Innovative Google Glass Developer Leverages Proprietary Open Source Technology to Launch Vibrand API
Brea, CA (PRWEB) March 23, 2014 -- APIs are emerging from current software development for web applications. The trick to accelerating the adoption of APIs and reaping the massive value they can create has been convincing skeptics. APIs have been proven over and over to be a transformative force.
What is an API?
An API is a simple way to provide access to various forms of business assets (content/data). A business asset can be information itself, information about a product or service, or direct access to the product or service. These bits of programming logic (code) take multiple forms and there are usually a number of unrelated parties involved. In this model, a software company releases its API to the public so that other software developers can design products that are powered by its service. These parties build, distribute, and market the applications. The ultimate goal is to deliver some functional data value to end users. Many apps combine multiple APIs to create a new, superior end user experience.
An Example:
Billy Ray wants to take his daughter, Miley, to the new movie, "The Spy That Twerked Me". He grabs his smart phone, opens his Fandango app, selects his movie and enters his credit card data. Fandango uses an API to send your credit card information to a remote application that verifies whether your information is correct. Once payment is confirmed, the remote application sends a response back to the movie ticket website saying it's OK to issue the tickets.
Billy Ray is oblivious to all the background work being done by the many APIs working in concert to score those tickets - this is seamless integration.
The Business Basics of APIs
APIs are huge channels for business. Although still perceived as experimental in some quarters, the fact is that more than half of all the traffic to major companies like Twitter and eBay come through APIs. They are hugely important in unlocking the power of partners to use business assets to extend the reach of products and services to customers and markets you may not easily reach.
While a lot of the conversation about APIs has been about their public use, there are many internal uses within any meaningful corporate IT strategy. The use of APIs is growing for the following reasons:
(a) APIs promote successful innovation. They simplify problem solving by allowing everyone in a company to use each other’s assets without having to wait around for permission.
(b) APIs offer solution for everyone. APIs are not only for huge companies: As open-source technology, the protocols are standardized and accessible to companies of all sizes.
(c) APIs are multi-functional. Many apps are powered by APIs. When developers are motivated, they can use APIs and combinations of APIs to create new experiences for end users.
(d) APIs are now extensively used in mobile apps.
Apps and APIs are going to be a crucial channel in the next 10 years. There will be trillions of apps in the next decade versus a billion web browsers in the last. Programmableweb.com now lists 11,129 different APIs and 7,380 different mashups.
APIs from Twitter, Amazon, Google, and Facebook have been used to create thousands of applications. These victories are being followed by APIs from AT&T, Sears, E*Trade, Alcatel-Lucent, Accuweather, and hundreds of other companies.
As one might expect, there has been a steady migration of developers wanting to make their mark in this fertile new software field. Yeti Media is a fresh, innovative software development firm based in Brea, California. Over the past six months, they’ve developed their own API platform, known as Rubix and are now introducing Vibrand. Rubix offers many relevant features including image detection, image comparison, OCR (Optical Character Recognition is a technology that enables conversion of different types of documents, such as scanned paper documents, PDF files or images captured by a digital camera into editable and searchable data), facial recognition and the ability to detect image similarities. Using Rubix as a platform, Yeti Media is now releasing the Vibrand app which will be available on Google Glass shortly.
What it does: Vibrand uses Rubix technology to collect images of brand logos and products and then serve up relevant information about them. Over time, Vibrand also updates the logo/ products database with each new image supplied by the user.
- Vibrand creates and updates the training set with the images collected
- When a user takes a picture and uses Vibrand to send the image file to Yeti’s servers, the Rubix API works to serve up relevant information across the Vibrand app.
The commercial application for this is far-reaching. Consumers live in an environment full of visual marketing stimuli, Vibrand makes accessing marketing information almost effortless; faster and easier than a mobile web search.
Nick Treadway, Yeti’s founder and CEO, stated that “As a software development company focused on mobile, we're committed to providing our clients with imaginative and cutting edge solutions that answer real business challenges. API technology is at the forefront of what we’re doing these days because it’s so flexible in the kinds of problems it can solve. Also, as a company that’s dedicated to the open-source community, we're proud to make Rubix available to our colleagues in the development space!”
About Yeti Media
Yeti Media (http://yeti-media.com/) is an agile, digital consultancy that provides application design, branding and high performance for enterprise, startup, and advertising clients. The firm builds everything from one page brochure sites that provide clear and marketable brand access to full applications for companies whose business is their app. They've built applications for college bookstores, ticketing and event management, social media promotional tools, remote health-management, and more. The firm's clients include entrepreneurs, major entertainment companies, publishers, and film camera manufacturers. Developers who are interested in Rubix open-source code should visit http://signup.rubix.io
Joe Hines, A-Cubed Marketing, http://www.acubedmarketing.com, +1 714-872-0561, [email protected]
Share this article