questions.

Image courtesy of Flickr, gagilas.

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Tags: API, developers, hackathon, pubsubhubbub

Companies: Flickr

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Biochemical developer Aurora Algae raises $22M

Aurora Algae, a developer of biofuels and biochemicals produced from processed algae, announced today that it has raised $22 million in its most recent round of funding.

The company is part of a small set of funded biologically-produced chemical companies that produce a diverse number of biochemical products, such as feed stock and transportation fuel. These types of companies have experienced a recent string of successful exits. Biofuel makers Solazyme, Amyris and KiOR all successfully filed to go public and made their trading debuts in the past year. While investing in the biofuel sector as a whole fell last year, companies that produce a diverse range of products from their biochemicals experienced record investing, according to a report by Lux Research.

“You’re?starting to see a realization that we came to a year ago, if you’re growing a base commodity you should go after the highest-value markets and not just biofuels,” Aurora Algae chief executive Greg Bafalis told VentureBeat. “Biofuels will eventually come, but they shouldn’t be your focus now.”

Investors made fewer investments in the biofuels sector as a whole, and invested a larger amount of money in a smaller set of companies. That’s because most biofuel companies have started to mature, and with fewer new biofuel companies emerging in the past year, they are either in a position to raise their third and fourth rounds of funding or to go public.

“I think you’re starting to see a little bit of a shakeout for the companies that are a little more advanced in their processes,” Bafalis said. “We’re?starting with the low-hanging fruit, the easy stuff to start off with that has high value.”

Aurora Algae produces chemicals that the company converts to “nutriceuticals,” which basically equates to feed stock and protein-rich biomass products. The company cultivates a strain of algae that is rich in omega-3 fatty acids and, when processed, creates a petrochemical that is similar the palm oil the company converts for a number of other products.

The company plans to use this funding to start construction of its first facility to produce commercial-grade biochemicals. The company is currently running trial runs at a demonstration plant in Australia, which should be complete later this year. Aurora Algae has raised $72 million to date.

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Tags: algae, biochemicals, biofuels, investing, Venture Capital

Companies: Amyris, Aurora Algae, KiOR, Solazyme

People: Greg Bafalis

View the original article here

Flickr releases new real-time developer tools in time for Photo Hack Day

Just in time for the August 20-21 Photo Hack Day, Flickr has unleashed some new tools for providing real-time photo data to web apps.

That means you can soon look forward to apps that make more extensive — and immediate — use of what’s going on in your Flickr photo stream and those of your friends.

Back in June, the photo-sharing service allowed developers to access photos and favorites from a user’s contacts in their applications using some of Flickr’s nifty PuSH API methods.

As Flickr’s “nils” noted in the Flickr developer blog, those methods were “pretty neat, but that barely scratches the surface of stuff that happens on Flickr that people might be interested in. So we added some more stuff to subscribe to.”

The new APIs make use of Pubsubhubbub (for instant notifications when something is published — say, a new photo) and allow developers to grab a lot more interesting data for their users, including:

Photos of youPhotos of your contactsYour photos and favoritesPhotos from a specific area (using geodata)Photos with a certain tag or tagsImages from the Flickr CommonsAnd, of course, photos and favorites from your contacts

When grabbing photos from the Commons, you can specify a particular institution or institutions to pull from — for example, you could just get pics from the Smithsonian and the White House. Or, you could scrape all photos and updates from the Flickr Commons in real time.

As for geodata, you can specify an area using a point and radius or a set of WOE IDs, the subscribe to images from that area. This would be handy for getting a real-time stream of photos of tourists “holding up” the Leaning Tower of Pisa, to name a terrible example that should never be implemented by anyone.

Etsy developer Kellan Elliot-McCrea was kind enough to post about how to get started with the new APIs, including some lovely PHP snippets.

Flickr will be at Photo Hack Day (or, more accurately, Photo Hack Weekend) in New York City this weekend. Flickr dev Paul Mison will be on hand to talk about the Flickr APIs and answer questions.

Image courtesy of Flickr, gagilas.

Next Story: Week in review: Meet IBM’s first chip modeled on the human?brain
Previous Story: Twitter unveils Bootstrap, a toolkit for lightning-fast web app?deployment

Tags: API, developers, hackathon, pubsubhubbub

Companies: Flickr

View the original article here

Biochemical developer Aurora Algae raises $22M

Aurora Algae, a developer of biofuels and biochemicals produced from processed algae, announced today that it has raised $22 million in its most recent round of funding.

