March madness

My NCAA teams failed to make it through last month, but there was still a lot of madness for me on the payments-related front.  Here’s my mad monthly recap.

I published the first two parts of a four part series on “Selling Digital Goods in Data Markets”.  Part 1 focuses upon the early movers and innovators, including a look at features I think are very desirable in a data market.  Part 2 discusses selecting a data market and dives deeper into Factual and Infochimps, including how to use Infochimps’ Twitter influence metrics API via YQL.  Source code for the Python example is available on GitHub (click here).

Watch for the third and fourth parts of this series to publish to the DevZone soon.

I also wrote the following DevZone blog posts last month:

• “Android apps for money and fame” details how you can enter a PayPal X-powered Android app and potentially win $25,000 in PayPal’s third Developer Challenge; the first critical deadline is May 14th
• “Free PayPal Android webinar” gave readers a heads-up on a PayPal webinar conducted March 30th
• I provided information on how to use PayPal’s new Apigee embeddable console (theorectically skinable but it doesn’t appear PayPal’s done that for theirs)
• “On data markets and YQL gotchas” gives you some pointers on data markets as well as a tip on using external tables in YQL-based applications
• I did not invent Tulsa, but I am a web API lover so in order to #win I suggest REST + JSON
• O’Reilly’s special offer has now expired but you can still make PayPal donations to help the Japanese people via links in this post
• “Amazon Appstore launches, encourages QR code links” introduces Amazon’s new US Android application store and discusses Amazon’s suggestion that developers highlight their in-store apps with QR code linking
• I kicked off a new series on the Twitter APIs with information on how to get started with Twitter’s RESTful interface

Click to read the complete post on the PayPal X Developer Network including links to other important news and information for developers.