Good news for developers and fans of mashups, as this morning Microsoft has announced the availability of a software development kit (SDK) for building map apps on Bing Maps . What’s more, last week Microsoft announced the creation of the Bing Search Library for PHP – a wrapper built in conjunction with PHP expert Cal Evans that gives developers easy access to the Bing Search API via PHP. Microsoft seems to be embracing third-party developers more openly now with these tools, so here’s a breakdown of what’s available now. Sponsor Bing Map App SDK Previously, the Bing Map App Gallery – a collection of map mashups for showing data overlaid on Bing maps – has been fenced-off to third-party map app development. The gallery has only featured Microsoft-built apps, like Photosynth, or those from partner sites, like Twitter or Foursquare . Now, however, Microsoft is opening the gates for anyone to create and upload a map app – well, almost anyone. To build apps, developers will need a Microsoft Live ID to access the SDK , a Windows box running Visual Studio 2010 to build the application, and a browser with the Silverlight plug-in to view the apps. Microsoft is also placing an Apple-esque app store submission process in place for the map mashups, requiring developers to submit apps for review and approval. To kick off the opening of the SDK, Microsoft has also unveiled a pair of new apps from partner sites today. An app from WeatherBug lets users visualize various weather related data on Bing Maps, and another from panoramic and 3D image service EveryScape helps users find interesting imagery from inside restaurants. Bing Search Library for PHP Announced last week, the Bing Search Library for PHP is a wrapper that allows developers to easily harness the power of Bing Search on dynamic Web pages. In the example shown by creator Cal Evans, developers can contextually place domain restricted search results from Bing onto web pages based on any search query – and it’s all done from within the PHP written to power the site. “The Bing API is very straightforward and most importantly, consistent in design,” says Evans. “The Bing API is easy to work with, powerful, and since Google doesn’t give you access to this information from an API, unique.” Evans says the current wrapper only includes support for the Search API, but that he hopes future releases will support other Bing API hooks, such as News, Translation and more. Discuss

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Enterprise SaaS and PaaS (platform as a service) vendor Netsuite announced the availability of Netsuite Manufacturing Edition last week. The company’s Manufacturing Edition is aimed at mid-sized manufacturers and provides support for “multi-company, multi-plant, multi-location and multi-currency” enterprises. The product was built by manufacturing management software company Rootsock Software on Netsuite’s SuiteCloud platform, which opens a new vertical market to Netsuite and escalates its competition with SAP . Sponsor The suite’s features include: multi-site planning and management, material requirements planning (MRP), production management, engineering change control (ECC), shop floor control and work-in-progress (WIP) management. Netsuite and Rootstock’s joint product , originally called Rootstock MRP for NetSuite, has been beta since April 2009. Launched in 2009, SuiteCloud is Netsuite’s platform as a service offering. Rootstock, founded in 2008, was one of the platform’s early adopters. According to a press release , the company was able to bring Rootstock MRP for NetSuite to market twice as fast and at half the cost as would have been otherwise possible. SAP is the dominant player in enterprise manufacturing software, so this product brings Netsuite directly onto SAP’s turf. SAP meanwhile is readying its SaaS offering Business ByDesign , which will compete directly with Netsuite in the SMB market. Netsuite has been aggressively positioning themselves as a SAP competitor and CloudSuite has been seen as a competitor to both SAP and Oracle (Oracle’s CEO Larry Ellison is a majority shareholder and major financial backer of Netsuite). Netsuite Manufacturing Edition will also compete with manufacturing ERP SaaS provider Plex . Discuss

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Extensions for Google Chrome can now send out desktop notifications. Google just announced the availability of a notifications API for Chrome extension developers. Until now, only websites were able to deliver non-model messages with the notifications API, which was first introduced in Chrome 4 for Windows. Now, extension developers will be able to make use of the desktop notifications API to deliver notifications that appear outside of the browser window as well. Sponsor One of the first extensions to make use of these system-wide notifications is the popular Gmail Notifier add-on for Chrome. After installing the extension, you will receive a notification whenever a new email arrives in your inbox. The advantage of this system is that you will see this notification, even if you are not looking at your browser. Some users will surely complain that OSX and Linux already have perfectly good system-wide notifications systems . This new notifications API, however, allows developers to create their extensions without having to think about the desktop platform and Google’s own developers won’t have to interface with multiple third-party desktop notifications platforms either. Chances are that we will see a variation of these desktop notifications in Google’s Chrome OS as well. Discuss

