Need help?
Contact us
Chat with Kin
AI assistant · trained on my blog
Stories about the technology, business, policies, and people of APIs.
I like to pick worrisome patents from my API patent research and share them on my blog regularly. Last week I talk about Patent #US9300759 B1: API Calls With Dependencies and today I want to talk a...
My new partner in API crime Cloud Elements is helping motivate me to spend more cycles in 2016 on defining specific stacks of APIs, as part of my ongoing API industry research. I am taking the appr...
When it comes to keeping an eye on what others are doing across the API space, and occasionally pushing forward a few crazy ideas, API Evangelist is your source. However if you really want to learn...
I am stopping and collecting some of my thoughts, as I work through my API stack. I’m thinking about the more difficult aspects of defining APIs, this time it is for the APIs I depend on to operate...
As I conclude the first phase of profiling the APIs that I depend on, I am thinking about my API usage at scale, and some new questions are arising, that I wasn’t thinking about before. I find my A...
As I approach 2016, I’m stepping back, and looking at the big picture of what it is that do, and using what I learn to help guide what I will accomplish in 2016. I tend to not subscribe to the conc...
The existence, membership, and activity around local API Meetup groups is one of the overall health indicators in the API space. I’ve long been a proponent of local API meetups, helping jumpstart t...
A handful of the most iconic APIs out there, which I also happen to depend on for my own operations, are some of the more frustratingly designed APIs I know. There are many API design offenses we a...
I’m down in the detail of how we craft our API plans, looking at the approaches of almost 100 different providers, and working to establish a common schema for cataloging the plans of these popular...
There are more HTTP client tools out there than I can shake a stick at (I’ve reached that point, I’m shaking sticks at things), and in 2016 I predict there will be even more entrants into the space...
I am continuing to build on the subway map exploration work, that I talked about at @Defrag and @APIStrat last month, and have a more static version of my API life cycle explorer ready, which I’m s...
I am going through each of the 35+ areas of the APi space that I monitor, working to bring alive the over 900 stops along the API life cycle, that I have identified through my research. I’m still w...
How to monetize APIs is on of the top questions I get from companies, right after concerns around security and control. I have separated my research into two main buckets, the first is focused on t...
During my API discovery session talk at @APIStrat Austin this last November, I talked about what I see as an added dimension to the concept of API discovery, one that will become increasingly impor...
As part of evaluating 50+ companies, and their business approach to delivering APIs, I came across the Box platform. As I am looking through this diverse slice of API companies, I am looking to bet...
I’m looking at the pricing APIs offered by some of the API providers that are further along in their API journey. This is just one example of how API providers are offering more operational level A...
I am spending a significant amount of time looking through the pricing pages for leading API providers, working to get a sense for some of the common approaches to API monetization in use across th...
I am spending a significant amount of time looking through the pricing pages for leading API providers, working to get a sense for some of the common approaches to API monetization in use across th...
I am seeing more operations focused API tooling emerge lately, like Stoplight.io, and as I’m adding API reciprocity platform DataFire to my list of integration, automation, and interoperability pro...
I am spending a significant amount of time looking through the pricing pages for leading API providers, working to get a sense for some of the common approaches to API monetization in use across th...
A lot can be learned from the pioneers of the API space. Companies like Amazon and Twilio have been used as a model by many providers, and are something I reference often across my research and sto...
A blog RSS feed is still my number one way to monitor what is happening across the API space. I also use RSS from Google Alerts and TalkWalker to monitor a variety of leading API industry keywords....
There are some pretty good examples (in my opinion), of well defined API service providers across the API landscape right now– companies, who are selling services specifically to API providers. You...
I spent the weekend adding a Siren media type to my API building blocks API, in support of my API life cycle map work. Every time I dive into using Siren, and begin applying hypermedia constraints ...
If you were at @defrag or @apistrat in November, you know that I am working to better understand the often complex world of APIs using the Subway map concept. My goal is to better understand the ov...
I started API Evangelist, because I saw a huge deficiency in the overall API conversation–nobody was talking about the business of all of this, and how you actually make money doing this emerging w...
I am spending some time taking another look at my “client research”, which started out as just about Postman and PAW, but now contains ten separate services I’m and bundling into this area of resea...
