Visualizing Hackathons in 2012

by on 01/23/2013

Hackathons have been going on for quite a few years now, in Silicon Valley circles. But in 2012 hackathons started going mainstream around the globe, getting a lot of attention because of organizers like Twilio, Sendgrid, AT&T, AngelHack, to name just a few. For those that are new to the hackathon space, these events are not intended to perform illegal activities around computer networks. Software developers widely see hacking as a quick and dirty programmatic solution to a problem. Hackathons are NOT about gaining access to other networks, which is a definition widely publicized by the media and hollywood. Among the developer community, it is meant to be a positive term that drives innovation among developers. While many hackathons are startup focused, we are seeing them emerge in other verticals like healthcare, education, environment and robotics. People are seeing hackathons as temporary venues for innovation and R&D as well as potential environments for talent acquisition.... read more.

Tags: Guide, Hack days, Hackathons, Infographics, Singly

API Strategy & Practice Conference in New York is SOLD OUT!!

by on 01/21/2013

It is 30 days until the API Strategy & Practice conference in New York City, February 21st and 22nd, and the event is now sold out! The event will be a 275 person conference focused on discussing the API industry. Since the event was postponed after Hurricane Sandy, the demand to get in and speak was overwhelming and conference tickets didn’t last long either. We were able to keep almost all the original session lineup while make a couple changes and squeezing in a couple new speakers, where possible. I am really pleased with how the event has come together. We have an amazing lineup and from looking at the attendee list, it looks like it will be a diverse groups of folks in attendance, discussing APIs.... read more.

Tags: API Strategy, New York City

WSO2 Now Has API Reporting With Google Analytics

by on 01/21/2013

WSO2's open source API management platform for creating, managing, consuming and monitoring APIs, now has the ability to track API usage through Google Analytics. Since APIs are deployed using HTTP, the same transport we are using for websites, it makes sense that we should be able to see statistics for both our websites and APIs, side-by-side using Google Analytics. After creating a new profile for your API in Google Analytics you can put the tracking code into your WSO2 API Management interface and begin seeing real-time or standard (24 hour) reporting on API traffic in the Google Analytics interface. Since Google Analytics has an API and widgets, you will be able to use this data easily in other reports or system integrations that may need access to your API usage data. It is great to see innovation around API analytics and reporting, beyond the standard dashboards we've seen from most providers. I'd like to see more stories and scripts to help automate API reporting using Google Analytics, StatsD and Graphite or platforms like Mixpanel.... read more.

Tags: Analytics, Google Analytics, Reporting, WSO2

Digital Strategy: 20 Federal Agencies, 76 data API and 75 Mobile API Initiatives

by on 01/19/2013

It has been a while since I provided an update on the White House Digital Strategy.  I monitor the progress of federal agencies participation programmatically, using JSON reports published by each agency at the agencies domain, /digitalstrategy. After running the script today, I notice 20 federal agencies with active footprints.  There are about five more, but there are issues with the JSON version of their digital stratgies--I really want to focus on the programmatic value. So, across these 20 agencies I find 76 data API initiatives and 75 mobile API projects. To bring you up to speed, there are two specific milestones in the Digital Government Strategy that specifically address API deployment: 2. 2 (Data) - Make high-value data and content in at least existing two major customer-facing systems available through web APIs, apply metadata tagging and publish a plan to transition additional high-value systems 7.... read more.

Tags: Data, Digital Strategy, Mobile

Six Backend as a Service(BaaS) Providers Discuss the Industry at #APIStrat in NYC

by on 01/18/2013

Backend as a Service (BaaS), sometimes called Mobile Backend is a Service (MBaaS) is a growing trend I’m monitoring at API Evangelist. I’m tracking on 20 providers in the space, with two newly added open-source BaaS platforms. Beyond the research, stories and analysis on BaaS, I just added a BaaS panel at the API Strategy & Practice Conference in New York City, February 21st and 22nd. The panel will include six of the leading BaaS platforms: Marc Weil (@marcweil) of Cloudmine James Tamplin (@jamestamplin) of Firebase Miko Matasumura (@mikojava) of Kii Morgan Bickle (@morganbickle) of Kinvey Ilya Sukhar (@ilyasu) of Parse Ty Amell (@tyamell) of StackMob  API play a critical role in BaaS platforms by providing interfaces for the common services emerging in the BaaS space, like object storage, user management and location, to name a few, but also bring in other 3rd party services like Twitter and Facebook. I will be moderating this new BaaS panel at APIStrat.... read more.

