Managing Alerts - do you know where things fail?

Following on from the piece in CITEWorld calling for a Chief API Officer, we had another great example of why people need services like the Viafo Gateway.  Our gateway picked up a dramatic change in API use from one of our client's applications and alerted us.  We were able to contact the client and inform them that their daily sign in activities that we are brokering using our Single Sign In service, had gone from over 500 a day, down to 4....  Given their average activity this seemed unlikely to us and we alerted their team.

It turned out that another service they used had failed and was blocking customers from completing the sign in process and they hadn't been alerted.

This follows on from a security change made by Facebook earlier in April which had also blocked their application and required them to make changes.  Without our service alerting them to significant changes in use patterns, it could have been days or weeks before they found out that there was a problem.

This is core to our value proposition for our customers.  Not only are we saving time and money with integration to common web services, but we're an essential piece of your monitoring solution.

The Chief API Officer

Time for the Chief API Officer

There is an excellent piece in CITEWorld concerning the growing need for a Chief API Officer within any organization working in mobile.  Yes, the article mentions Viafo and our solution, but there's a serious point in there about the need to manage your APIs.

A mobile, TV, in-car or application for any other screen needs integration to 3rd party services in order to maximize the value of the application and drive 'stickiness'.  Without that, you've essentially got a webpage circa 2003.

But managing your APIs isn't always as straight forward as it sounds, especially if you have to deal with secure 3rd party identification services.  Obviously, with our ability to set geographical policies for API yes, generically handle oAuth across multiple services and provide integrated and detailed analytics on in-app API use, we see Viafo as the best solution.  But whatever and whoever you use, it's essential.

Mobile World Congress 2013

So, this is going to be an interesting one.  While it's back in it's home of the last decade, Barcelona, they've moved to a new location, so the first day is going to be even more confusing than usual.

But what to expect?

Well, in some respects, from a purely mobile perspective, CES this year was, to put it bluntly, a bit poor.  Very few interesting devices on display and no real phone announcements.  The consensus was that the phone companies with the exception of Apple were keeping their powder dry.  Apple being a special case who don't bother to do things with the rest of the industry.

The definite feeling I'm getting from the preparation work we've been doing is that the industry has really evolved in the decade I've been attending.  For my early Mobile World Congress events (back when it had just become 3GSM) the focus was very much on the handsets - form factor, color screens, cameras and the like and data speed.  This year, I think I can comfortably say is all about the apps.

From our perspective we'll be showing 3 new things to the public and over the course of the next few days, we'll be posting more details.

Just contact me if you want to meet up next week and see you all in Barcelona!

oAuth 1.0, 2.0, 2.err? Standards and why you need us

We recently found that one of our API services we manage for clients had stopped working.  We couldn't figure out why, except we were suddenly getting strange errors and our tracking system alerted that somewhere, somehow, an API had changed.

We traced the culprit to our old friend the oAuth 'standard'.  Basically,  OAuth2 originally specified that the access token was a parameter in the HTTP request:

e.g.  https://graph.facebook.com/me?access_token=blah&foo=bar

This is easy to use… but this is bad from a HTTP usage perspective – the access token is authorization token, not something that should be handled by the end resource. That kind of thing should go in the headers.

So, they spec’d it as a header:

Authorization: Bearer TOKEN_VALUE

So, here's the thing, the final spec mentions that the old way exists but is not recommended (it actually wasn't mentioned for a while) - our client had done the right thing and upgraded the spec, the problem was it broke how people integrated to their APIs.  We'll predict, but not guarentee that Facebook won't do the samething because it will catch out too many people and apps.

So, now we have 2 oAuth 2.0 standards, and, of course, oAuth 1.0 is still out there.

Remember, our service is designed to let us worry about this mess for you, so check out our developer site and try us for free today: http://dev.viafo.com

SoMoLo - The Retail Perspective

Forbes has an excellent piece on SoMoLo and the importance of this to retailers.  Naturally we're in full agreement, but would extend that to all types of information and content that people want to get out to their customers.

Viafo's Service Gateway's core functionality is to make it easy and cost effective to integrate Social Mobile and Location services into your existing mobile apps, but we're starting to look at wider use cases than that, as the solution we just delivered for Classic Accessories up here in the Pacific Northwest shows. 

