Does Sabre provides a way to get rich content flights - sabre

I was reading this press release "Sabre and Routehappy collaborate to provide travel agents with intelligent and visually rich airline product content in flight search" in sabre website.
Is there any Sabre API endpoint to get rich content, images for the carrier, Cabin class, etc in BFM or any other air request?

At the moment there is no API with Routehappy content. You could contact your account team if you are interested in this.

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Google Play Store - web scrape top apps for every genre

Currently when I access the Google Play store from a browser (https://play.google.com/store/apps/top?hl=en), I can only see:
Top Apps, Top Selling Apps, Top Grossing Apps, Top Games, Top Selling Games, Top Grossing games.
I am trying to scrape data to get the top selling/grossing apps on the Play Store for EVERY GENRE of apps (i.e. Education, Health, Social, etc). I would've thought this data would be available on the browser Play Store because apparently it is available on the Android App Play Store. When selecting a category on the web browser Play Store, there are no options to view the top selling/grossing apps.
There are many (commercial) API's that give information on top Google Play apps for each genre so surely this information is able to be scraped from somewhere? For example Applyzer, https://www.applyzer.com/?mmenu=worldcharts shows top apps for every genre on the Play store. I would web scrape from here but I want to do this directly from Google.
Any insights would be greatly appreciated.
SOLVED: see my own post below
SOLVED: I just managed to solve this myself. Turns out the Google Play Store does display this information, but you must manually enter the URL yourself. For example: https://play.google.com/store/apps/category/BUSINESS/collection/topselling_paid BUSINESS can be replaced by any category, and topselling_paid can be interchanged with topselling_free or topgrossing

Can I customize look of Google News RSS feed on my website?

I have a doubt regarding the use of Google News RSS Feed. Google News help states this:
Why Google might block an RSS feed In some cases, Google News might
block a feed. That could happen if you are:
Using Google News feeds for profit or to increase traffic to your site
Reformatting news results so they look like your own content
Changing, editing, or creating works based on content from Google News
I am looking to clarify these points:
Can't I customize the look of the feed? I want to have a separate page for news related to content on my website. Will then I violate the second rule if I customize the look of it? For example, I'll display a slideshow on the top along with a listing in the bottom much like FeedWind or Feedgrabber widgets.
I am surely not violating the third one. But everyone displays Google News on their website to sustain traffic right? Isn't the first rule broken by everyone who uses Google news RSS feed on their website?
Can't I customize the look of the feed?
Create an app or script to grab the feed, parse it, decorate it the way you like. Now, you have successfully customized the look.
I want to have a separate page for news related to content on my website. Will then I violate the 2nd rule if I customize the look of it?
A bit critical question. Let me provide you a simple answer: mention at certain corner that it was from google news feed. When google shows you ads, it puts a little AdChoice at a cozy corner by clicking on which you can confirm that that was an ad from google - follow their strategy, give them proper credit.
I am surely not violating the third one. But everyone displays google news on their website to sustain traffic right? Isn't the first rule broken by everyone who uses Google news rss feed on their website?
When you are providing value to others, then people like to act blind and pretend that what they see is not a promotion. For example, free medical camps are not actually done for helping others if they cannot promote them to get prospective patients (clients/customers) or cannot get free media promotion (again free flow of lot of customers) - forget those doctors who are lonely or have no responsibility or for whatever reason serving for free.

Google Maps query businesses Near Me Search

Objective
Client wants a map on the search results page that shows a Google Map with all business listings, matching the users search parameters, that are near that user.
Background
I have a client who is building a business directory website.
This client is currently using a WordPress plugin called GeoDirectory and would like to have a map on the search results page that shows a Google Map with all business listings, matching the users search parameters, that are near that user.
These would not be the businesses on the website they would be the businesses that you would get if you did a search on Google say "restaurants near me" and it would show those businesses.
The client wants it to look exactly like the google map that results from that search so it would take the query created by the GeoDirectory plugin and show a list of businesses from the clients site that match a specific category and also a google map of other businesses in the area that are listed on Google.
Question
Is this possible?
I don't really have a link to show an example but if you type in "restaurants near me" in the google search bar and click on the map that pops up in the search results you will see what I mean.
Is it possible?
I don't know WordPress, but coming from a Google Maps background, I can definitely tell you that yes, it is possible.
What can I use?
Depending where you make your request from, you can either use the Places API Web Service (server side) or the JavaScript API with the Places Library (for client side).
For more information about the Places API and related products you can visit https://developers.google.com/places/documentation/
How can the Places API help me?
The Places API Web Service and its library for the JavaScript API have a functionality that you can use called PlacesSearch, which is exactly what you need.
Examples and Docs
To use this functionality, lets say, using the Web API, you need to make a GET request like the following:
https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/nearbysearch/output?parameters
Using the JavaScript API, you would send a request like this:
https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/places#place_search_requests
With this information, you can include a map, and quickly get the information you need by having the user type in a text box.
The example below demonstrates how this concept works
https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/examples/place-search