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Dedicated e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook are coming under increasing pressure from mobile phones and tablet devices like the iPad. According to the latest research from Informa Telecoms & Media , sales of e-readers with broadband connections will peak in 2014, as users decide to opt for multi-purpose devices like the iPad. According to Informa, the best way for e-reader manufacturers to survive is to focus on cheap devices that don’t feature built-in wireless connectivity. Sponsor The Real Question: E-Paper or LCD Displays? Many readers swear by e-paper displays that look and “feel” more like regular paper than traditional computer displays. These e-paper displays don’t need backlighting and consume far less power than tablets that use back-lighted displays. A number of e-paper manufacturers are working hard on developing color displays with faster refresh rates that will allow Kindle-like devices to compete with the feature set of tablets. The question, of course, is if users will really flock to low-end e-readers or if they will opt for more expensive multi-purpose devices like the iPad instead. In the near future, some of these tablets will likely feature more advanced e-paper displays that will combine the best of both worlds, though they will probably cost about the same as an iPad. The Disadvantages of Dedicated E-Readers For now, however, these advanced displays aren’t ready for the consumer market, while tablets are getting more market share and iPad apps like Wired’s new magazine app get a chance to show the advantages of tablet computers. A number of universities have experimented with the Kindle as a textbook reader, and it’s quickly becoming clear that today’s e-readers aren’t ready for this market, as students ask for a more flexible devices that are more akin to tablet computers than a dedicated e-readers. Sony Expands This study comes on the same day that Sony announced its plans to expand the availability of its e-reader to Japan, China, Australia and a number of European countries. Asia is one of the fastest growing markets for e-readers, so this move definitely makes sense. With its low-end e-readers , Sony will be in a good position if Informa’s predictions turn out to be true. Discuss

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The number of apps hosted on the Ruby platform Heroku has increased 50 percent since November, pointing out how cloud-based platforms are becoming the norm for the capabilities the services provide in terms of testing and reliability. Heroku had more than 40,000 apps on its platform last November. Now more than 60,000 apps are using the Heroku service. Heroku’s success is not alone. Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Rackspace are rapidly expanding. AWS announced its expansion to the Asia Pacific region this past week. In its announcement, AWS featured Kim Eng, one of Asia’a largest security brokers. The firm said the availability of the AWS service helped minimize its latency for its KE Trade iPhone application. Sponsor Rackspace developer Mike Mayo built the company’s latest iPad app for customers to monitor Rackspace cloud networks. He said the cloud provides a way for developers to test with better efficiency. For example, using cloud platforms, apps are continually tested for bugs. Those bugs can be fixed one at a time as they pop up. That’s easier than doing a build and then fixing the 20 bugs that are discovered. Heroku Heroku is a Ruby-on-Rails platform that according to the company web site “eliminates the need to manage servers, slices or clusters.” Developers focus on the code and that’s pretty much it. Heroku hosts the Flightcaster application, an interesting example of a service that uses two cloud providers to serve its app. Flightcaster is a service that checks your flight to see if it is on time. It can predict up to six hours in advance if your flight will be late. Flightcaster uses Heroku to serve the application. But the actual data analysis is done through Amazon S3 where Hadoop manages the data analytics. The data is passed from Heroku to Amazon S3 and then back to Heroku where it is served back to the customer making the request. Heroku is an example of a service that is making it infinitely easier for developers to develop and manage applications. It’s part of a new breed of platforms emerging that are growing in popularity. We’ll see if Heroku will grow 100 percent over the span of a year. That would mean 80,000 apps. Seems plausible, doesn’t it? Discuss

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