In that project, we've used our gateway and technology not just to deliver SoMoLo content direct to people when they go shopping, but we also integrated into their BazaarVoice CRM system and also provided a complete, hosted solution for delivering HTML5 micro-apps for any smartphone.

The future is going to be about giving customers and consumers all the information they need, in an interactive and viral way straight to their phone or mobile device!

Drop us a line if you're interested in learning more or having a demo of our technology for retailers.

New Look, New Quarter...

As you may have noticed we've given the website a facelift.  The goal is to provide a better and clearer view of what it is we do here at Viafo, and also showcase some of the great customer solutions we've enabled over the summer months.

It's been an exciting summer for us, with a lot of new features and technology being put in place and we've a lot planned for the next 3 months too!  There's also a lot of movement in the social and API space and we're planning to be here to help you keep ahead of that curve.

The main things to watch out for in the coming month is yet another change to the Twitter API and what we're calling the Tokenpocalypse from Facebook.  Naturally, if you're already working with Viafo, these are not going to affect your apps.  The worst thing that will happen is your users may have to sign into their social networks.  If you're not, then this is likely to require a rewrite of your apps on all platforms!  Another good reason to shift to Viafo we think!

In other news, this quarter we'll be launching the following services:

• International Social Networks including regional management
• Social CRM v1
• Basic Social Scoring - score and track your users based on what they do and share
• Polls
• New Carriers

It's a big quarter we have coming up and we hope you'll be coming along for the ride.

South African Perspective on Social Networking Growth

An interesting article here on the growth of Social Networking in South Africa.  While this article is focused on Facebook and Instagram,  the section that interested me was this:

Blackberry and Nokia are still the most popular brands in South Africa, accounting for around 87 percent of the smartphones in the country. Blackberry holds the majority of that with around 46 percent of South African using a Blackberry. Nokia's share of the local market is around 41 percent.

iPhone is way in last place with 3%.  It's often forgotten that the entire global market isn't just the iPhone, and nor is it Facebook and Twitter.  Viafo's strength is to free developers, brands, carriers and agencies from having to focus on 2 platforms and only 2 social networks.

AT&T Developer API Support

Viafo is delighted to annouce that we've added support for several of AT&T's API Services.  By using the Viafo Gateway, you can now work with SMS, Location and Payment APIs with a fraction of the time and effort that working directly with the API will be.

Additionally, with the Viafo Gateway, developers don't have to hard code payment scenarios to their applications and can easily change and manage.

Keep your eyes out for more annoucements about supported carrier APIs on AT&T and other networks.

Check out the service at the Viafo Developer Site.

Updated Tumblr - No Need to Write More Code!

One of the great features of the Viafo platform is you don't have to change your apps when APIs change or alter, you can either add the new API or we'll upgrade the old one.  Tumblr is in the process of a major upgrade to their APIs, moving from basic authentication to a more secure and 'modern' oAuth based authentication.

Because this is a significant change and will require users to authenticate in a different way, we've decided to run both Tumblr APIs in parallel for a few months.  So we'd recommend going into your apps and adding the V2 API and then later removing the V1 API - remember that's all you need to do, the UI in your app will handle the changes automatically!

We've also taken the opportunity with the V2 API to enable commenting on Tumblr threads through our REPLY API and added FOLLOW to allow you to follow specific Tumblr accounts, all in the same way you'd do it with Twitter.

Other Updates:

Facebook Like:  We've just finished implementing the new Facebook Graph LIKE function, to map to our existing FOLLOW API - this doesn't work quite the way that you might expect and we'll be issuing a tutorial for this shortly.

Check-In: We're now supporting Unified Facebook and Foursquare Check-In through the same gateway API and we've provided reference code on Github for how you can make use of this in your applications.

SoMo - Saskatoon

"Would you like to speak at a Social Mobile event in Saskatoon?" I was asked.  I blinked.  I had to look on a map, sorry Canadians, I really didn't have a clue.  

Due to our interest in APIs we're currently helping the GSMA evangelize the launch of the OneAPI gateway in Canada and they wanted somebody to talk about their new cross carrier play, meanwhile, they also suggested I give a talk on the subject of if Mobile and Social are so important why are their so few Socially enabled Mobile apps?  I'll post more on that later.

