API

Makers of some applications that seek out Wi-Fi access are now seeking a new home after Apple purged a select group from its App Store. In a blog post this week, 3Jacks Software said it is the latest developer to get the boot from the increasingly choosy App Store.

Just days after a Microsoft and Yahoo search-engine and advertising partnership was approved by U.S. and European regulators, Google has rolled out an upgraded ad-serving platform for publishers. Dubbed DoubleClick for Publishers, or DFP for short, the single platform replaces DoubleClick's DART for Publishers and Google Ad Manager by combining Google's technology and infrastructure with DoubleClick's display-advertising and ad-serving experience.

Over the last year, location-based social networks such as Foursquare, Gowalla and Brightkite have exploded among early adopters. It’s no question—with increasing adoption of smart phone usage, location-based social networks are rising in popularity every day.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the Internet Explorer browser waters, a new threat has emerged despite Microsoft's speedy out-of-band security patch. Symantec has confirmed a new exploit for the security hole used in the recent high-profile attacks against Google and other companies. The new exploit is in the wild and IT administrators who haven't applied Thursday's emergency patch are at risk.

The new threat is not the same Trojan.Hydraq malware that was used in the recent attacks against Google.

Twitter has acquired Mixer Labs, whose GeoAPI service helps developers build location-aware applications. The financial terms were not disclosed. Twitter CEO Evan Williams said the company wants the Mixer Labs team to work on location for tweets.

"We want to know, 'What's happening?', and more precisely, 'Where is it happening?'" Williams wrote Wednesday in a blog. "As a dramatic example, twittering 'Earthquake!' alone is not as informative as 'Earthquake!' coupled with your current location."

A Robust Set of Location Services

Most iPhone users have no idea what an API is, let alone the difference between a public and a private one. But developers know that an application programming interface is not only important to how a smartphone app interacts with other software, but whether it will make the cut into the all-important, exponentially growing Apple App Store.

As recently as last month Apple was aggressively weeding out apps that use a private API because they can cause compatibility problems. The Apple licensing agreement specifically notes that using a non-documented API is a violation of its terms.

When it comes to the Web, Microsoft's Job One is to get its Bing search engine a chunk of the market share long controlled by Google. In the short term, at least, Microsoft's strategy is to load up Bing with new features and integrated results, as evidenced by a flurry of new announcements.

Just this week, Microsoft has announced enhancements to Bing's maps, improving functionality so users can now easily click and drag the maps around; the integration of MSN videos with the search engine; and Wednesday, the inclusion of Wolfram Alpha search results for health and food-related queries.

As part of its quest to organize the world's information, Google is upping its commitment to organizing everything you can buy. On Thursday, the search giant announced Google Commerce Search, a new hosted enterprise search product that will help customers find products at online retail stores and e-commerce sites.

An Éclair in your cell phone. That's Google's vision of the future for its Android open-source operating system, with its announcement Tuesday of a software development kit for the new Android 2.0, whose code name is Éclair.

SDK revision 3, which is required for building applications for Android 2.0, supports coding using the Ant build system or Mac OS X 10.6. Additionally, Google is releasing its Android Development Tools as a plug-in for the Eclipse development environment.

2.0 Update By Year-End

Google has followed through on its promise in July to enable Google Docs users to establish shared folders. Far and away the most requested Google Docs feature, shared folders promises to make it far easier for groups to collaborate on documents.

Previously Google Docs users had to set the access permission status for documents, spreadsheets and presentations one at a time. But once Google has finished rolling out its latest round of Google Docs changes, all users will have to do to share items with others is to put them into a shared folder.