There is a long list of things people will tell you that you need as a startup: You need a working product. You need a business plan . You need a lawyer . You need a good coffee maker, a video game system, and beer on Fridays. Here’s one more thing for the list: you need an API . And here are the top five reasons why: Sponsor 1. It’s Good BizDev 2.0 Having an API is, as Caterina Fake calls it, BizDev 2.0. In other words, in a web-oriented world, it’s the way business development is done. APIs facilitate business-to-business relations by opening data and systems to business partners, either freely or via a commercial license. The integration with other services provided by APIs makes doing business, in Fake’s words, “much much better.” 2. It Builds a Strong Developer Ecosystem An API allows you to interact with developers outside your team, adding expertise and innovation to your product. Releasing an API also adds to the proverbial tool in a developer’s toolbox. 3. An API Facilitates Data Accessibility Having an API makes new queries easier, making information discovery easier for you and for others. 4. Investors Are Going to Want One In a talk in February at the Future of Web Apps conference, VC Fred Wilson spoke about the “10 Golden Principles of Successful Web Apps,” one of which was, indeed, a programmable API. “Not all of our companies, by the way, have launch read/write API’s, and we’re constantly hounding them to do that,” said Wilson, “but the important thing about programmability is that when people can add value to your application, they are in effect adding energy to your application, bringing more users to your application, and also bringing more data and more richness to your applications.” 5. APIs Make Mashups …And mashups are awesome. Facilitated by APIs, mashups bring together information and applications in unique ways, expanding the reach of your data and product. A mashup that combines data from Google Maps plus YouTube plus World Cup, for example . A

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With all the clatter about the new enterprise collaboration platforms from big players like Salesforce.com ’s Chatter, Cisco ’s Quad, and SAP ’s Steam, we thought it would be a good time to look at a few smaller players doing big things: Feng Office , MangoSpring and we+ . Sponsor Feng Office Feng Office is a Uruguay based company developing open source collaboration tools. Begun as an academic project based on the final open-source version of ActiveCollab , Feng Office was originally released as OpenGoo in 2007. FengOffice features documents, projects, calendars, contacts, and multiple work spaces. Although it includes online Google Docs like word processor and presentation apps, it doesn’t include a spreadsheet app. It also lacks a status update/microblogging feature – something that’s quickly becoming a “must have” feature for enterprise collaboration. Feng Office offers three versions of its software: Feng Sky – The hosted version. Feng Onsite – The onsite version, obviously, which includes support. Feng Community – A free version, offered with no dedicated support. MangoSpring This Bellevue, WA based company claims to have accumulated over one million users since it launched in 2007. MangoSpring offers several apps all built on its collaboration platform Engage. MangoSpring Collaboration Suite brings together all the company’s apps, plus a few 3rd party apps built on the company’s open API. MangoSpring have released iPhone app, and have Android and BlackBerry apps on the way. One particularly interesting offering from MangoSpring is the innovation management app MangoIdeas. MangoIdeas allows employees to submit, discuss and search ideas in a centralized location, enabling staff to manage an idea’s life cycle from idea to project. MangoSpring’s clients include Intuit , Minerva Networks , and Texas State University-San Marcos . we+ we+ is the product of Italian company Yooplus . Most of its clients are Italian SMBs, but it has managed to land a couple big customers: Fiat Group and Loescher Editore . we+’s features include project management, blogs and wikis. It is availble as either a SaaS or an onsite solution, and boasts extensive customization features – both visually and technically. Yooplus says we+ can be integrated with other web apps, databases, and traditional collaboration tools like e-mail. Although it has a status update feature, there doesn’t seem to be an activity stream. Conclusion It may seem crazy to compete with so many established players , but these companies are showing that even if they can’t dominate a space, there are still opportunities to grow profitable businesses based around solid technologies (much as ZoHo has done ). Discuss