This is another one of those topics I talk a lot about, but only found few examples of me talking about on the blog–API service composition. If you aren’t familiar with the concept, it is the art o...
I’m working my way through some of the low hanging fruit in my API notebook, when it comes to stories, and found a story thread I was working on regarding automating API key management. I’m persona...
This conversation has come up over 10 times this month, at Defrag, APIStrat, and online conversations via Skype and GHangouts. The concept of API virtualization solutions. I am not talking about vi...
I’ve done this a couple of times now. I took PhantomJS, and created my Screenshot API, and used ImageMagick to create my Image Manipulation API. These are two openly licensed software solutions, wh...
I stumbled across Objective Revision Evaluation Service (ORES) last night, a web service running in Wikimedia Labs that provides machine learning as a service across Wikimedia Projects, and is desi...
I have been learning about hypermedia over the last three years now, and only earlier this year, I began playing with Siren to help me craft a better experience around my API industry news and link...
Most of the tooling and services I come across in the API space, are designed for developers. As I play with more services, and put tools to work, trying understand their role in the API space, som...
This conversation has come up over 10 times this month, at Defrag, APIStrat, and online conversations via Skype and GHangouts. The concept of API virtualization solutions. I am not talking about v...
I get regular links sent to me, and foiks telling me that freemium API access is a bad idea. That it doesn’t help your API sales funnel, and was something that was just a thing, for a brief moment ...
My API Stack began as a news site, and evolved into a directory of the APIs that I monitor in the space. I published APIs.json indexes for the almost 1000 companies I am trackig on, with almost 400...
While it will never be 100% complete or perfect, I finally have my API stack in a way that lets me add, evolve, scale, and deprecate the endpoints as I need. I’ve been centralizing all of my APIs, ...
I am continuing my series on helping non-developers realize they can publish, and put APIs to work, without having an API expert in their pocket, using Zapier, Google Sheets, and Restlet. Its no se...
I’ve seen something at an ever increasing pace lately, situations where very intelligent software engineers hit a wall, and realize they do not understand the fundamental building blocks of HTTP, a...
Runscope added the ability to import and export your API tests as JSON, helping make API monitoring a much more flexible and portable thing. You can import and export using the Runscope UI, as well...
As I think about the bad behavior that occurs on the API consumption side of API operations, I’m considering ways that I can help API providers address these problems when they arise within their e...
I am continuing to push my research around API monetization, plans, and partners forward, whilep preparing for my API lifecycle keynote at @Defrag and @APIStrat. Along the way, I am also exercising...
I am still catching up on my feeds, and open browser tabs, and one tab that has been open for a couple of weeks is Why Your Colleagues Still Don’t Understand Hypermedia APIs, by Luke Stokes (@lukes...
I’m neck deep in government open data again, and as we are gearing up for the presidential election, you really begin to see the potential for accurate, real-time election data via APIs. There are ...
I’ve always been a strong advocate for the API consumer, which is one of the primary motivations for me working to define best practices that API providers can follow across their operations. The m...
I recently told the story of how I view the API life-cycle, based upon my research across the space, at the Defrag Conference in Broomfield, CO, and at my API Strategy & Practice conference in ...
I just read The Pill versus the Bomb: What Digital Technologists Need to Know About Power, by Tom Steinberg (@steiny), and I’m reminded of the important role APIs will (hopefully) continue to play ...
It can be easy to stumble across the base URL for one of my APIs out on the open Internet. I design my APIs to be easily distributed, shared, and as accessible as possible–based upon what I feel th...
It can be easy to stumble across the base URL for one of my APIs out on the open Internet. I design my APIs to be easily distributed, shared, and as accessible as possible–based upon what I feel th...
I am back home in Los Angeles, after another great edition of API Strategy & Practice–this time in Austin, TX. I have had a few day to decompress, and took a day to reboot my brain by crafting ...
I needed a side project to reboot my mind after @APIStrat this last weekend, so I opened up my notebook and picked a project that I’ve been meaning to give some attention to, one that would help me...
This is the 6th edition of API Strategy & Practice, happening in Austin, TX next week. As one of the organizers, I can say that pulling together the perfect lineup of speakers and topics is alw...
