The Auckland Web Meetup has 260 members with 120 attending the last monthly meetup. We talk about a lot of new technogies and last month was no different. Next month we are going to talk about creating and consuming web API’s (or mashups), but the point I want to make is that our next meeting is going to be really exciting. There are some amazing API’s out there like Facebook, Amazon S3, Google, Google Maps etc etc.

My point is that if you build it, will they come? My argument is that there are so many more tools now available other than Java and .net. At the meetup I am pushing the Adobe AIR platform that allows just about every single member of the group to create Rich Desktop applications using their existing skill set of HTML, Javascript and/or Flex. Adobe AIR looks extremely exciting and that excitement I intend to spread to the members of our group in the next month (since I run the thing). I have also had huge success with developing for API’s using the AIR framework with Adobe profiling my software in the AIR showcase and Computer World article page 3 (and a little tiny photo on the cover) all in about 4 weeks from staring on AIR.

It would be really exciting stuff if you did launch this and I would love to talk about your shiny new (or up and coming) API at our next meetup which will easily have another 120 web developers hungry for more tools.

http://webdesign.meetup.com/108/calendar/5890211/

It wont surprise me if you competition doesn’t start this soon either, I have been making a lot of noise about this up here and I am getting a lot of great feedback so far.

John

As to when to update developers on changes, well just doing that when they happen would be nice for a start! At the moment if TM changes something theres usually some time before I see something isn’t working with TM, then I have to work out wether it is the software or some new TM update. And then I have to inform the developer and wait for the fix, all the while getting pissed off at TM.

So come on, get an API up and help out the people who are paying you your revenues.

1) Evolve or Die — you are seriously limiting your rate of innovation, by effectively constraining your backend dev to an inhouse team only, and while you focus at the front end only your base business is vulnerable

2) One idea does not a business make – you don’t know what you don’t know, until there are many more eyes and brains offering solutions you don’t get to cherry pick for the new opportunities.

3)Risk is bad = serious businesses will limit their trading, although TM does have a robust front end, and I have a robust backend it is joined by a dodgey bit of electric string brokered via auctionitis…which in turn violates TM’s T&C’s… double yuk

thats it.

p.s. Lances analogy/stats with ebay are spurious, clearly ebay’s poor stats can be attributed to not hosting their servers in NZ… ref. church of the flying spaghetti monster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:FSM_Pirates.jpg

http://www.wellies.org/trademe/member_listings_gadget.html

Sorry, http://www.wellies.org/trademe/tra is unavailable. Please try another result.

http://www.eventfinder.co.nz/content/api.html

Watch out for the next review. It is about an extension I wanted to see a long time in Firefox…