A first for US carriers, Sprint opened up a few REST services for developers to play with for free at their dev Sandbox (http://www.sprintdevelopersandbox.com/). Developers can access location, simple presence, and send SMS messages through the services to Sprint handsets without requiring any software installed to the handset.

With the services, you can prototype web or mobile apps that query Sprint users and mashup with other data. You could create your own tracking apps for families, groups or businesses, text the users when they go out of bounds or if remind them if they are in range of a location or a commercial service. Mashing up weather info, you could push weather warnings according to dynamic location with simple service calls, and again, no need for installed software on the handset. Developers can use any language to make the service call, and any platform, so they could even develop an wacky iPhone app to query Sprint handsets if they wanted.

The location service returns a lat/long accurate within 100 meters, better in the cities, since it relies on tower triangulation location. You could beef up the lat/long with a mashup app to detailed mapping and address info. On the dev site, you can see a Google mashup of a very simple map with location for a demo. There’s also a presence service, which simply indicates the phone is on or in network range, and an SMS service to send a text and get the status of the message.

Carrier privacy requires a sort of opt-in notification to the services by the “trackees.” Your trackees receive an initial text requiring an opt-in. The trackees can opt-out at anytime at the Sprint account management web site. And just to be sure, the trackees get a text message about monthly reminding them that they are being monitored. So no anonymous tracking is allowed.

On the dev Sandbox, you get 250 hits a day for free, but for better performance and more hits, you can go commercial through an arrangement with one of Sprint service partners, which act as sort of “bucket” shops for purchasing access. Right now, the services are pretty plain and could be more robust in feedback. The performance on the free Sandbox is not the better production quality you can expect if you have purchased commercial access. There are non-REST APIs that are richer. But for free, you can get an idea of what you could do with accurate location mashups that require no clients on the handset. These REST services access only Sprint customers now, but later Boost should be added. It’ll be interesting to see if these services will ultimately extend through Sprint’s partners like Cricket and Virgin.

(First published on Programmableweb.com - Nan Hickman) Art from Sprint Dream ad campaign.)

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