June 2012
12 posts
Rise of Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) API...
Mobile is fueling a lot of API growth right now. Or is it APIs fueling a lot of Mobile growth right now? Either way, APIs and Mobile go together like chocolate and peanut butter (or Nutella as my girlfriend would say).
With this growth in mobile, we are seeing a rise of Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) providers, delivering a basic stack of storage, messaging, notifications, user...
Thoughts For Federal Agencies About to Deploy Web...
I wanted to publish some thoughts, on what Federal Agencies responding to the Executive Order 13571 issued on April 27, 2011, and the White House CIO’s, “Digital Government: Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People” strategy should be considering.
These thoughts are in the business and marketing aspects web API deployment, with light thoughts in the...
Tracking Federal Agencies Progress on API...
I’m excited about Barack Obama directing all federal agencies to have an API. The President has given federal agencies 90 days to create a page on its website, located at www.[agency].gov/digitalstrategy, to publicly report progress in meeting the requirements of the Strategy in a machine-readable format, and implement the requirements of the Strategy within 12 months.
As I said in my post, I...
1 tag
“The benefits of this are hard to overstate. RT @noeltock: Barack Obama Directs...”
– @mikeschinkel
Healthcare Imaging API
There is a new API edition to the healthcare industry this week. lifeIMAGE launched an API that can be used by developers of healthcare applications, to enable the secure exchange of medical images and related patient records.
Norman Young, President and CEO of ClearCanvas, said “We were founded on the simple belief that medical imaging informatics should be accessible to all. Now, using the...
An API Could Be The Fancy's Kill Move Against...
Pinterest and The Fancy are locked in a deathmatch, if you hadn’t heard? Compete wrote back in February that The Fancy was poised to take over a chunk of Pinterest’s traffic with their new webstore. Fast forward 5 months, The Fancy has just launched an update to their iOS which includes the ability to purchase products from the mobile app with just one click.
Nice move! The Fancy...
API Monetization: API Affiliate Network API +...
In my quest to understand the monetization opportunities via APIs, I’m studying the possibilites around tracking, and now monetization of content and URL’s served up via APIs.
The other day I considered wrapping URLs for another layer of metrics in your API, and today I’m thinking about how to evolve API monetization beyond advertising, defining entirely new API driven conversion events where...
Is Your API Big Data Ready?
Many “public APIs” are launched with well, very “public” intent—to extend the reach of the brand and platform. Many of these APIs are setup to pull data, enabling developers to use it in their applications for free or paid, with the understanding they’ll properly attribute the source.
Many of these APIs like Amazon E-Commerce, eBay, Google Places and Foursquare are...
Barack Obama Directs All Federal Agencies to Have...
As a follow-up to the Executive Order 13571 issued on April 27, 2011, requiring executive departments and agencies to identify ways to use innovative technologies to streamline their delivery of services to lower costs, decrease service delivery times, and improve the customer experience—Barack Obama has directed federal agencies to deploy Web APIs.
The Whitehouse CIO has released a...
Self Service vs Sales Oriented Web APIs
I’m doing some big data work. Ok it isn’t really, but feels like I should use that label. What I’m actually doing is analyzing the Twitter activity of top APIs.
I have the twitter handles of 100 of the popular web APIs. I have been pulling and analyzing the Tweets from each of these accounts via the Twitter API for some time now.
It is time that I scale this to about 500 API twitter...
Barak Obama Directs All Federal Agencies to Have...
As a follow-up to the Executive Order 13571 issued on April 27, 2011, requiring executive departments and agencies to identify ways to use innovative technologies to streamline their delivery of services to lower costs, decrease service delivery times, and improve the customer experience—Barak Obama has directed federal agencies to deploy Web APIs.
The Whitehouse CIO has released a...
Is Your API Big Data Ready?
Many “public APIs” are launched with well, very “public” intent—to extend the reach of the brand and platform. Many of these APIs are setup to pull data, enabling developers to use it in their applications for free or paid, with the understanding they’ll properly attribute the source.
Many of these APIs like Amazon E-Commerce, eBay, Google Places and Foursquare are...
