One of the things that I’m not too fond of when it comes to the launch of Google+ thus far is the lack of a proper API for developers to create cool tools and uses for Google’s social network.

Even though Twitter has throttled usage of its API for third-party developers, once in a while a really great tool becomes available that either people use the heck out of until Twitter buys them, like Summify, or it serves a quick purpose, and we all move on. Either way, it’s great promotion and increased usage for Twitter.

Facebook has seen similar growth and engagement thanks to a huge ecosystem of developers and companies building apps and games on its platform. Needless to say, Google+ hasn’t exposed enough of its platform to enjoy any type of innovation. Perhaps that will change now that the company has announced a Google+ Developers page on the social network. Here’s what Google+ Developer Relations lead Chris Chabot had to say about it:

Our team will host regular hangouts to talk about the +Platform, your experiences with it, and share tips and tricks with the community. Our weekly office hours hangouts take place every Wednesday at 11:30am – 12:15pm PDT, and can be accessed from our Google+ Developers page. The +Platform team will also share Google+ developer events, conferences and hackathons, as well as photos and videos of the events. In addition, we’ll announce and discuss our +Platform launches on our page.

2012 is going to be a very exciting year for the Google+ Platform — I look forward to seeing you on our new Google+ Developers page!

In October, Google’s Vic Gundotra said that the company was taking a “cautious approach” to exposing the service for third-party development, and that’s exactly what the company has done. Currently, there is no “write” access for Google+ without using its own badge systems that you see on sites like ours.

There doesn’t seem to be a huge ecosystem of developers creating things for Google+ as of yet, and I’m hoping that the “exciting year” Chabot mentions will mean that the company will open up more access to Google+ for developers through its platform.

➤ Google+ Developers Page

While marketing professionals and executives of companies tend to get all of the accolades when it comes to popular services that we use on the Internet, the actual developers and engineers behind these products often go unnoticed. Part of that is due to choice, and the other part is because these rockstar coders don’t have a place to show their appreciation for each other.

For example, everyone knows that Jack Dorsey helped invent Twitter, but do we know which engineers helped code the site to stay up during its heaviest usage? Not so much.

Today, a site came our way called Githero.es that lets the developer community nominate those who share code with others on the popular repository site GitHub. This community is a new trend we’re seeing, especially with the popularity of Geekli.st, which coaxes achievements in development out of its community of geeks.

Githero.es comes to us from the creators of the video syncing app, Denso as a public service to thank our favorite developers for those helpful lines of code.

Nominate your GitHero

If you’ve been helped along the way by a specific member of GitHub, now’s your chance to nominate them as your “GitHero”, as a way of saying thanks. The site is rather simple, and allows you to nominate your hero by entering their username:

While the site is very simple, it does feature a leaderboard which can be broken down by city. The leaderboard lets you click through to the developer’s GitHub page, which shows you all of the code that they’ve checked in and when they signed up for the site:

Most of the amazing engineers that I’ve worked with over the years are the last ones to applaud a job well done for themselves, so sites like this are a great way for a budding community to grow and bring more attention to the ones that keep our favorite sites up and running, as well as keep pushing the envelope of development on the web.

If you’re a developer, check out Githero.es and let your colleagues know how much you care!

➤ Githero.es

Geekli.st, the social network for developers and engineers, has launched a cool integration with code repository site GitHub.

The new feature allows users to send a new achievement to the Geekli.st site along with the superstar code that you just checked in. If you’ve pushed something awesome, it’s worth telling people about. This integration makes it super simple.

Geekli.st has become a way for developers to interact with each other and share their technical achievements. It’s extremely difficult for developers to maintain a resume, since their best work is usually quite granular and rarely gets attention from recruiters.

Here’s what your profile on Geekli.st will look like when you publish an achievement at the same time you push code to GitHub:

In the video below, Geekli.st shows you how to integrate GitHub into your social experience on the site:

While LinkedIn has become the popular place for business networking, it really doesn’t cater to engineers and developers in the way that Geekli.st does. As it adds more features, Geekli.st has a shot to be the go-to place for the merit based developer resume.

Companies are looking to the site to find very specific talents, and the more achievements that a developer publishes, the more attention that they’ll get by way of high-fives and shares. Smart.