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The Exceptional Performance crew at Yahoo has launched ” Boomerang .” “Boomerang is a piece of Javascript that you add to your web pages, where it measures the performance of your website from your end user’s point of view. It has the ability to send this data back to your server for further analysis. With Boomerang, you find out exactly how fast your users think your site is.” Sponsor Lovingly hand-crafted with the assistance of the Yahoo Developer Network , the EP team thinks that Boomerang will help reduce the disconnect between push and pull. When we launch a site or write a blog or anything else online, a combination of our experience and expectations give us a sense of how our site will be used. The problem is, nobody is free of the chains of their own objectivity. If you’re an intuitive person, or someone with a very strong point of view, stats can be either a harsh corrective or a pleasant affirmation of your gut feelings. Boomerang hopes to help you see your site from the end-user’s point of view. Among the uses of Boomerang, the team has listed these possible measurements. + A page’s perceived performance – it takes into account the moments at which a page becomes usable for a reader + Perceived performance of dynamic pages + User bandwidth + Component load time + Network latency Boomerang API is downloadable here. Boomerang’s github pag e is here. Knock yourselves out you crazy kids. Discuss

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Wait, what the heck is geofencing ? No, it’s not some virtual sword fighting app for your phone. Geofencing, or a geofence, is exactly what its name implies – a virtually fenced-off geographic location. When this concept is applied to mobile phones, it refers to a device’s ability to receive automatic alerts or notifications when entering, leaving or moving within a specific geographic area. Location Labs , providers of location services for mobile developers, announced earlier this week the release of its library that will allow iPhone developers to build geofencing apps thanks in no small part to new features included in the new iOS 4.0. Sponsor Location Labs’ Geofence Library for iPhone As the company points out, location services on mobile devices have been hindered both by differences in location technology standards, and the significant drain on the device’s battery caused by its use. With the introduction of background applications with iOS 4.0 and increased battery performance in the new iPhone, Apple has created a fitting platform for geofencing apps, the company says. One aspect of background location capabilities in the new OS is and API that notifies apps “based on configurable accuracy and distance change filters,” which is a highly-accurate “always on” battery drainer, says Location Labs. A new service, the “significant change location service,” uses less power but the lower accuracy and frequency makes geofencing useless, delaying notifications by several hours. “With the iPhone, we employ a combination of the standard and significant change location services, intelligent interaction with the iPhone backgrounding and suspending logic as well as local awareness of proximity to the geofence boundaries,” the company said in a blog post Wednesday. “Together these allow us to offer a high quality firing latency guarantee (measured in minutes) while keeping impact on battery life to a minimum.” What This Means for Location Apps To get an idea of how geofencing technology could improve on existing location-based applications, just look at the current popular apps. Apps like Foursquare and Gowalla could implement this infrastructure to allow users to automatically check-in when entering the geofence of a particular location. I can’t even count the times I’ve been out and forgotten to check-in at various locations, robbing myself of precious Foursquare points. With geofencing, I could have been automatically checking in as I went from place-to-place, or perhaps a push notification would have reminded me after I was within the perimeter of the geofence for a certain amount of time. Additionally, geofences could allow for a feature of location apps that Robert Scoble advocated for earlier this month . As Scoble points out, it is helpful to location app users if they can tell if their friends are still at a location, and determining how long users spend in businesses can have a significant impact of location-based marketing. “For instance, I hate shopping so I’ll only spend four minutes inside the Gap, if I go at all. But there are many people who will linger there for hours,” he said. “If you are another clothing store, which customer is more valuable to you to get to come to visit your store? Me or that other customer?” Other interesting ideas for geofences include connecting mobile devices to house lights or air conditioning units to automatically activate them when users approach their homes. Friends could even be notified when they are within a certain distance of one another. The possibilities for geofencing applications are enormous with this new library from Location Labs. Photo by Flickr user KWDesigns . Discuss

