We’ve just released a new MashLogic version coming with a major LinkedIn mash overhaul, made possible by the new LinkedIn API that they have been working on the past two years. The API being OAuth based, we no longer need to keep a copy of your LinkedIn credentials around, so we purge those from your stored configuration, if you had provided them. We are very fond of the business card look of contacts in the MashLogic callout now made possible:
Old MashLogic users may note that we have (at least temporarily) removed another feature that mash used to have. Back when we started, when there was no LinkedIn API, we made a proof-of-concept implementation that would (if you configured the mash with your LinkedIn credentials) log you on to the site, use site search and some page scraping, to look up your in-network distance to people we spotted on the web page you were at. Then we would show you this information in a little icon right in the web page beside the name.
In theory, we could do that with the API as well, but so far, the number of API calls a user can do per day is constrained to a maximum of about 50, by our measurements, after which the API stops delivering any data at all. As every name lookup costs an API call (or two, if we show the profile image) and as it is quite likely that your web browsing over the day would encounter more than a few dozen names that have a LinkedIn presence, we have opted not to do this, for now, and only perform lookups when you open a MashLogic callout.
Once you are looking at a person, we of course show you what network distance separates you, and now, even via whom or what people. We hope we will get to iterate to make it better still over the next few weeks, as the LinkedIn API matures.