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking through the licensing we apply to APIs, as part of my work on the Oracle v Google API copyright case. The licensing around APIs is still in flux, with the current ...
We reached another significant milestone in the API space today, after being acquired by SmartBear this spring, the Swagger specification is being moved into a Linux Foundation grouped called the O...
I wish I had more time to spend on designing, and deploying APIs the way I desired. Without any real funding of individual APIs, I can only go so far with them, which usually doesn’t go beyond the ...
When I started API Evangelist in 2010, I tracked on one area–API management. Over the years this expanding to be about API deploy, and design, and most recently monitoring and discovery. As I appro...
I read a lot of blog posts, and press releases about open data these days, and when I find a dataset I think offers a lot of value, or is just interesting enough to help push forward, I either try ...
I am a big advocate for making sure the on-boarding process for developers is as friction-less as possible. Developers should be able to signup, and login without anything getting in their way. Thi...
I’ve had a handful of suggested building blocks when it comes to authentication, as part of my API management research, but after taking a look at the OAuth Scopes page for the Slack API, I’m going...
APImetrics just released their second API Performance Report for Social Networks, aggregated from data they have been gathering from monitoring social networks since 2014. APImetrics is publishing ...
I love that AWS is baking monitoring testing by default in the new Amazon API Gateway. I am also seeing new service from AWS, and Google providing security and testing services for your APIs, and o...
When planning the API Strategy & Practice Conference, the team works very hard to make the speaker and session line up reflect what we see across the API space. The conference is meant to be an...
Many of you that have attended any of my talks, have heard me tell the audience about the importance of sharing your API stories. As an API provider it is the most important tool in your toolbox, a...
As I explore through API portals, looking for the successful approaches to APIs, I’m increasingly seeing formal partner programs, resulting in me expanding the topic as its own research area. My ob...
I have a notebook of story ideas I can do from any moment, but I find that I foten need some sort of inspiration to kick them off properly. I got that this afternoon in a Tweet from Leah Bannon, re...
I have some really amazing resources exposed as APIs. Everyone is doing it these days, and I have some good ones, now I just need a plan. You know, actually, I need several plans, that will help me...
API rating is a conversation I have several times a year, with different groups, and is a conversation that seems to occurring with a little more frequency in recent months. How do we know which AP...
After writing I Have A Bunch Of API Resources, Now I Need A Plan, Or Potentially Several Plans, and How Are We Going To Create The Standard And Poors And Moodys For The API Economy, I wanted to com...
There are number of areas across the API life-cycle that are being expanded upon in the current space, thanks to the evolution of API definition formats like Swagger, API Blueprint, and RAML. One a...
This is one of my ideas for an API service provider, that I will never get time to do, but would love to see exist in the space, so I am happy to put out there for someone else to do. I’m calling t...
One of the discussions we are having behind the scenes at APIWare.io, is whether we should be hand-crafting, or auto-generating SDKs for the clients we are working with on the design, deployment, a...
I have been writing some fictional stories on a project site I have called Alternate Kin Lane for some time now. Writing fictional stories in the tech space has provided a sort of pressure release ...
As I go through each of the 20 core areas of the API sector that I am keeping an eye on, in preparation for my keynotes at @DefragCon and @APIStrat, I’m taking a fresh look at which of them have AP...
I was talking through the features, and roadmap for SecureDB with their team the other day, and one of the conversations that came up was around on-premise opporutnities for deploying encrypted use...
As you probably know, I’m always up for learning about APIs, so when @Darrel_Miller and @GBlock started doing their In the Mood for HTTP podcast, I was all in. Both Darrel and Glenn are API experts...
As you probably know, I’m always up for learning about APIs, so when @Darrel_Miller and @GBlock started doing their In the Mood for HTTP podcast, I was all in. Both Darrel and Glenn are API experts...
As I’ve written several posts on the recent Amazon API Gateway release, one of the side things I noted about the API solution from AWS, was that API monitoring is baked in by default. As stated on ...
It can be difficult to know where to start when it comes storytelling around an API. Many of us who have been in the space, have followed the lead of Twitter, Twilio, Amazon, and others, but when y...
An API key management service targeting Drupal developers came across my radar this week. The service is very focused, in that it is a Drupal module, and is focused on helping Drupal developers man...
