The Pownce Blog

The lack of an API has been a major criticism leveled against Pownce from day one. The problem isn’t that we don’t have one, though–it’s that the existing API (built exclusively for the purpose of communication with the desktop app) just, well, sucks.

Some enterprising souls, however, have unlocked the secrets of our bizarre auth scheme and begun to write client libraries for the undocumented API. This was to be expected.

Of course, now that we have widely distributed clients (namely the desktop app) that rely on the existing API, we can’t really change it. But what we can do is create a new, public API, document how it works, then endorse and encourage its use by third parties.

Toward this end we’ve created the Pownce API Google group, where we can discuss its design and development with client library authors and API consumers. Feel free to sign up and chime in if you have any suggestions for how you think it should work. We’re particularly interested in hearing from you about response formats (XML or Atom?) and authentication schemes (HTTP Basic over SSL? WSSE? Frob/token? AuthSub-style?).

Soon we’ll be publishing specs for community review, and we hope to have the initial implementation up and running in September. I’m really excited to see Pownce’s evolution from web site to platform, I think that the API is going to be a huge leap in that direction. Thanks for your patience, everyone!