Why Web 3.0? A Look at Where the Web Is Headed
There are several things that will help make your site’s data more available for developers and make it easier to parse:
HTML 5
HTML 5 is a specification that will most likely replace the antiquated HTML 4.01 (published December 1999). The HTML 5 spec includes support for new elements (section, article, aside, header, footer, nav, dialog, audio, video, embed, mark, meter, time, canvas, command, datagrid, and over 20 others), new attributes (more than 30 additions), and changes to 10 existing elements. The changes proposed by HTML 5 would allow developers the ability to do more with their markup and would allow others an easier time parsing what’s on the page.
Open Social
OpenSocial is an open API developed by Google and implemented by several social websites like Engage, Friendster, hi5, LinkedIn, Myspace, Ning, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, and others. OpenSocial has had positive effects on both sides of making website data more organized and accessible. While there have still been significant costs for websites implementing the OpenSocial API, it has spelled significant savings in the development of the API. For developers who are looking to develop applications for social sites, the use of OpenSocial now means that data will be organized consistently across sites and that applications are easily ported between sites.
Mashery
What about those non-social websites that want an API? How do they avoid massive development and implementation costs? Mashery provides full-service API options which reduce costs removing the need to hire developers, buy hardware, and buy software. Instead, Mashery users pay a monthly license fee and optional professional services rates which cover documentation, implementation, and maintenance. This helps websites reduce the money and time needed to get an API up and running.
Mozenda
The issue, for some people, is wanting data from websites that haven’t taken any steps to make it available. Mozenda provides users with the ability to extract specific information from across multiple pages of a website, organize that data on a hosted database, and then access the data through an API. By allowing users to extract the data they want, organize it how they want, and then access it through an API, Mozenda is a viable solution for users who need data from a site that currently doesn’t have a way of providing it.
Spinn3r
Spinn3r is a service that indexes blog posts in real time and provides access to the data via an API. This allows users to have on-demand access to data from thousands of websites for a fraction of the cost of setting up and maintaining a blog crawler.