The company is part of a small set of funded biologically-produced chemical companies that produce a diverse number of biochemical products, such as feed stock and transportation fuel. These types of companies have experienced a recent string of successful exits. Biofuel makers Solazyme, Amyris and KiOR all successfully filed to go public and made their trading debuts in the past year. While investing in the biofuel sector as a whole fell last year, companies that produce a diverse range of products from their biochemicals experienced record investing, according to a report by Lux Research.

“You’re?starting to see a realization that we came to a year ago, if you’re growing a base commodity you should go after the highest-value markets and not just biofuels,” Aurora Algae chief executive Greg Bafalis told VentureBeat. “Biofuels will eventually come, but they shouldn’t be your focus now.”

Investors made fewer investments in the biofuels sector as a whole, and invested a larger amount of money in a smaller set of companies. That’s because most biofuel companies have started to mature, and with fewer new biofuel companies emerging in the past year, they are either in a position to raise their third and fourth rounds of funding or to go public.

“I think you’re starting to see a little bit of a shakeout for the companies that are a little more advanced in their processes,” Bafalis said. “We’re?starting with the low-hanging fruit, the easy stuff to start off with that has high value.”

Aurora Algae produces chemicals that the company converts to “nutriceuticals,” which basically equates to feed stock and protein-rich biomass products. The company cultivates a strain of algae that is rich in omega-3 fatty acids and, when processed, creates a petrochemical that is similar the palm oil the company converts for a number of other products.

The company plans to use this funding to start construction of its first facility to produce commercial-grade biochemicals. The company is currently running trial runs at a demonstration plant in Australia, which should be complete later this year. Aurora Algae has raised $72 million to date.

Next Story: Report: webOS ran twice as fast on an iPad 2 than on the?TouchPad
Previous Story: Zurb pulls its annual all-nighter for Rebekah Children’s?Services

Tags: algae, biochemicals, biofuels, investing, Venture Capital

Companies: Amyris, Aurora Algae, KiOR, Solazyme

People: Greg Bafalis

View the original article here

Disabling the iOS Beta 5 Apple installs and developer of accounts on sales of device Slots? [Update: the old betas expire?]

Since late last night, MacRumors has received some reports of users who have seen their devices running different beta versions of iOS 5 closing down and returning to the mode of activation. Reports have been sporadic, with some users suggesting that beta previous versions may simply have been expiring and was disabled by Apple.

But, according to a report from Karthik.K (via AppleInsider), deactivations appear to be an effort by Apple to crack down against the registered developers who have been selling them additional beta slots to provide access to beta versions 5 iOS non-developers. Developers who have sold their locations are apparently reports that Apple has closed their accounts on the violation of the terms of the company developer, limiting facilities beta iOS for devices of the developer for testing purposes. Many of my developer friends have reported that Apple has sent an e-mail warning who said that they have identified the developer to sell its slots for some users get the overview at the beginning of iOS.

And Apple began closing the accounts of developer to sell the slots and also reported the UDIDs associated with this account of dev, thus making the 5 unusable iOS device.

Many developers have received this letter and immediately prohibited their developer program account.

Once Apple locks your iOS device, the phone will come in the mode of initial configuration, asking you to connect to a WiFi network. And nothing happens more than that.

Apple allows developers to register up to 100 devices to a single developer account, which costs $ 99 per year. Each developer can submit a list of unique identifiers of the (UDIDs) device to be registered under their account, and some users have taken to sell these sites of device non-developers for $5-10 each to pay for their own developer access and to make a small profit. To go even further, full Web sites even arose to facilitate the direct sale of these locations.

Because of these beta slot sales, access to the iOS 5a was relatively large open, facilitating the important disclosures on the operating system mobile generation despite many details technically being covered by agreements of non-disclosure between Apple and its developers.

It is unclear why it took Apple long to crack down on the behaviour, such as the sale of slots beta was a secret de polichinelle for some time. iOS 5 is set for a public release some time this "fall", with the general consensus being that it should appear alongside the iPhone 5 in September or October.

Update: most of those they were affected by the issue of the Bill note that they were running Beta 1 or 2 of the beta version of iOS 5, which have expired. We have received scattered reports of users to Beta 3 and 4 Beta affected, but those who may be erroneous. Therefore, the issue may simply be expiring early beta versions as we assumed from the outset.

We are always seeking reports more users on iOS Beta 3 or 4 current Beta which can confirm affected.

View the original article here