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Editor’s note : We offer our long-term sponsors the opportunity to write posts and tell their story. These posts are clearly marked as written by sponsors, but we also want them to be useful and interesting to our readers. We hope you like the posts and we encourage you to support our sponsors by trying out their products. Thousands of devices, hundreds of service providers, and dozens of app stores mean that developers must place bets on devices, telcos, and service functionalities. This fragmentation creates risk for developers and cripples innovation across the industry in several ways. Sponsor Complexity : Because they can’t easily develop across devices and telcos, developers today are resigned to the path of least resistance – even when it means leaving money on the table. They opt to program for platforms that give them the most reach and best chance for success, leaving other potentially attractive channels and customers untapped due to a lack of resources. Lack of Bandwidth and Network Investment : Popular, bandwidth-hungry applications – which often run “over the top” using the carrier’s data connection – can overwhelm a network. Service providers, wary of simply providing “dumb pipe” may resist investing in the additional bandwidth needed to support these applications appropriately. Out of Pocket Expense : Most applications, even for the iPhone, fail to achieve large-scale success. Starved for revenue, developers do not want to pay up-front fees for the usage of network functionalities in their applications. As a result, they look for ways to go over the top of a service provider’s network to control costs. For example, rather than use the more refined and costly capabilities of a network’s geo-fencing capability, a mobile ad developer may instead opt for the device-based workaround to reduce expense. This hurts service provider revenue and results in a less capable application. Network Security Fears : Service providers set a high price for accessing network APIs because they have built their business and reputation on reliability and security. This is part of the reason telco APIs are so arcane and that they are only understood by telecom IT managers. As a result, service providers don’t understand what motivates third-party developers, nor do they have the resources and knowledge to properly cultivate and manage a developer ecosystem. Individual App Store Requirements : More than 80 app stores already exist, and the number is rapidly growing. Each imposes its own certification process and requirements. And then of course even if the processes were the same for each one, there is the challenge for developers to manage all of the metadata associated with each version or update across each of the stores. Unrealized Revenue : The barriers created by fragmentation stifle application development by hampering creativity and limit the ability of developers to realize the financial potential of their work. This deprives end users of the best that the Web and telco worlds have to offer. It’s an unsustainable and unstable industry business model, and it must change. There is a Cure Telcos have recognized these problems, and are responding with a cohesive and inclusive strategy that will revolutionize the development and distribution of mobile applications. Turning the telco network into the primary application development platform is the key to this plan. As a single, scalable IP network, it is ideal for collaborating, delivering and managing telco, enterprise and third party applications regardless of access mode and device. It also provides the must haves you’d expected from a robust applications platform: bandwidth scaling, QoS and traffic optimizers, automation, billing and payment, and so on. Using telco development tools and APIs eliminates many of the barriers that have kept service providers and developers apart, enabling application innovation to flourish in an open, mutually beneficial business model. Telco networks are ideal for collaborating, delivering and managing telco, enterprise and third-party applications, regardless of access mode and device. By making the telco network their primary application development platform, developers gain immediate relief from oppressive fragmentation, improving their odds of application success. For instance, developers no longer have to program services to access capabilities such as SMS, MMS or presence on multiple devices. Instead, they can write the functionality once and let the telco network manage optimal performance on consumer devices. Telco networks offer developers unique advantages as an application platform. The next generation of applications will be highly personalized and interactive. They will seamlessly blend voice, data, video and multimedia across all devices and networks, including television, broadband Internet and mobile. Powerful new networks provide the means to do this, and developers can still differentiate their applications. Developers can grab developer-friendly API bundles – accessed using SOAP and REST – that expose unique telco and enterprise capabilities. Rather than investing the time to search and locate APIs for a new social gaming application idea and negotiating the terms of their usage, developers can simply grab a social gaming API bundle – including providing SMS, advertising, virtual goods and location services, for example – at a single location. Access to these API bundles is provided in a bold new revenue sharing business model that properly aligns incentives for developers, service providers and third party API providers. Everyone wins. Next page: Speeds Up Delivery, Accelerates Monetization Speeds Up Delivery, Accelerates Monetization This aggregation model also alleviates fragmentation by enabling developers to automatically share their applications across multiple service providers. This speeds up the delivery of exciting new services, and accelerates monetization. A dashboard tool even provides personalized, detailed real-time business data on applications and their adoption and use by subscribers across a wide array of major apps stores. This new approach will make it easy for developers to bring their applications to market. They will have a single place to upload their application, manage certification and updates, and distribute across multiple stores. In addition, a wholesale service will give apps store managers the ability to browse and select from a pre-certified inventory of developer applications. This gives developers greater reach and app stores more apps. By transforming the telco network into an application development platform that addresses all of the developer’s business requirements – building, testing, management and distribution – the new paradigm for mobile application development is bringing service providers and developers together in new and mutually beneficial ways. The future is mobile, and telcos have realized that their success and your success are intertwined. If you have stayed out of mobile application development because it looked too convoluted a market to traverse, it is time to take another look. Photo by Gonzalo Baeza Hern

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