➤ Geekli.st

Interested in Web design? Take a look at 9 gorgeous examples of black & white websites.

Since we talked to Geekli.st last, which is still in private beta, the service has seen impressive growth and engagement.

The site allows you to add technical-focused accomplishments to share with community of developers and engineers.

Since the end of September, Geekli.st has had over 100,000 activities happen within the community. Activities range from viewing cards and giving people high-fives for accomplishments. The company has been slowly rolling out invites to users, and has more than doubled in size during the process.

Today, Geekli.st has rolled out a robust search option so that you can find other like-minded developers who have accomplished pretty amazing things, like scaling Twitter.

Resumes are so 2010

The thing that stood out to me about Geekli.st was that developers and engineers are usually judged based on the tasks or projects that they participated in, entered in as a “card” on Geekli.st. Furthermore, what role they played in a project is equally as important. These are things that you don’t get from a resume. Even when you visit LinkedIn, most profiles are barely filled out and rely on recommendations to fill in the color about your career.

Companies are starting to turn to Geekli.st to find the talent that they need in Silicon Valley. A well-funded startup isn’t looking for someone with a certain type of degree, they’re looking for someone who has been in the trenches and lives and breathes certain types of coding languages and technology. That’s why Geekli.st has rolled out its search product.

The search bar will now follow you throughout the site and by simply typing in any keyword, you’ll be shown a list of people as well as cards that match your search.

Search is an important feature since the company now hosts 5,000 cards worth of accomplishments.

Some of the other things the company is working on are personalized timelines, updated profiles, the ability to have conversations with users, and “nominations” which I’m personally excited about.

When I spoked to Geekli.st Co-founder Christian Sanz about the new features, he explained how nominations would work when they roll-out. Since geeks aren’t the most social bunch, you’ll be able to nominate your peers for things such as “PHP God”. It’s a great way for a budding community to be able to highlight really talented developers without making them beg or hope for attention.

One of the other things Geekli.st is doing for its community is hosting Hackathons all over the world, with one going on today in New York City. It was sold out in one day.

If you’re a geek and want to show off some of your accomplishments to peers and potential employers, you can join the site by using this exclusive code for readers of The Next Web: IMAGEEK1. The first 500 get in, so hurry up and geek out!

➤ Geekli.st

The Code Cards come from UX expert Matt Raw, and these cards are coded and printed out with care in Brooklyn, NY.

My favorite has to be the “Egg Nog Arrays” card:

The best part is that these cards are made on really great card stock, and come complete with matching envelopes. The Code Cards cost $14, but are completely worth it for the novelty factor.

➤ Code Cards

Today, Google announced an update to one of its most popular APIs, Google Calendars. Integration of Google Calendar into other apps has become popular, namely among those who focus on task management software.

The company had this to say about its Calendar API Update:

The Google Calendar API is one of Google’s most used APIs. Today, we’re rolling out a new version of the API that will give developers even more reasons to use it. Version three of the Google Calendar API provides several improvements over previous versions of the API:

• Lightweight resource representation in JSON
• Consistent and comprehensive reference documentation
• Improved support for recurring events
• Ability to manipulate default reminders on calendars
• Access to the new UI and event colors

Google Calendar recently updated its design, and allows you to color-code events, so including those items into its API is key for developers to update their own creations.

The company has done a wonderful job cleaning up its documentation, as well as offering support directly from the developers working on the various Google projects.

The team is hosting a live Google+ Hangout on November 30th from 8am-8:45am EST to talk about the new Calendar API and answer any questions that developers might have.

Intel has gotten very serious about its stance in the mobile market today.

Two things were announced. The first is a round of funding and partnership with Urban Airship, which recently purchased location startup SimpleGeo.

Up until now, Urban Airship has focused primarily on products for smart phone users, but Intel believes that there is a need for the same technology in its future plans for netbooks.

Vice President of Intel Capital, Lisa Lambert, had this to say:

The top app companies look to Urban Airship for help shaping the most engaging user experience on mobile. We are well aligned with Urban and they help us bring even more value to developers creating apps for the users of millions of Intel Atom processor-based devices.

In a play that sounds like a “me too” approach to mobile, Intel is hoping that the relationships built by Urban Airship over the years, can be parlayed into development on Intel’s own netbook platform.