API Monetization: API Affiliate Network API +...
In my quest to understand the monetization opportunities via APIs, I’m studying the possibilites around tracking, and now monetization of content and URL’s served up via APIs.
The other day I considered wrapping URLs for another layer of metrics in your API, and today I’m thinking about how to evolve API monetization beyond advertising, defining entirely new API driven conversion events where...
An API Could Be The Fancy's Kill Move Against...
Pinterest and The Fancy are locked in a deathmatch, if you hadn’t heard? Compete wrote back in February that The Fancy was poised to take over a chunk of Pinterest’s traffic with their new webstore. Fast forward 5 months, The Fancy has just launched an update to their iOS which includes the ability to purchase products from the mobile app with just one click.
Nice move! The Fancy...
Healthcare Imaging API
There is a new API edition to the healthcare industry this week. lifeIMAGE launched an API that can be used by developers of healthcare applications, to enable the secure exchange of medical images and related patient records.
Norman Young, President and CEO of ClearCanvas, said “We were founded on the simple belief that medical imaging informatics should be accessible to all. Now, using the...
May 2012
36 posts
Be a Feature in Other Platforms with an API
I talk with a lot of entrepreneurs in my travels to conferences, hackathons and online with my API evangelism. I get a lot of ideas pitched to me, asking me for feedback, and ultimately if I think their startup is viable.
I hear a lot of good ones, and bad ones. Even the good ones face an uphill battle to get noticed in an extremely crowded and noisy landscape. The one piece of advice I leave...
Provide Release Valves for API Rate Limits
In my effort to better understand API access, I’m studying how API owners control access to their APIs, with most recently being around Rate Limiting. The other day I asked, why do we limit API access for developers, and even explored rewarding developers for heavy usage.
As I continue to understand the impact of rate limits on developers it’s becoming clearer that for an API to successfully...
API Management Platform for Universities
I recently stumbled across the University of Washington’s Web Services area, where they are working to create a single place to learn about, discover and connect with various APIs that are available at the University.
As the home page says:
Web Services at the University of Washington is a method of getting important institutional data from and/or into your applications. Web Services are a way...
Twitter Rolls Twitter.com Back to a Server-Side...
I recently stumbled across the University of Washington’s Web Services area, where they are working to create a single place to learn about, discover and connect with various APIs that are available at the University.
As the home page says:
Web Services at the University of Washington is a method of getting important institutional data from and/or into your applications. Web Services are a way...
Twitter Rolls Twitter.com Back to a Server-Side...
Twitter just rolled back their architectural approach for Twitter.com back to a server side implementation.
If you remember back in September of 2010, Twitter rebuilt Twitter.com to use a web application architecture that pushed all of the UI rendering and logic to Javascript running in the browser and consumed the Twitter API directly.
Now they are “taking back control” of their...
University Information Services with APIs
APIs are making information more accessible across many industries and sectors, but one area I haven’t seen a lot of movement, until recently, is at Universities.
Last month, Harvard openly licensed their library meta data and through a partnership with the Digital Public Library of America, made it available via APIs. But today’s story is more about APIs driving the operations side of higher...
Why Do We Limit API Access for Developers?
I am putting a lot of thought into why we limit API access for developers. I understand requiring keys to access APIs, and tracking who has access to your API, so you can understand how they are using it. What I don’t understand is why you’d want to limit API access.
By limit, I mean…here is an API, you get 100 calls, then no more! No option for paying, begging or pleading for more...
1 tag
“Turning census data into hotspot maps and micro modeled surfaces”
– @GEOpdx
Wrapping URLs for Another Layer of Metrics in Your...
I’m documenting Twitter’s process of wrapping the URLs contained within tweets, using a shorter URL like t.co. I’m interested in understanding the opportunities around URL wrapping (aka URL shortening) as an API business strategy.
From an API business perspective, the reasoning for implementing URL wrapping as part of your API would be:
Saving Space - By shortening URLs you are reducing the...
Lack of Pinterest API is a Lack of API Business...
