Fourplay and Sidewinder Win MetaLayer’s API Hackathon
Team Fourplay (above) and Team Sidewinder (below) took home the MetaLayer API Awards at TechCrunch Disrupt 2012. Both apps were built from concept to working product in only 48 hours!
FourPlay (previously Team Serendipity) used our Text API in combination with Foursquare to take ‘missed connection’ posts from Craigslist and matched the places where the encounter occurred with location data from Foursquare’s API. The result is a brilliant way to potentially find people you might have missed by looking at who’s checking in, or who’s been at those places recently!
Sidewinder described their app as “cliffnotes for the web”. It essentially summarizes events or topics using the tagging function of our Text API coupled with the Factual API to give greater context to a particular subject. Clicking on a specific tag remixes the page and offers greater context about whatever tag was clicked on.
We’re happy we could sponsor a prize for each team: a Kindle Touch 3G for Fourplay and an AppleTV for Sidewinder!
Video of the Announcement
Update: We thought we’d go ahead and list the other teams who built on our APIs over the weekend. The numbers only represent the order they presented in at Disrupt.
- 72 - Serendipity/Fourplay - matches foursquare to missed connections on Craigslist
- 6 - Tipsters - social Q&A (uses the metaLayer API)
- 81 - Sidewinder - Cliffsnotes for the web, iPad App
- 17 - Dedic8d - Sentiment streams about anything you care about
- 25 - Tweet2Tracks - search twitter for beautiful images + sentiment
- 34 - Sentimental Diary - views how mood changes throughout the day
- 60 - What’s Around - figure out what to do in your neighborhood based on tweets
MetaLayer API Workshop at Disrupt 2012
Integration with InfoChimps Platform & Hadoop
Today at the TechCrunch: Disrupt Hackathon, metaLayer is happy to announce that we now support native integration with the Infochimps Platform and Hadoop. Through integration with the Infochimps Platform, metaLayer Dashboard users not only get access to Hadoop, but Infochimp’s analytic product Dashpot, managed database hosting, and easy Hadoop cluster management.
And that’s just where it all starts! Combined with metaLayer’s Dashboard you get the ability to work with big data with drag and drop ease, sophisticated third-party API integration and flexible visualizations for the information you care about.
Find at more at metalayer.com or follow us on Twitter @metalayer
Giveaways for #NYCDisrupt
What you could win hacking on metaLayer APIs this afternoon at TechCrunch Disrupt! A Kindle Touch 3G and an AppleTV with HDMI Cable.
The Role Data plays in Participatory Democracy. This Google Big Tent panel session was recorded on April 25th, 2012 in Moscow, Russia with Jeff Jarvis (author of “Public Parts” and “What Would Google Do?”), Jon Gosier (Director of Product at metaLayer), Konstantin von Eggert (Kommerstant FM) and Elena Paniflova (Head of Anti-Corruption Center Transparency) discussing the balance between technological advancement and public rights.
If you happen to speak Russian, you can watch the Russian lingua version here.
(Source: youtube.com)
Chris Burrage discusses the metaLayer platform at The Paley Center in New York.
"The opportunity from Big Data (of which social data is a part) is gigantic. Even that doesn’t do it justice. But Big Data needs its unit of human computational threshold so it appeals to the billions that can benefit from it."
— Sameer Patel, “Tiny Insights. Big Data.”
(Source: pretzellogic.org)
We’re proud to be supporters of the VibrantData.org project lead by our good friends Juliette Powell and Eric Burlow!
The goal of the Vibrant Data Project (#vdat) is to enable a massive democratization in our collective ability to convert data into personal and social good. How can we enrich a Vibrant Data Ecosystem that increases access to economic opportunity, protects civil and political rights, improves environmental sustainability, increases human health and wellness, and sparks radical advances in science and education?
Ultimately what matters is how data is used, not simply the data itself. This project is a good reminder to us all.
(Source: vimeo.com)
MetaLayer Presents at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC
MetaLayer will present at TechCrunch Disrupt at Pier94 in a few days! Come to our API workshop session at 3:00pm to learn how to use our Text and Image APIs in your projects. Best use of our APIs will win you a Kindle (for text hackers) or an Apple TV (for photo hackers) as well as a free metaLayer T-Shirt and Hoodie.
This will be the second Hackathon TechCrunch has organized at Pier 94 in NYC. Last years event had over 300 developers and 100 teams present, and this years event promises to be even bigger and better.
But enough about the past, let’s chat about the future.
We’ve got a lot of really great sponsored API’s, prizes and contests including AT&T, Hatch, Mashery, City Grid, Spotify, The Echo Nest, Knodes, Mobli & more!
Date: May 19, 2012
Time: 3:00pm
Presenter: Jon Gosier, Founder and Director of Product at metaLayer.
Contextual disambiguation using metaLayer’s Text and Image analysis REST APIs. metaLayer’s APIs allow users to process streams of text or images to extract contextual features where they don’t exist. For instance, extracting place names from tweets or articles using NLP to attempt to geolocate content makes it possible to then visualize where content is coming from or referencing on geospatial maps. With images, extracting text makes it possible to search words in photos or auto-categorize them based on the objects they contain.
Details regarding the metaLayer API can be found at: http://api.metalayer.com
If you’d like your API rate limits raised for your Disrupt projects, just email us at developers@metalayer.com and let us know you’re participating.
APIs for Data Science
If you’re a programmer or data scientist looking for APIs to utilize in your work, look no further than api.metalayer.com!
With our various APIs you’re able to extract contextual features from streams of imagery and text. For instance take an archive millions of long form articles and auto-categorize them using our Text API or do the same for an archive of photos based on the objects they contain using our Image API.
You’ll also find new documentation pages that explain exactly what’s possible.