Spotify integration with Facebook OpenGraph

I'm trying to reproduce some cool things of the Spotify opengraph integration but there is one thing I understand how they do :
when you go on your spotify app profile (mine : https://www.facebook.com/antonio.mendespinto/music) you can see that the musician links points to the facebook page and not the spotify web pages (http://open.spotify.com/artist/7CajNmpbOovFoOoasH2HaY). How do they do that.
Also, is it this that lets Facebook to do behind the scenes the nice box in the artists page https://www.facebook.com/ogp/464730384564/ on the top showing friends interactions with the artist and spotify friend interactions.
Everything seems to point to the facebook pages instead of the spotify pages. How do they do that?
Yes, Spotify uses Facebook Open Graph Music, a predefined set of objects and properties for music.
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/music/
Then I guess the Spotify account is marked in a way that makes this available. It is possible that this is what makes Facebook show the nice box in the artist page.
I work at Spotify, but I am not really sure about all the details of this. I know other music streaming services also use this, but I am not sure if it still requires a special account. It did in the beginning. Spotify was one of the first users of Open Graph.
The destination of the links inside Open Graph artifacts are left to the discretion of the developer. Say you're writing an app that lets people share restaurant tips. When you post a "Tip" object to OG, you naturally would include a link to the restaurant. As the app developer, you could choose the restaurant's web page, its Yelp page, its OpenTable page, your own representation of the restaurant page on your web site or any other web page on the internets. :-)
Being faced with a similar situation, I chose to use my own application's web page representing a restaurant. I experimented with using the restaurant's Facebook page (which I had to look up using the Graph API for search) as well as a third-party provider of restaurant information, e.g. Yelp. Using the Facebook page, my app felt more tightly integrated with Facebook, but I didn't get the luxury of having my own Facebook app metadata. Because I chose to link to my own restaurant page, I was able to set and retrieve whatever metadata I wanted, which really came in handy later when I started configuring aggregations.
I don't know how Spotify data surfaces on artist pages nor do I know how they managed to shoehorn song AND album objects into each listen post on OpenGraph, e.g.: "Chris listened to Torn and Frayed on Exile on Main Street." I could only ever get ONE object linked to an action, e.g. "Chris left a tip on California Pizza Kitchen." My assumption is that since they were one of the (if not the only) Facebook Open Graph launch partner, they probably had some inside help.

How to integrate shopping cart system for flash application

I've built a simple flash application that takes a user's photo/image, offers various effects and filters to play with. In the end, the application can write-out the resulting image to a PDF print file (to be purchased and sent to a printer).
Currently I'm using PHP to template the web pages, with the Flash app embedded in the body of one of the pages.
I now need to integrate a shopping cart and check-out system, the idea being that the user can play with images, add various images to a shopping cart, at some point choose print sizes for each image, check-out and purchase etc. My app would attached the necessary print files, and email/submit the order to the printer.
In researching the various cart systems out there like Zen-cart, Magento, osCommerce, etc.. these all seem to be full featured CMS systems, full websites, that you deploy, customize and skin, add products to etc... a "canned store". But in my case, I'm adding/creating the product at run-time. It's not a traditional store where you browse and select items.
At first glance its not clear to me how I would use one of these systems, how to integrate with my Flash app.... it seems I only want to make use of the shopping cart, customer database portion, payment transaction features.
Is it possible to use one of these, using only the checkout and order management through a API? called from my Flash app? or processed via back-end PHP? Any suggestions, pointers?
I'm looking for some guidance, someone to point me in the right direction. I'm a noob to eCommerce.
Thank you!
I would just use PayPal Website Payments Standard, and have "Buy Now" buttons, or an "Add to Cart" button, which just adds the cost of each image to an array as your customers create the images. Then just set the appropriate PayPal Standard HTML variables and submit a form to PayPal. Then your customer would pay for the things on PayPal.
I'm building an eCommerce system with Flex and Rails right now (using Spree), and I can tell you it's a pretty decent undertaking. If you don't need to calculate shipping costs or taxes based on where the person lives, and you don't need to be able to have thousands of products, I'd just skip the whole eCommerce thing and use PayPal (it's free). That's what PeepCode does for example (they're a site I use to buy tutorial videos for Rails and such), you just say "add to cart", and it takes me to PayPal and I do my thing. Way easier, way less overhead. It sounds like you could do that.
If you really want to use a full featured eCommerce system, you can definitely connect to them through HTTP requests to get/post data, but that will be a long-term undertaking.
Hope that helps,
Lance

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