Blog

Business of APIs 2nd Edition

by Kin Lane on 03/15/2013

In May 2011 I released a book called the Business of APIs. The book was intended to be an introductory walkthrough for non-technical people, to the world of APIs. I wanted to educate business, organizational and governmental leaders about the space, and the important role of APIs in having a healthy digital strategy. Its coming up on two years later, and I'm finally getting around to updating the Business of APIs. After a nice long walk on the strand with @audreywatters, we have the outline for the next version: What is an API? What are APIs used for? The history of APIs What goes into an API? Do you need an API? How do you get an API? What are the common building blocks of an API? What are possible business models for an API? How do you evangelize and support an API? Where have some APIs stumbled? APIs, a new way of doing business The goal of the Business of APIs is the same. Help anyone, from any company, organization or the government understand what an API is, and why they are important. You don't have to be a developer to put APIs to use, this book is for everyone. Look for an updated version of the Business of APIs by June.... read more.

Tags: API Evangelist, Book, Business of APIs

Pinboard API Tax Proposal

by Kin Lane on 03/15/2013

Maciej Ceglowskiis, the founder of popular social bookmarking platform Pinboard,made an interesting proposal over on the Pinboard Google Group: I've been thinking about imposing an API tax, the proceeds of which would go into improving API infrastructure and offsetting operating costs, structured along these lines: API free to use for your own Pinboard account Every API client making requests on behalf of someone else must register an app identifier $20/year tax if your app makes requests for over 100 Pinboard accounts $100/year tax if your app makes requests for over 1000 Pinboard accounts Possibly additional price levels to waive certain rate limits Think of it as a road tax that then pays for further construction, repair, and people in orange vests. I’m guessing that Maciej has a lot of experience to back his proposal, watching how developers use Pinboard for their own purposes, or on behalf of a user via a client. I heavily depend on Pinboard for my curation at API Evangelist, so API access would remain free for me. I’m not sure how I would feel if I was building a client.... read more.

Tags: API Evangelist, Pinboard

Real-Time Notification Layer Within Your API

by Kin Lane on 03/15/2013

This story comes from Phil Leggetter (@leggetter) over at Pusher. Its about a client of theirs, cisimple, which provides continuous delivery services for mobile developers. cisimple just released a new API, which gives mobile developers more control over the build processes for their mobile applications. Using the cisimple API you can kick off new builds and download artifacts from your mobile dev process. cisimple is a very interesting API resource, that I will definitely be watching, and I’m sure I will be writing about in the near future. But what I really think is interesting is that cisimple is allowing clients to register for real-time updates via Pusher channels, using API tokens. This means that when you use cisimple to manage your mobile development, you now have a real-time push system that will send notifications when builds start, pass, fail, etc. This opens up a whole world of human integration with the build process via desktop and mobile notifications, but also can be used in other systems that play a role in your dev cycles. The weaving of a Pusher real-time notification layer into the cisimple API is pretty innovative. Something I’m sure will deliver huge value to their customers.... read more.

Tags: API Evangelist, Cisimple, Pusher, Real-Time

An Essential Stack of Existing API Resources

by Kin Lane on 03/14/2013

I see a lot of new API platforms emerge, and often times you see them deploying their own solutions to problems that are actively solved by top API platforms, and are already adopted by common mobile and web app users. The best example of this is with authentication. Its growing more and more common that you don’t build your own login, you use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google or Github oAuth. It seems to me that when it comes to other common resources, the same could be applied. So I’m exploring what my essential stack of API driven resources might look like: Messages Photos Documents Videos Notes Bookmarks Blog Contacts Checkins Audio Calendar Payments Advertising URL Shortener I could do quite a bit with this assembled as a single backend stack, if it included a regular datastore, key-value store, user management and other essentials for building apps.... read more.

Tags: API Evangelist, Essential, Stack

Top API Platforms Deliver More Node.js Resources for Developers

by Kin Lane on 03/13/2013

Node. js, the server-side software system designed for writing scalable Internet applications in JavaScript, seems to be getting more attention lately from top API providers because of its event-driven, asynchronous I/O that can minimizeoverhead and maximize scalability. Last week Google released an official Node. js client library for accessing Google APIs that supports authorization and authentication using OAuth 2. 0. Then earlier this week, Amazon Web Services announced that AWS Elastic Beanstalk, their PaaS solution now supports Node. js applications. While Google’s deployment is a client, and AWS’s is an application platform, they both have the same objective--enabling developers to build highly reliable, scalable, and cost-effective applications using APIs. Both Google and AWS recognize the potential for selling developers their valuable API driven resources, by providing them with Node. js solutions. JavaScript is the number one language on Github, with Node dominating most starred and most forked overall categories, according to Github trends. I think that AWS and Github both send a good signal to other API owners, that they need to step up the availablity of Node.... read more.