It's an interesting event, focused more on the concepts behind mobile and social than on the technology.  This made it something of a bust from the perspective of getting developers aware of Viafo, but it was certainly extremely interesting in terms of content and what companies are doing with Social.

Most interesting was a talk by Dave Carrol of 'United Breaks Guitars' fame on how his viral video came about and the impact this has had on airline customer service.  This followed on nicely from a morning talk by Darren Hailes the head of Social Media at Canadian Low Cost airline Westjet about how they use Social Media and the web to engage their audience.  Having spent 5 hours in Calgary on the way here due to weather this was a subject dear to my heart.

My main takeaways: people are starting to grasp the importance of social, but they're still failing to put it front and center of their web and mobile planning - in the long term that's going to be a huge mistake for any brand.

Flurry Says Social Media Apps Now Rival Games

Games, games, games...that is has always been the 500LB gorilla of the App world.  Well at least until today when App analytics company Flurry announced that for the first time in the history of applications … another app category is rivaling games,” according to Peter Farago, vice president of marketing at the analytics firm.

Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/173469/social-network-apps-rival-games-for-mobile-attenti.html#ixzz1taQD35IY  and be sure to suscribe to our mailing list for the latest and greatest in the SoMoLo App economy at  http://eepurl.com/jTrrP

Viafo Services Gateway at AT&T Mobile App Hackathon

Come and join us this weekend at the AT&T Hackathon!  Viafo are going to be showing how our gateway can be used to simplify the integration to AT&T's carrier APIs.

We're providing some simple reference code and access to some of AT&T's APIs like Location, SMS and the mHealth service.

Viafo Services Gateway, Developer Version Now Available!

It has been an exciting and busy few weeks since our last post from SXSW.  As we mentioned in Austin, we have been hard at work on a Public Beta of a Developer Version of the Viafo Services Gateway. Well that day has come as we are proud to announce that Services Gateway is now publicly available, and free at (http://dev.viafo.com).  

Viafo’s Services Gateway reduces the cost of integrating and maintaining Services integration. By adding our free reference code into your App code, your App will be deeply integrated with all the major services, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and more.  Services can be added and managed from the cloud without ever having to update your apps.  Reference code is available for iPhone, Android, HTML5 (Sencha and jQuery Mobile libraries provided), Samsung Bada, Nokia QT for S60.  Additional features include:

Authentication Support: oAuth 1.0 & 2.0 support through the Viafo Service Discovery API

Supported Interactions: Update Status, Reply, Comment, Message, Like/Follow, Get Friends, Check-In

Supported Social Networks (Q1 2012): Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Foursquare

Reporting: App use stats, regional use, social networking use & sharing by app, region and network, social networking use. Export to CSV & .XLS

Moderation: Content management and blocking - moderation holds for Social Networking Posts

Control: Web Control Panel for all apps

Taco Bell, Scanlife and Viafo launch ScanSocial SXSW 2012!

Greetings from Austin, Texas! It has been an exciting couple of days here at SXSW, great people, parties and new products. SXSW is all about networking and to help attendees network more easily, and win a few prizes, Viafo has teamed with Taco Bell and Scanlife to launch ScanSocial SXSW 2012.

ScanSocial SXSW 2012 provides SXSW Interactive participants a new and fun way to network and connect with fellow SXSW attendees.  By simply pointing their Smart Phone browser to http://scansocial.appspot.com/ participants log in, using their Twitter profile, and immediately receive their own unique Scanlife QR code, tied directly to their Twitter account.  

Here is how is the way it works:

1)  Scan the ScanSocial Official QR code to enter or go tohttp://scansocial.appspot.com/ from your mobile device.

2)  Enter your Twitter login and you will automatically get your own QR Code badge that links to your Twitter profile (thanks to world of API’s!)

3)   When people scan your code, they will be an instant follower and you start racking up points

More followers = more points = more prizes!