Here we are going into June, and I still don’t see a publicly available Pinterest API. Jay Yarow wrote in Business Insider back in February, “Pinterest’s API Is Coming Soon, And VCs Are Super Excited” and Adam Duvander wrote in ProgrammableWeb, “Pinterest API: Coming Soon or Already Here?”.
There is also a reply to a Quora thread by Yashh Nelapati, Lead Engineer...
1 tag
“@jxinsight: @Beaker I like to manage the quality of the user experience ;-)” ...”
– @Beaker
The API Driven Life of Your Facebook Mobile App
One of the best ways to explain what APIs are to someone sitting next to me on the plane is to find something the user does every day, that is driven by an API, and explain how an API drives the functionality they take for granite.
I tend to look for industry specific examples if they are an accountant or stock broker, but the most common example I use, is Facebook. Facebook is technology...
Visions from the API Economy
I’m always looking for solid examples of how more and more of our every day world is being driven by APIs. Examples I can use to help explain APIs to every-day business folks.
I came across one example that will speak to many business executives today via an Apigee Innovator Spotlight on their client TradeKing. When asked about the vision of their API program Dan Raju CIO of TradeKing says:
...
Developer Insights Into Facebook Open Graph API...
Facebook provides an interface for Open Graph API developers to better understand how users are interacting with content via their applications, called Insights.
With Insights you can monitor the number of your unique users that are seeing and accessing a Facebook authorization dialog, number of unique users publishers stories through Open graph as well as viewing and clicking on those...
1 tag
“Hedge funds leverage social media for trading decisions http://t.co/BFwA2Jsv...”
– @gnip
Google Updates the API Explorer
Google just released an update to their API Explorer.
Some of the new features include:
Indexed history of API calls
API request body editor
Search box for search APIs and methods
Indicator showing which methods require authentication
The Google API Explorer now supports two dozen Google APIs, up from only six when they first launched.
Google’s continued investment in their API explorer,...
Nike Sustainable Products Index API
Nike is working on a new API as part of their Nike Better World initative. The API provides access to a materials sustainability index, which evaluates the environmental impact of materials used by manufacturers.
The scoring system evaluates the environmental impacts of materials used in products using a combination of materials-specific data, covering areas such as Chemistry, Energy and...
How Are We Going to Track Private APIs?
Image Credit - Wiki Noticia
Adam Duvander (@adamd) reported at ProgrammableWeb today that they rolled over 6,000 public APIs in the directory. The pace at which companies are launching public APIs is accelerating, with the last 1,000 added in just 3 months.
Any of us in the space knows that this is just the tip of the iceberg, and Adam acknowledges that internal API usage is a major factor in...
1 tag
“PODCAST: @screenkapture “shares” his insight on...”
– @radar
Find Your Hackathon Venue with EventUp
I am going through all my notes from organizing the CityGrid Los Angeles Hackathon and trying to publish as many stories as I can, about how I planned and organized the hackathon.
One service that was a catalyst for the event occuring, was assistance from EventUp. EventUp is a service that assists event venue owners in finding people to rent their space, and in turn can help you find the ideal...
App Center Best Practices
Last week Facebook announced a new App Center where developers can submit applications they’ve built. Like any API owner, Facebook is looking for high quality applications to list in its directory and has published a list of App Center Best Practices:
Websites must provide a personalized experience - All websites and mobile web apps need to immediately present authenticated users with a...
Products and Commerce with APIs
I am really starting to see my early visions of the Internet coming together. In my mind I see an interconnected world of products and commerce, where every business has an API.
APIs finally seem to be maturing, reaching a point where they can deliver at the scale and reliability we need, to really make this happen. Three good examples of this are:
The StructuredRetailProducts.com API -...
Developing More Meaningful API Metrics
API metrics are an essential, but what should we measure? There are two metrics that seems to dominate discussions about success of the API industry:
Number of New API Registration
Number of Daily and Monthly API Calls
Every API I’ve consulted with, use the same two metrics, if they have any at all. The tech blogosphere (driven by API service providers) have created a so call billionaires...
