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Attention developers -- Google increases Calendar API quota to 1 million daily requests

Publié: décembre 3, 2014, 9:25pm CET par Brian Fagioli
When you are a developer, the world is not all roses. Sure, it is very rewarding to bring your ideas to life, but sometimes your imagination is limited by the software with which you are forced to use. You see, many services offer an API, which enables your software to connect with it. Ultimately, if it is user-based data, you can push and pull information to and from a users account.

Google's calendar is such a service that offers an API, but sadly, applications were limited to 100,000 requests per day. While this might be sufficient for some developers, it apparently was not good enough for all -- the search giant is increasing this to 1 million daily requests.

"At Google, we like to make 10x rather than 10 percent improvements. In this spirit, we are increasing the default quota for the Calendar API v3 by a factor of ten, to 1 million requests per day. That means your application can support ten times as many users without any need to apply for more quota", says Lucia Fedorova, Tech Lead, Google Calendar API.

Of course, if 1 million is still too low, developers can apply for a greater daily quota. However, the application would have to be quite popular for that to be necessary. With that said, Fedorova shares the following tips to best manage working within the quota:
- Use push notifications instead of polling.
- If you cannot avoid polling, make sure you only poll when necessary (for example poll very seldomly at night).
- Use incremental synchronization with sync tokens for all collections instead of repeatedly retrieving all the entries.
- Increase page size to retrieve more data at once by using the maxResults parameter.
- Update events when they change, avoid re-creating all the events on every sync.
- Use exponential backoff for error retries.
Are you a developer that uses the Calendar API? Tell me in the comments.

Photo Credit: AcaG / Shutterstock
Facebook tells advertisers how to (very) closely target users this holiday season

Publié: décembre 3, 2014, 2:17am CET par Mark Wilson

Ads are hard to avoid at the best of times, but it has a tendency to get a little worse in the run-up to Christmas. Advertising has become increasingly prolific on social networks, and this is certainly true of Facebook. As we enter the holiday season, Facebook is providing advertisers with advice that will enable them to deliver finely-tuned ads at highly specific sets of users.

If you picked yourself up a new tablets in the Black Friday or Cyber Monday sales, Facebook makes it possible for advertisers to pick you out of the masses. The social network is not only rolling out a couple of new features to help with targeting advertising, but also providing tips for more successful campaigns.

Advertisers want assurances that the ads they post are reaching the right people, and this is something Facebook says it can deliver. Or as a blog post announcement puts it, "advertisers can buy Facebook mobile app ads with highly predictable reach and frequency". Targeting can be incredibly specific: "advertisers can set their app ad campaign to reach 5 million people with a frequency cap of three impressions per person for one week".

What is especially interesting about Facebook's announcement is that it highlights the ability to target people who have bought a new device. It has been possible to target specific devices -- such as iPads or Samsung tablets -- and now the Amazon Fire has been added as a target device. But it is also possible to use the fact that a user has logged into Facebook using a new device as at trigger for delivering certain ads to those users.

Facebook's tips suggest making use of more video ads, so you can probably expect to see more of these cluttering up your timeline in the coming weeks.

How do you feel about this sort of targeted advertising? Assuming some ads are a given, would you rather see generate ads that are likely to be of no interest, or targeted content which may at least be relevant to your needs?

Photo credit: Michal Poracky / Shutterstock
Dropbox for Business API set to woo corporate customers with secure cloud apps

Publié: décembre 3, 2014, 12:56am CET par Mark Wilson

While Dropbox for Business is nothing new, there's no getting away from the fact that Dropbox is seen essentially as a consumer level tool. Part of the reason for this -- apart from the occasional security slip-up -- is the fact that it has not been possible to use Dropbox in conjunction with third party tools at an enterprise level. Now this changes thanks to the arrival of the Dropbox For Business API.

The API is yet to be officially announced -- although rumors have been circulating for a little while -- but internal documentation obtained by TechCrunch shows that the launch is imminent, possibly as early as tomorrow (Wednesday December 3rd). Once launched, developers will be able to use the API to produce their own secure Dropbox-based apps and services.

The leaked documents give a glimpse at what could be achieved with the Dropbox for Business API, but a select number of partners have been granted early access to the tools so development will already be underway. TechCrunch reports that Microsoft, Dell and IBM have been working with Dropbox to ensure that their applications and services work with the Dropbox for Business from launch.

Launching the API is something of a shrewd move by Dropbox. Rather than spending the time developing tools of its own and then convincing enterprise customers to put their trust in them, developers are instead being invited to create their own tools that meet their own precise requirements. This not only places customers in greater control, but eliminates the element of compromising that is often part and parcel of using readymade tools.

With a strong focus on security, encryption and rights management, the API will have broad appeal. Security focus will enable companies to produce their own apps that take advantage of Dropbox while adhering to internal security policies.