Tags: BaaS, BaaS, CloudMine, Firebase, Kii, Kinvey, parse, StackMob

Moving From API Area to API Stack

by on 01/18/2013

Finding APIs that compliment your API, and talking about the mutual benefits is nothing new. When I worked with the print API Mimeo, I would write code that used Mimeo API in conjunction with Box API or Dropbox API. Mashing up or bundling your APIs with other complimentary service can really help, when you are trying to explain the value your API delivers. I’m beginning to see patterns of even deeper integration and partnerships between APIs emerge--where one API provider will resell the API of another provider.  APIs partnering with other APIs isn’t that new, but reselling of each others API services to their developers is a fairly new concept, providing a potential new wholesale channel for API providers. One recent example of this is in a recent partnership between Singly and Cloudmine. Cloudmine is a BaaS provider, and Singly is provider of personal and social data via aggregate APIs. With the reseller approach, Cloudmine developers get a vastly improved stack to develop against, with Cloudmine providing all the essential BaaS tools developers are growing accustomed to, while also having access to 30+ social, personal and other aggregate API services provide by Singly.... read more.

Tags: Aggregate, Box, CloudMine, Dropbox, Mimeo, Resellers, Singly

An MMS API For The Next Generation of Mobile Apps

by on 01/17/2013

I am a big fan of APIs that do one thing and do it well, like Twilio. I had lunch with the team from a similar API yesterday, called Mogreet. The Mogreet API lets you send and receive text or multimedia messages and use the platform to transcode, host and send video, audio and images for your web or mobile application. When you think of the popularity of Instagram, the rebirth of Flickr and the ubiquitous value of photos and images online, it just makes sense that MMS is going to play a critical role in mobile app development in 2013. I have a daughter, who sometimes responds to my SMS, email, chats and facebook messages. Her attention span doesn’t include always responding to her dad in "his" preferred formats. While she was visiting lately I sat on couch and watched her interact with friends and use her iPhone. I noticed she communicated mostly in photos. She communicates by taking photos and sending them, tweaking or distorting them and writing messages before sending, and spent a lot of time surfing and sharing silly photos from around the web--all in a social way via her smart phone. A picture is worth a thousand words. I'm not good at math, but that seems 6x more valuable than a Tweet.... read more.

Tags: MMS, Mogreet, Photos, Pictures, Twilio

Markdown APIs and Future of Reporting on Data

by on 01/17/2013

I just posted a story on how I like the Guardian’s approach to data journalism, and spending time evolving on last nights thoughts about the possibilities of Markup APIs. As I’m migrating much of the front-end of my websites to run on a home brew of Github Pages, Jekyll and JSON fueled Mustache Templates, I am seeing more of the potential of not just Markup APIs, but Markdown APIs that will run in a purely client side environment. Imagine if I could go to a provider like the Guardian, US Census or other high value data provider, grab a link to a Markdown API JavaScript file that is relevant to a story or report you are working on.  With this Markdown API I would be given a whole dictionary of markdown you could use. An example would be, that when I wanted the 2010 population for New York City, I could just write [population| New York| NY| US| 2010], or something like that and would print out the actual population for that year in NYC, with a link to the source. Each time I used a markdown API it would add some sort of attribution to the source at the bottom of document.... read more.

Tags: Markdown, Markup

API Management Platform Emergent One Launches Free Tier

by on 01/17/2013

Emergent One, one of the newest API management players on the block, just announced a new free development tier. The Emergent One platform provides simple, cloud-based tools for connecting to your MySQL or PostgreSQL database, and quickly generating an API from your database. I didn’t sign up for their service when they first launched, because they didn’t have a free tier, and I’m unwilling to put in credit cards and commit to brand new services. This is something I have problem with from running development and IT teams who use a wide variety of cloud services. I would spend a great deal of time each month chasing down charges and other issues from cloud services that were being experimented with. The Emergent One approach to deploying APIs from common data sources, is one I think will resonate with users who aren’t developers, but understand the importance of APIs, and are often restrained by unresponsive, limited or no IT resources. Emergent One one is responding to user requests for a cheaper tier that support entry level API users, which will allow them to tweak their API strategies before spending money.... read more.

Tags: Emergent One, Free, Freemium, Self-Service

Markup APIs and API Scripting Platforms

by on 01/16/2013

Over the holidays I added a new section to API Evangelist called "trends". One of the areas I’m tracking on is what I’m calling “scripting platforms”. While you can program against any API using the language of your choice, these platforms are aggregating APIs and make available through a custom language stack. This approach is different than what I’m seeing from aggregate APIs like Singly. Scripting platforms may offer aggregate APIs, but are also providing a way to easily script against them, in new and abstracted ways. I’m still trying to understand each company, as well as the nuances between each approach--so stay tuned. In the last couple weeks, I’m seeing a possible new approach to programming against APIs come into focus, one that is using HTML instead of scripting--using Markup APIs. After reading Building Bridges Between GUIs and Code With Markup APIs by Atul Varma (@toolness) from Mozilla, you can really start seeing not just the potential around rich media and content like Mozilla is with its Webmaker platform, but deliver any API resource in abstracted, simplified markup anyone can put to use--without knowing programming.... read more.

Tags: Markup API, Mozilla, Mustache Templates, Scripting-Platform, Singly, Webmaker


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