StrikeIron Developer Blog

RatchetSoft Brings StrikeIron Web Services to Applications People Already Use

support@strikeiron.com — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 06:18:28 GMT

RatchetSoft continues to bring web services to applications people already use. Ratchet-X can incorporate data from web services into existing web sites, electronic forms and other traditional desktop applications without making any modifications to them.

With the release of Ratchet-X Community Edition, RatchetSoft also releases a suite of plug-ins based on StrikeIron web services.

Ratchet-X Community Edition is a free, full-featured version of the Ratchet-X platform. Ratchet-X empowers software users to be more productive by allowing them to take greater control over their application integration needs. The basic value proposition comes from its ability to expand and enhance existing applications by transforming them from isolated “silos” of functionality and data into “mashups” that facilitate more integrated and accessible information across end users in an organization.

Ratchet-X Community Edition will automatically come configured with the following StrikeIron Marketplace powered plug-ins:

Pre-configured integrated applications include:

Salesforce
FreeCRM
ZohoCRM
Act2007
Outlook 2003

For more information about RatchetSoft's integration with StrikeIron, visit http://developer.strikeiron.com/ratchetsoft

Mashup Madness! NCAA Hoops Mashup Contest

support@strikeiron.com — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:57:47 GMT

StrikeIron Announces Mashup Madness! Hoops Contest

Contest challenges developers to showcase their skills with live college basketball data and win a flat screen TV

Research Triangle Park, NC – February 20, 2008 - StrikeIron Inc., the leading provider of Data as a Service (DaaS), today announced the NCAA hoops contest “Mashup Madness”. This contest is based on the newest addition to the StrikeIron Web Services Marketplace, The Sports Network Men’s College Basketball Web service. This XML-based API provides a breadth of real-time NCAA Men’s College Basketball data that is updated as often as every 60 seconds. StrikeIron is launching the contest to see who can create the most innovative basketball widget, mash-up or application that leverages this data.

The contest begins Friday, February 22, 2008 and ends Monday, March 31, 2008 with winners announced on April 7, 2008. All submissions will be judged by executives from The Sports Network, StrikeIron and Programmable Web. Winning applications must be innovative and easy to use, bug free, and extend the performance and quality of StrikeIron’s service. Prizes include an Apple iTouch for the “Best Mobile Application,” “Best Social Application” and “Best Widget” with the grand prize, a 42 inch HD flat screen television going to the “Best Overall Mashup.”

Entries must include data from The Sports Network NCAA Web Service from StrikeIron. Entries can also incorporate other StrikeIron Web Services or Web services from another source (see The StrikeIron Marketplace or Programmable Web for additional APIs to mashup). For details and submission information, please visit: www.strikeiron.com/hoops.

The Sports Network is the nation’s foremost international real-time sports wire service furnishing a multitude of content 24 hours a day, seven days a week. TSN’s Men’s College Basketball Web Service includes the following features:

Comprehensive live data on NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball provided by The Sports Network
Accessibility to key NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball statistics, news, scores, schedules, standings, injuries and poll data
Track all data, by conference, team, or individual player
Plug-and-play XML Web service makes it easy to integrate live college basketball data into a broad range of applications and Web sites

For more on this service, please visit www.strikeiron.com/TSNMensCollegeBasketball.

NetSuite Partner Conference provides opportunity for ISVs

support@strikeiron.com — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 09:38:38 GMT

I attended the NetSuite Partner Conference two weeks ago. NetSuite made some interesting announcements about new functionality such as Subsidiary Management & Consolidation. But what really caught my attention was SuiteBundler. SuiteBundler is the newest addition to NetSuite's SuiteFlex platform. For those of you new to NetSuite, but familiar with Salesforce.com, the SuiteFlex platform is similar to Salesforce.com's Force.com platform. SuiteFlex is application development and integration platform that enables developers to build custom functionality, such as custom fields, forms, and functions - both in the browser and on the server - on top of NetSuite's SaaS platform.

SuiteBundler is worth a special look because it takes those customizations one step further by helping value-added resellers package their vertical solutions, add-on applications, end-to-end business process customizations and integration solutions so they can be repeatedly installed by customers at the click of a button. Again, for those of you familiar with Salesforce.com, this is akin to the smooth installation process you'd get with an AppExchange app.

SuiteBundler builds upon previous NetSuite technology, such as SuiteScript, which was introduced at last years Partner Conference. I was particularly impressed with that SuiteScript because it enabled developers to create pop-up windows from within NetSuite which could talk to 3rd-party web service providers such as StrikeIron's US Address Verification service.

Working with NetSuite and Xolved, a NetSuite integration partner, we created a demo of an Address Verification bundle using SuiteScript and SuiteBundler. Its just a prototype now, but I expect it to be completed by the end of Novermber. When its ready we'll post a demo and the code to our community site. I am looking to Xolved and Celigo, another NetSuite integration partner, to innovate with StrikeIron Web Services on top of these powerful NetSuite SuiteFlex platform technologies.

Stay tuned!

Announcing the StrikeIron Developer Community

support@strikeiron.com — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 10:07:25 GMT

Developers often ask us where they can find resources to demonstrate our web services. Before today, I pointed them to our tech docs and sample code pages, which offer samples for most popular programming languages and some of our web services.

But developers don't integrate Web Services in a vacuum, in addition to building their applications using a programming language like Java or PHP, their applications often integrate with a web platform like Salesforce or NetSuite, or even run as a plugin within a software application like Microsoft Outlook.

So in addition to tech docs and sample code, we've put together a list of projects that focus on specific integrations. The first 5 environments are NetBeans, Salesforce, IBM, Microsoft and Zend and there are more to come. And that's not all, we intend to create an ecosystem around each environment, leaning on our partners to add resources and content to help each project grow.

We're calling this new site the StrikeIron Developer Community or developer.strikeiron.com. It has most of the features you'd expect from a developer community site:

But this is just the beginning for our new community. While StrikeIron continues publishing web services, we'll keep releasing sample code for new partner environments.

And your invited too. Use our forum for questions we don't cover on the site. And once you complete your integration, tell us about it. We'd love to feature your application or code on our site.

Dave Nielsen
StrikeIron Developer Community
http://developer.strikeiron.com

Personal Government Mashup

support@strikeiron.com — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:04:14 GMT

Marc Mecuri from Microsoft creates a simple Personal Government Mashup using free StrikeIron APIs.