I had a follower tweet out an interesting question about successful patterns for multi-linguarl APIs, which I thought was interesting enough to share as a story, adding to my research, and helping ...
Shortly after the Zypr voice API came on to the scene in 2011, I launched my research into voice APIs. Like many other areas of the API universe, voice has come in and out of focus for me, somethin...
I’ve been tagging companies that I come across in my research, and stories that I find with the term “orchestration” for some time now. Some of this overlaps with what we know as cloud-centric orch...
I am keynoting APIStrat in Austin next month, and it is a big deal for me. Ok, its my event, and I probably shouldn’t be that excited, but it is the first time I’ve ever keynoted it. ;-) It is the ...
I started playing with the possibilities when it comes to API deployment using virtual containers like Docker early this year, exploring the constraints this approach to API deployment introduced, ...
Marketing your products and services in the API sector can often look very different than marketing of products and services in other sectors. Developers are a very different target audience, and t...
It has been a year or two since I’ve given any deep thought to the Twitter ecosystem. There has been such little meaningful action to come out of the social platform over the last couple years, I h...
I just had a call with one of my newer API partners, working with them on crafting version 1.0 of their API evangelism strategy, and the subject of what content to generate, and which channels to u...
One layer I am working to add to my API research, are machine readable API definitions that I find, or generate from the APIs of the API service providers I keep an eye on. Within this new layer I’...
I have used the Federal Agency Directory API for quite some time to lookup federal government agencies. USA.gov has some highly valuable, and simple APIs including the Social Media Registry API, wh...
I have used the Federal Agency Directory API for quite some time to lookup federal government agencies. USA.gov has some highly valuable, and simple APIs including the Social Media Registry API, wh...
I’ve been working on expand upon my API security research, but it can be difficult to find API focused security solutions. Exactly what is security when it comes to APIs can vary. Are you looking t...
It is up to API providers to establish a coherent approach regarding how they rollout and manage their APIs, something that historically has just involved deploying and managing, but in the last co...
I mentioned the concept of what I call API building blocks coming to life by API service providers yesterday. These are the features provided from API service providers that are made accessible via...
Maybe I’ve looked at too many APIs, but I feel that APIs are very telling of the overall culture of a company. APIs that are trusting, tend to open up a full stack of APIs, including POST, PUT (or ...
NASA just launched two new APIs, as part of their open data efforts. I find the APIs they offer to be simple, and very inspirational examples of what an API can be. Maybe I just love space, but see...
I wrote about the ability to convert between multiple API definition formats using API Transformer the other day, a solution being developed by the APIMATIC team, and shortly after posting, the Luc...
If you have followed my work since 2010, you know I pull out what I call the common building blocks of originally just API management, but over the last five years this has grown to 17 areas of the...
One of the things that really bothers me in the API space is when API service providers are too competitive, establish silos, don’t use APIs themselves, and refuse to provide interoperability with ...
As I add each API to my stack, I consider security along the way. I require an API key to access all of my APIs using my 3Scale API management infrastructure, and I also have different tiers of acc...
I’ve been getting demos of some pretty interesting new work spaces meant for API architects, and designers. Examples of this are API Garage, RepreZen API Studio, and the recent SwaggerHub. These ar...
I received a personal demo of the new SwaggerHub from Mr. Swagger himself – Tony Tam, this last week. SwaggerHub is a new API life-cycle hub, centered around the API definition format, developed by...
This is a review of the communication API platform CallFire, crafting a snapshot of platform operations, from an external viewpoint, providing the CallFire platform team with a fresh take on their ...
I have a whole bunch of APIs I want to deploy. There is a queue of APIs that I will never get to, but I can’t help myself, and when I am tired of watching what everyone else is doing, and want to g...
I was gathering my thoughts today around API management solutions can better work together, in response to an industry discussion going on between several creators of open source tooling. The Githu...
My own API management system allows me to import Postman collections, HAR files, Charles Proxy XML files, and Swagger version 1.2, but when it comes to output, it only speaks Swagger 2.0. I’ve been...
I have a research project dedicated to trying to understand al things Swagger. I try to add any new research, or tooling there when I can. The latest thing I added was a page to list out Swagger ex...
