Farewell to the TED Open API

I am afraid that I’m the bearer of some bad news. It has been conveyed to me that the TED API, which is the basis for the TED Downloader application, that you all use, is going to be shut down on July 15 2016. What this means is that the app will stop working, come 15 th July.

TED supports 3 kinds of  APIs : Basic (Free and very low calls to the API permitted), Premium (Probably not free and allowing more calls to the API) and Partner (for  businesses and media companies). What has been conveyed to me is that :

 On July 15, the public API will be turned off. Keys will stop working after this date.


As per the above notice, it can mean that the premium API will continue (as I see it). I have dropped them a mail to confirm if this is the case and what would be the charges for it (as I assume that they won’t allow free access to anyone).

But what this means is that, essentially, the free version of TED Downloader will stop working, come 15th July and there would be no way to access TED without the premium API (if the reply is positive), so unfortunately, Ted Downloader will no longer be able to remain a freeware as the charge for the premium key will need to be recovered.

But, still this is just a heads-up, as it might happen that the API is shutting down completely with no way to salvage anything and the app will be shut down for good. I’m waiting for their reply which will provide a conclusive answer.

 

Update :

Here is the reply, I got from TED :

Hey Obin,

My apologies for the delay! Partners will still have access to TED’s API, only public access will be retired.

If you’d like to discuss a partner license with someone at TED, please fill out the media license request form.

Please let me know if you have any other API questions!

So, apparently only the free public API is retired and the paid API is going to be available. So this means that the free version of the app shall work till July 15 2016.

I will be applying for a media license and as per the cost, the new application shall be priced (I tried and will try to keep the application free for as long as I can but still…). I have applied for the license and hopefully, within the next month, the application shall be up again.