Socialight Opens API to External Developers
Embraces open source collaboration to refine platform for location-based content.
New York, NY, May 08, 2008 --(PR.com)-- Socialight, an award-winning urban navigation company, today announced that it has opened its application programming interface (API) to external developers, leveraging the power of open source collaboration to build upon its powerful platform for location-based content.
Accelerating sales growth of GPS-enabled mobile handsets and the increasing availability of inexpensive, fast wireless data are enabling entirely new kinds of services that take GPS beyond navigation and deeper into the realm of content.
Now, with Socialight's API, any person or company can build their own location-based content application by leveraging Socialight to do the hard work of capturing, managing, and distributing local content. This is a key milestone in realizing Socialight's goal to create and facilitate a new kind of media channel -- a conduit for recommendations, information, video, music, and more, tied to specific places.
"There are other APIs out there for tracking where your friends and family are," said Dan Melinger, co-founder of Socialight. "But no one we know of has released an API that lets you publish, manage, and distribute local content, media, and information. This is far more useful and we are excited to see what develops."
With the release of its API, developers can create interfaces onto Socialight for all of the mobile platforms that continue to flood the marketplace, including Apple iPhone and Google's Android. In addition, Garmin, TomTom, BugLabs, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, LG, and Sony Ericsson all have location-aware devices that will benefit from well-designed local content applications.
Socialight is jump-starting community development by providing working sample code for several popular platforms along with the API release. Most importantly, Socialight is opening and distributing the source code of its fully functional mobile Java (J2ME) application for cellphones and mobile devices. "By open-sourcing this application, Socialight is taking an important step toward openness that is incredibly rare from a startup company," said Naveen Selvadurai, Socialight VP of Engineering. "As mobile developers ourselves, we're disappointed that there's so little J2ME code out there; we're opening up both to provide useful code to Socialight API developers and as a way of strengthening the developer community at-large."
Socialight also announced that several leading companies are already using the API to develop location-based content solutions for customers. Dash Navigation lets people send channels of location-based Socialight content directly to their Dash Express in-car GPS units so they can bring Socialight with them while driving. SiRF Technology, a world leader in GPS technology, is building a Socialight mobile Java application upon its SiRFstudio Platform so its customers can take greater advantage of their mobile phones' location-aware capabilities with Socialight.
Registered users of the free Socialight service can access the API, tutorials, and documentation at socialight.com/get/api.
About Socialight
Socialight (socialight.com), a closely held company based in New York City, is creating the ultimate urban navigation service, helping people explore their cities using mobile phones. Using Socialight's mobile and web interfaces, users discover insider information on great places to eat, rate their favorite hot-spots, and tag secret bars for friends. Socialight's open platform makes it painless to create successful mobile local services such as NBC Universal / Bravo's Project Runway Guide to NY, part of the Webby-nominated Runway Mobile Fan Club. Socialight has recently won awards including the Tele Atlas Attendee Choice Awards at CES 2008 and NATPE Mobile's Top 12 for 2007. Partnerships with Skyhook Wireless, SiRF, Tele Atlas, and Navteq help power Socialight in developing the next generation of location-aware services.
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Accelerating sales growth of GPS-enabled mobile handsets and the increasing availability of inexpensive, fast wireless data are enabling entirely new kinds of services that take GPS beyond navigation and deeper into the realm of content.
Now, with Socialight's API, any person or company can build their own location-based content application by leveraging Socialight to do the hard work of capturing, managing, and distributing local content. This is a key milestone in realizing Socialight's goal to create and facilitate a new kind of media channel -- a conduit for recommendations, information, video, music, and more, tied to specific places.
"There are other APIs out there for tracking where your friends and family are," said Dan Melinger, co-founder of Socialight. "But no one we know of has released an API that lets you publish, manage, and distribute local content, media, and information. This is far more useful and we are excited to see what develops."
With the release of its API, developers can create interfaces onto Socialight for all of the mobile platforms that continue to flood the marketplace, including Apple iPhone and Google's Android. In addition, Garmin, TomTom, BugLabs, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, LG, and Sony Ericsson all have location-aware devices that will benefit from well-designed local content applications.
Socialight is jump-starting community development by providing working sample code for several popular platforms along with the API release. Most importantly, Socialight is opening and distributing the source code of its fully functional mobile Java (J2ME) application for cellphones and mobile devices. "By open-sourcing this application, Socialight is taking an important step toward openness that is incredibly rare from a startup company," said Naveen Selvadurai, Socialight VP of Engineering. "As mobile developers ourselves, we're disappointed that there's so little J2ME code out there; we're opening up both to provide useful code to Socialight API developers and as a way of strengthening the developer community at-large."
Socialight also announced that several leading companies are already using the API to develop location-based content solutions for customers. Dash Navigation lets people send channels of location-based Socialight content directly to their Dash Express in-car GPS units so they can bring Socialight with them while driving. SiRF Technology, a world leader in GPS technology, is building a Socialight mobile Java application upon its SiRFstudio Platform so its customers can take greater advantage of their mobile phones' location-aware capabilities with Socialight.
Registered users of the free Socialight service can access the API, tutorials, and documentation at socialight.com/get/api.
About Socialight
Socialight (socialight.com), a closely held company based in New York City, is creating the ultimate urban navigation service, helping people explore their cities using mobile phones. Using Socialight's mobile and web interfaces, users discover insider information on great places to eat, rate their favorite hot-spots, and tag secret bars for friends. Socialight's open platform makes it painless to create successful mobile local services such as NBC Universal / Bravo's Project Runway Guide to NY, part of the Webby-nominated Runway Mobile Fan Club. Socialight has recently won awards including the Tele Atlas Attendee Choice Awards at CES 2008 and NATPE Mobile's Top 12 for 2007. Partnerships with Skyhook Wireless, SiRF, Tele Atlas, and Navteq help power Socialight in developing the next generation of location-aware services.
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Contact
Socialight
Colin Nagy
212-239-6074
www.socialight.com
Colin Nagy
212-239-6074
www.socialight.com
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