I just sat in on an APIWare call with a fast growing startup, developing a better understanding of how we can assist their team. They have a pretty solid development team behind their API, so provi...
Sometimes I have ideas, that are sticky, meaning they won’t leave my brain, but are not always concepts I personally enjoy exploring. This is just a little insight into the madness that is my brain...
If you are in an industry being impacted by technology, you have probably become very aware of the term Application Programming Interfaces, more widely known as APIs, and how they are driving web a...
When it comes to the API space, it always takes numerous conversations with API providers and practitioners, before something comes into focus for me. I’ve spent five years having API management co...
API design and definitions are the number one area when it comes to talks submitted for APIStrat 2015 in Austin, and when it comes to traffic across the API Evangelist network in 2015. After diving...
One of my readers recently reached out to me, in response to some of my recent stories of monetization opportunities around government and scientific open data and APIs. I’m not going to publish hi...
The Element Loader from API service provider Cloud Elements came across my monitoring this week, providing a configurable JavaScript application that help simplify data migration, allowing you to m...
I preparing a talk this week in Portland, OR, at the IDX Developer Summit. IDX serves the real estate industry, providing real estate professionals access to hundreds of multiple listing services (...
I sat down for a second, more in-depth look at the Amazon API Gateway. When it first released I took a stroll through the interface, and documentation, but this time, I got my hands dirty playing w...
There is a little more than 24 hours left for you to submit your talk for APIStrat in Austin, TX, this November 18th, 19th, and 20th. With this sixth edition of APIStrat, we are taking things back ...
My last rant of the evening, I promise. Then I will shut up and move back to actual work instead of telling stories. I’m working on my Adopta.Agency project, processing a pretty robust spreadsheet ...
I had a reinder on my task list to check-in on where some of the common database platforms were when it came to APIs. I think it was a Postgres announcement from a while back that put the thought i...
There was a pretty interesting conversation around API design going on in one of my API slack channels over the last couple days, about what is API design, and what is needed to get developers, and...
I have two more conversations kicking off on the topic of API monetization, so I just needed to take a moment to gather up the last wave of posts on the subject, catch my breath, and refresh my ove...
I believe in the ability of APIs to pull back the curtain of the great OZ, that we call IT. The average business and individual technology consumer has long been asked to just believe in the magic ...
This is a full walk-through of me trying to distill down my approach to API monetization, in a way that can be applied across not just 30 APIs, but potentially 300, or 3000. There are several thing...
I have had this discussion several times now, in the dark corners of bars in San Francisco, Paris, Berlin, and Barcelona. It is something I just want to make sure is published on my site, as part o...
It has been almost 10 years since Google launched the Maps API. With as many APIs as Google have, you’d think they’d have a better handle on a standard approach to pricing across all of them. As we...
If you have heard any of my talks at API Days Sydney, in Barcelona, or at Gluecon in Colorado this year, you’ve heard me talk about wholesale APIs, and how I am using Docker to help make some of my...
I’m always on the hunt for API driven solutions that will help the average business user be more exposed to the power of APIs. It is common for us technologists to kick up dust, and get all excited...
One of the reasons I setup individual research projects, is to provide me with a structure for better defining each aspect of the API world, something I am working hard to jump-start within my API ...
As I make my way across my research projects, I’m learning more about how companies like Metacert can deliver valuable security services to API providers. I’m also getting a better idea of the nuan...
I am always pleased to see API providers publishing Swagger definitions, and using them to drive their interactive documentation. Projects like the Global Change Information System API, are getting...
When it comes to API security, there are a number of things to consider, something I will be be working to define, and share as part of my ongoing research. However there are three building blocks ...
While there are numerous examples of APIs that successfully offer more than one option when it comes to the content types their API returns, the concept is missing from the large portion of the API...
I’m immersing myself in the Data Sharing and Open Data for Banks, published by the HM Treasury and Cabinet Office in the United Kingdom, ”to explore how competition and consumer outcomes in UK bank...
Late in 2014, the HM Treasury and Cabinet Office in the United Kingdom, published Data Sharing and Open Data for Banks, ”to explore how competition and consumer outcomes in UK banking could be affe...
