On the whim I recently decided to play around with the API for mlkshk, a relatively new image hosting and sharing service. I have always been uneasy uploading photos to yFrog and TwitPic for the purpose of sharing on Twitter because of the amount of ads that scatter the page and get in the way of actually viewing the picture. Once I discovered mlkshk could be made to work with Twitter for iPhone, I was set.
Even more important to me is they actually want to take my money in the form of a small recurring subscription fee. In this world of venture capital funded, free services it is refreshing to see a Web site actually want to take money from its customers rather than turning the customer into what is being sold.
It’s in my developer DNA to want to tinker with things I like, so as soon as I discovered the mlkshk API I started hacking away. The developer page is pretty sparse, but does have a list of methods and a few samples for PHP and Python developers. Nothing for Objective-C, however. Until now.
I spent the Memorial Day weekend putting together ShakeKit, an Objective-C wrapper for the mlkshk API. The wrapper makes extensive use of blocks so iOS 4 or Mac OS X Snow Leopard are required.
The ShakeKit library is MIT licensed and it is my hope that someone will be able to take this API wrapper and use it as the foundation to build something awesome for the Mac or iOS. I’ve got several ideas for apps small and large that could harness the mlkshk API, but I’ve got more than enough on my plate as is. Hopefully ShakeKit will inspire someone else out there to build something awesome.