The round of funding was a $15.1 million Series C round, which included salesforce.com, and Verizon as other investors. Urban Airship provides back-end notification and communication services for app developers who want to talk with and advertise to its users.

In addition to the funding announcement and partnership with Urban Airship, Intel also announced that they have launched a $100 million dollar fund called AppUp, for the development of apps on its platform. Ultrabooks and netbooks are still mobile, even though we mostly think of smartphones when we think of mobile apps. Intel is stepping up, but will major app developers jump on board? The fund certainly won’t hurt its chances.

Even if you’re not a Facebook developer there has been a “hack” of sorts in place to become a developer and gain early access to your Facebook timeline, if you didn’t want to sign up and wait.

At this time, it is not known if Facebook’s Timeline will be available to everyone on October 19th, but as you can see by the screenshot above, Timelines will be published publicly on that date. However, when most of us were getting our Timeline, we weren’t shown a date at all, so this is a recent update from Facebook.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for more information about the Timeline launch, but have yet to hear back. We will keep you updated.

UPDATE: According to Liz Gannes, you are given a 7 day grace period before publishing your Timeline. This date may just be that. The tip came in last night, so when we tested today, we both saw the 19th. However, the tipster was outside of the US, thus it was 7 days previous to the 19th for him at the time. We will continue to monitor Timeline’s arrival.

Thanks to @JPKing88 who spotted this and tipped The Next Web.

We have all been in mourning since the passing of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs this week, and we’ve read a lot of the tweets and thoughts everyone has had on the subject.

The Next Web has heard from several developers on the topic of how Steve Jobs affected their lives, career, and companies. Without iTunes and the App store, some of them may never have had the chance to succeed in the way that they have.

From Allan Petersen, Co-Founder of Memoir Tree:

Without Steve Jobs, my startup would not exist. It’s as simple as that. Our private beta launches in two weeks. We’d be doing something completely different, if Steve Jobs hadn’t been such a visionary.

The iOS platform has proved to be a very successful one for developers, giving small teams of developers and creatives a new canvas to paint their mark on the world. Steve Jobs realized that experiencing something on a computer with a web browser simply wasn’t enough, you had the hold something in your hand and touch it to get the full experience. Companies have benefited from that vision in a big way. For example, Angry Birds continues to be amongst the top games on the App Store. It’s crazy to think that the game may never have seen the light of day if it weren’t for the platform that Steve Jobs thought up out of thin air with help from his friends and colleagues at Apple.

Bobby Ghoshal, founder of FLUD News, shares a very personal story about his interactions with Apple and Steve Jobs:

The day FLUD News launched its iPhone app last december, I emailed Steve and thanked him for his contribution to the app industry. I also asked him to check out the latest FLUD when he got a chance, the next day I got a call from Apple heads telling us that we were the number 1 featured app in the app store and that we were invited to meet with people from the app store team. It gave me goose bumps.

We’ve heard many stories like that, including my own, but one young developer stood out.

Tom Harris, InsiderApps’ 17-year-old founder and creator of the App “Tweet Now”, perhaps sums up best what Steve Jobs meant to developers with this:

I never really thought about it much before until today and it sort of hit me as a bit of an overwhelming moment, the fact that if Steve Jobs hadn’t been here to create the iPhone and therefore iOS as we know it today, then I and thousands of other developers wouldn’t have been able to create apps that help people. Me, personally, am just an indie 17-year-old dev who codes in my spare time, but the fact that I have had over 40,000 people download one of my apps to make their lives a little bit easier for a short moment, it just made me think how many people’s lives have been improved upon, thanks to Steve and his team at Apple, and how one person really can make a difference. Even for me, if out of the 40k downloads, if just a handful of people saved themselves a bit of money by using my app, then I’ve helped some people to be potentially be able to support their families in the future just by that little bit, and that’s the sort of thing that’s hard to come by, but it does make you feel really great inside and thankful for Steve’s visionary personality. RIP Steve, you’ll be missed by millions.

The show must go on, and as long as Apple is around there will always be “One More Thing…”.

With the help of developers, of course.

Are you an Apple Developer? Share your stories about Steve Jobs in the comments.