Diving Deeper Into Data from Research
I was reading a report commissioned by Google and conducted by Ipsos MediaCT in partnership with the Mobile Marketing Association and the Interactive Advertising Bureau, called Our Mobile Planet.
You can find the report at OurMobilePlanet.com. Included with the report on the mobile consumer, the site provides access to the full set of data from the research through a chart creation tool or the...
PeopleBrowsr API Restructures to Deliver More...
Explaining to developers, what an API does, can be hard. How you describe your API, the underlying endpoints, can make or break user adoption. You shouldn’t be afraid to evolve, and keep trying to find the sweet spot in both the language and branding that you use in your API area.
I saw an example of this today, with the restructuring of PeopleBrowsr’s APis. When I first starting...
USDA Releases API for Mandatory Livestock...
USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) has released a new publicly available web API for its Livestock Mandatory Reporting (LMR) system, offering access to all historical LMR data, allowing users to pull large amounts of customized data sets via a RESTful interface with JSON embedded URLs and XML formatted output.
“The Livestock Mandatory Reporting program facilitates open,...
Business and Politics of APIs
This summer its been 2 years since I started API Evangelist. API Evangelist started as my research project into the Business of APIs, and became a full time career.
While over the last two years I’ve worked for clients like Mimeo and CityGrid, my ultimate goal is to focus on studying the Business of APIs. So whenever I get the time, I study how popular APIs operate, and how they are...
APIs Have Been Copyrightable for 22 Years
I attended a great webinar put on by the folks at Apigee last week, where they discussed APIs & Copyright. A very timely discussion with the recent API copyright decision in the EU, and from the ongoing Oracle vs. Google case.
As I process all discussions around API copyright, I’m going to publish relevant pieces here at API Voice, for everyone else to process along with me. One...
API Innovation at the Edinburgh Festivals
I’m always on the hunt for API stories that capture the power of APIs, showcasing how they are transforming industries and businesses around the globe. Today, my global API monitoring platform picked up one such story in Edinburg, Scotland.
In the summer of 2011, the summer-based Edinburgh Festivals made their event listings data publicly available for digital developers and technologists, via...
Making Your API Accessible to the Masses
There are a lot of high value APIs emerging these days, APIs with access to essential business data, resources and intelligence.
When designing your API you want to make the interface as intuitive as possible, and ensure as wide as access to it as you possibly can. To quote Jonathan Schwartz, Sun CEO regarding Java APIs:
“We wanted to build the biggest tent and invite as many people as...
The Flora and Fauna of the Twitter Ecosystem
Twitter has an innovative approach to presenting the objects that make up the Twitter Platform. They have built a field guide to Twitter Platform objects, designed like an Audubon Society field guide, describing the four primaty Twitter objects:
Tweets - Also known as a Status Update, Tweets are the basic atomic unit of all things Twitter. Users create Tweets. Tweets can be embedded, replied...
Curated API Industry News Feeds
In my Google Reader I curate hundreds of articles pulled from 600+ blogs and 25+ real-time Google Alerts, on a daily basis. Everything I star in my Google Reader or Tweet about daily ends up in my Pinboard account. In addition to this curation, I bookmark every relevant site and post I come across in my daily surfing using the Pinboard bookmarklet.
Using the Pinboard API I setup a news...
APIs Help Deliver on Early Visions of the Internet
As my professional career moved online during the years between 1995 and 2000, I had numerous visions about what the World Wide Web could do for businesses. I think I shared these visions with millions of other individuals, fueling what we now know as the first Internet bubble.
I saw e-commerce driving entirely new businesses that could operate entirely online, and strengthen existing brick...
April 2012
18 posts
1 tag
“Rumor has it, excess food from #citygridhackathonla was donated to less...”
– @mexitlan
Tools of the CityGrid Los Angeles Hackathon
We have a pretty awesome line-up of tools, platforms and APIs for people to use when building their local web and mobile apps this weekend at the CityGrid Los Angeles Hackathon:
3Scale (@3Scale) - A Plug & Play Cloud based API Management Infrastructure for Developers, Startups, SMBs and Enterprises to securely open, control, manage and monetize their API to 3rd...