Among the scheduled proceedings at the music hackathon, at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference on Sunday, was Nike's release of the application programming interface (API) for NikeFuel, which is the technology behind the company's January-unveiled waterproof wristband, the Nike FuelBand.

The release of the NikeFuel API at the music hackathon - which is organized by startup Backplane, in tandem with Spotify music-streaming service - is a notable move because NikeFuel is essentially the metric which Nike uses for keeping track of physical activity; and the FuelBand measures the movements of the users and synchronizes them with their iPhone or iPod Touch.

Noting that the NikeFuel API will give the third-party music developers the advantage of infusing the features of NikeFuel into their respective apps or platforms, Backplane said in a Friday statement to Mashable that, Nike will open up a BETA version of the NikeFuel API; thereby giving interested app developers the ability to combine music with the Nike FuelBand.

The $150-priced Nike FuelBand, which boasts its own dedicated NikeFuel technology in place of the conventional metrics for burning calories, has specifically been designed with the aim of making it a cohesive measure of all the day-long physical activities of the users.

Terming the NikeFuel metric as a big plus, especially for the athletes, Gizmodo's Casey Chan said: "It's a clever idea! As balancing the differences of various activities (sprint, jog, etc) can provide the token to improve overall fitness since you're gunning for the same goal, in this case, a NikeFuel benchmark."