AOL Open Blogs API Released

The AOL Journals team and the AOL Developer Network are pleased to announce the release of the AOL Open Blogs API.

Unless you're a software developer (and I am not), this is probably not going to mean much to you at this particular moment. An API is an "Application Programming Interface," which is like a gateway in one application (in this case, Journals) that lets other applications do... stuff.

This typically results in a mashup application, which is basically when you take the functionality of two or more applications and use the API "hooks" to mash them together to do interesting things. (Popular types of mashups you may have used include map mashups, where people use the APIs of a mapping application, like Google Maps or Mapquest, to display restaurant reviews, real estate prices or crime reports on a map.)

Here's an example in the AOL Developer Network's Mashup Gallery, which features a bunch of different sample mashups using AOL's different APIs (note: this one is pretty raw and is primarily proof-of-concept; there's not much to look at, since there's no design or UI) -- the Buddy List Blogs application, which mashes up the AIM and Blog APIs to show you the blog feeds of all the AOL Journals belonging to folks in your Buddy List.

Journals Tech Manager Junaid also has a little bit more about the Open Blog API, and there's a brief writeup at the ProgrammableWeb Blog (which also has a primer on APIs and mashups in their FAQ.

If you'd like more information about the AOL Blogs API, you can find the full documentation on the AOL Open Blogs API page.

Like I said, for non-coders, this is going to be of limited utility until programmers start working their magic and mashing things up.

However, one thing that may be of interest involves using the Atom Publishing Protocol to kinda-sorta back up your blog, which I know a lot of you folks are interested in (it's kinda-sorta because it'll be a bit unwieldy unless someone writes a utility to streamline it). I will blog it tomorrow after I confirm a few things.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: aol journals, api, open blogs api, mashups