Tags: API Evangelist, AWS, Google, JavaScript, Node.js

An API That Scrubs Personally Identifiable Information From Other APIs

by Kin Lane on 03/13/2013

One of the best aspects of being the API Evangelist, is I get to hang out with smart folks, doing gaming changing things across all business sectors. Last week I was able to make it to the API Social, an event held in Berkeley by a group of API savvy faculty members. This is my third one, and the group is up to some very interesting things. I had a conversation with one UC Berkeley analyst about a problem that isn’t just unique to a university, but they are working on an innovative solution for. The problem: UCB Developers are creating Web Services that provide access to sensitive data (e. g. grades, transcripts, current enrollments) but only trusted applications are typically allowed to access these Web Services to prevent misuse of the sensitive data. Expanding access to these services, while preserving the confidentiality of the data, could provide student and third party developers with opportunities to create new applications that provide UCB students with enhanced services.... read more.

Tags: API Evangelist, PIN, Student Data, UC Berkeley

Who Runs The Internet?

by Kin Lane on 03/13/2013

I came across the great infographic from ICANN titled, Who Runs the Internet? i want to brush up on my own knowledge about all the key stakeholders in the Internet, so I typed up some of the text from the infographic, for my own benefit, as well as to make it a little more interactive. Who Runs The Internet? No One Person, Company, Organization or Government Runs the Internet The Internet itself is a globally distributed computer network comprised of many voluntarily interconnected autonomous networks. Similarly, its governance is conducted by a decentralized and international multi-stakeholder network of interconnected autonomous groups drawing from civil society, the private sector, governments, academic and research communities, and national and international organizations. They work cooperatively from their respective roles to create shared policies and standards that maintain the Internet's global interoperability for the public good. Here is how it works: Operations & Services - Internet Operations span all aspects of hardware, software, and infrastructure required to make the Internet work. Services include education, access, web browsing, online commerce, social networking.... read more.

Tags: Kin Lane

#APIStrat Slide Decks Added To Session Page

by Kin Lane on 03/12/2013

I added the slide decks for the keynotes and sessions we have so far from API Strategy & Practice to the conference session page. As soon as we get videos, I will be linking them on the session page as well. Here is what we have for the two days of the conference. Day 1 Keynote: Laura Merling (@magicmerl), VP Ecosystems and Solutions at AT&T (Slides) Track 1 - Music Paul Osman (@paulosman) of Soundcloud (Slides) Evan Stein (@SteinEvan) of Decibel (Slides) R.... read more.

Tags: API Evangelist

Netflix API Is Much More Than A Public API

by Kin Lane on 03/12/2013

Netflix has entered the final stages of shuttering its public API last week. Its been coming for a while now, starting in June of 2012, and now is official with the platform no longer accepting new API registrations. After reading about the changes to the Netflix Public API program on their blog, and hearing much of the news in response, everyone seems to file this away, along with the Twitter API--just another API platform screwing over its developers. As I do, I wanted to take a step back, look at the bigger picture and try understand what happened. On October 1st 2008, Netflix launched their public API, and they appear to have done everything right. They had a blog, solicited code samples from developers, accepted application submissions and even showcased the developers apps in the gallery. Netflix would even help promote your app to Netflix subscribers and threw hackathons. The Netflix API team worked to improve API performance, communicate regularly, but really nothing that amazing happened. There were applications like InstaWatcher and WhichFlicks (among others) developed on the API, but as Daniel Jacobson puts it, a thousand flowers didn’t bloom.... read more.

Tags: API Evangelist, Deprecation, Netflix, Open source

Five Separate API Event Series In 2013

by Kin Lane on 03/12/2013

When it came to API focused events, the only conference there was to attend was the Business of APIs Conference, from Mashery. They have been putting on the conference(correct me if I’m wrong) since 2007. There wasn’t much of an "API Industry" back then, and Mashery was definitely the pioneer in the space, getting the word out and along with ProgrammableWeb, has done a lot to define the API space. Fast forward five years, and after the successful API Strategy & Practice in February (originally scheduled for November), there are now five API event series going on: It is exciting to see the explosion of events, and I’m hopeful regarding how much progress will occur in 2013 with this many conversations going on. It is also promising to see the international growth, with Nordic APIs happening in Scandinavia, API Days coming from France, Business of APIs in London and API Summit spreading the conversation from United States and Australia. With this amount of buzz, APIs will definitely continue its spread to the mainstream.... read more.

Tags: API Days, API Evangelist, API Summit, Nordic APIs