Daily prizes will be awarded to people in Austin with the highest number of followers and you can get bonus points by following others and tweeting from the game. Daily prizes include a package of a $20 Taco Bell gift card, a $50 cash gift cards and getting tweeted by @tacobell to 170K followers!   The Grand Prize winner with the most points for the week will win  4 tickets to the Closing Night Party at the Hype Hotel on March 17, 2012.

Daily winners will get announced from the 12th to the 17th.

The leaderboard will be updated real time so get started now, and start collecting your followers!

ScanSocial is powered by Scanlife and the Viafo Services Gateway.  ScanSocial is powered by Scanlife and Viafo.  Scanlife powers intelligent QR Code campaigns for hundreds of brands around the world. It includes a complete set of API's to create and track dynamic experiences plus an SDK to convert any mobile app into a barcode scanning machine! 


Viafo's Services Gateway is the most comprehensive App-Services integration solution on the market. By adding just a few lines of code, your existing Apps will be deeply integrated with all the major services - Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Ren-Ren, Tumblr and more - and you can add and manage services from the cloud without ever having to update your apps. 

Hello Austin!

2012 is off to busy start. Highlights include CES in Las Vegas, Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and the Beta launch of the Viafo Services Gateway.  There are now 10 Viafo powered 10 apps in the market. Currently we are in Austin, Texas for SXSW Interactive. Check back with us next week, or follow us on Twitter #Viafo, as we will be announcing more news shortly.

New App Using Viafo: TVPyx

Another new app just went live in the Windows Phone Marketplace, TVPyx is a TV Guide application for the United Kingdom which integrates a full range of social networking functionality through our gateway.  If you want to interact with the Twitter stream for a show that you're watching or want to watch, it's there at your fingertips.

TVPyx uses our new Native Windows Phone integration code which is available on Github.

Viafo Comes Second at Nokia Hackathon

Viafo came second in the Nokia World Hackathon for the launch of the Lumia range of Windows Phones.  Our entry, Blood Sprint (www.bloodsprint.com) is aimed at helping Blood Donation Services and Blood Donors connect via a simple to use mobile app and web service.

True to our company mission, to make apps better, we integrated a wide range of social and location functions into the app to make it a fun and viral solution.

For more information, check out this interview we gave Nokia.

http://www.ideasproject.com/docs/DOC-8818

You can also download the app for your Windows Phone device here: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/apps/74e223d3-d94e-484b-abdc-fbc9f29daf65

API Market is getting big

You don't have to take our word for it, how about this article:

http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/12/02/the-api-market-is-taking-a-big-shape/

Basically, there's a lot of movement in the space that we're focusing on.  Hopefully we'll be able to give you more insight into that next week, with the launch of Viafo Labs, our services arm, and videos showing how effective our Gateway is at enabling social networking services in your apps.

Welcome Google Plus AND yet more reasons why you should be using Viafo...

I will admit to being slightly taken aback by how quickly I've seen Google+ go from something that arrived in my inbox, to something that I'm using more than Facebook and where I already have a non-trivial part of my social graph on already.

And this highlights I think, the need for our gateway.  Here's a new social network, it's rapidly growing, but it's by no means a sure thing that it's going to be a success.  So, what a sane mobile or similar developer would do would be to wait.  Of course, by waiting you might miss out on a new service or a new feature or a new way of interacting with your users.  So should you really wait?

Then again, if you're on iPhone there's a built in wait for you anyway.  You're not going to have Google Plus integrated instantly.

Whereas, with our gateway, the moment that we get access to the Google Plus API then you'd have access through the same set of APIs you're using to talk to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and LinkedIn - now, doesn't that make sense?

We're looking forward to welcoming Google Plus into the fold.

Developer Product Launched!

Well, let's be clear, the Alpha interface for developers building HTML5 apps got launched at the WIP Connector "Muther" event last weekend at the Computer History Museum.

You can try it out at our developer site: http://dev.viafo.com

The UI isn't quite ready yet and we've some features to add.  But our reference apps, like "Kittens!" will get you on the way.

The winner of our $500 prize for the best app using Viafo's Gateway, Wombat Mobile's DVD Collector, was quite clear that this was the easiest way to add social and location features to an app that they had come across.  It took about an hour to integrate and get Facebook working and then Twitter just worked to!

That's what we planned from the start, and it's awesome to see it working like that.