I enjoy what I do, but when I embarked on my API Evangelist journey in 2010, I set myself on a mission to educate people about the business of APIs, and highlight that it isn’t just the technology ...
I’m almost to the point with my API stack, where I can start plugging in new APIs I have planned. Up until now, the APIs i have deployed, are of little use to a wider commercial audience. However s...
I walked around San Francisco with Jakub Nesetril (@jakubnesetril), the CEO of Apiary, Wednesday evening, talking about the API space. Eventually we sat down in Union Square, continuing our convers...
I was given an introduction to the Microsoft Graph A concept being applied to Office 365 APIs, other Microsoft APIs, and potentially beyond, to map out segments of users and every day objects. As I...
I’m processing all of my thoughts from some travel to the big city of San Francisco. I was providing feedback on Microsoft’s API design guide, as part of the OneAPI Technical Advisory Group. As I w...
I spent all day Wednesday, at Microsoft offices in San Francisco, providing feedback on the Microsoft API design guide, as part of the OneAPI Technical Advisory Group. The OneAPI team had already d...
Making sure APIs that are available via the enterprise service bus, affectionately known as an ESB, more discoverable, accessible, and consumable via the open Internet, is one of the many challenge...
I am slowly making my way through defining of the APIs available in the API Stack, beginning with the APIs that I depend on to operate API Evangelist. The best way to understand any API in my opini...
I’m neck deep in discussions around API monetization lately, from building a business model in the fast growing podcast space with AudioSear.ch, funding scientific research through API driven reven...
This is a deep dive from one of my loyal readers, who doesn’t just listen to what I write, he is pushing my own research in new directions, and reporting back to me. You have read his work before i...
While we wait for the next steps of the long drawn out Oracle v Google Java API copyright battle, I wanted to take some time and talk about what we can all be doing to actually make a difference. I...
This is one of several stories I am evolving as part of series I’m calling API fairy tales. With these tales I want to educate business leaders, technologists, and government about the importance o...
I am spending an increasing amount of time thinking about how you monetize data, content, and other digital resources via APIs. A couple of very compelling layers to all of this work, is pushing fo...
I play with a lot of services that target the API space each week, during my regular monitoring of the space. These are services from all along the API lifecycle that service this space, from desig...
One of the areas I focus on in the API space, is the business of APIs, and how companies actually make the rubber meet the road when it comes to pricing the API resources they are serving up, as we...
I love the API design editors that have emerged from Restlet as part of their design studio, and from APIMATIC as part of their SDK management service, and if you haven’t checked out Gelato.io, I h...
I love the wide swinging perception people have of who I am, often based upon a 15 seconds of sizing me up, reading the title, first and ending paragraph of a blog post, and often seeing this photo...
I’m feeling like the recent release of the AWS API Gateway isn’t just an isolated product release, but more of a signpost in the overall evolution of the API space. It is quite possible that Amazon...
We are picking up momentum on our way to the APIStrat conference this November 18-20th in Austin, TX. The call for papers is now open, and we are looking to hear your ideas for what the session dis...
I came across HDScores a couple of weeks agao, but their API wasn’t quite ready, something they officially released this last week. HDScores is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. It is an A...
I am accumulating more references to API goodness from across Universities, as part of my APIs in higher education research. The more I monitor, the more I find, this is how the API monitoring game...
I am spending some time, refreshing my look at the open data work, specifically the results of OMB Memorandum M-13-13, which required federal government agencies to publish a data.json file, provid...
I am spending some time, refreshing my look at the open data work, specifically the results of OMB Memorandum M-13-13, which required federal government agencies to publish a data.json file, provid...
I am participating in several API focused Slack channels these days, which opens up entirely new channels for conversations across the API community. I think the private channel(s) gives people a s...
While updating my APIs in higher education research this last week I came across an API portal I think tells an important story about an evolution in how we develop and maintain software. The curre...
As I work with each generation of API service providers, I always notice a portion of them that are born out of a previous era of software development from the 1990s, and even sometimes the early 2...
As I migrate the version 1.0 of my internal systems to an API-first version 2.0, one of the challenges I face is the optimization of some of the features in my own system. I have numerous systems I...
I am revisiting the service composition for my own APIs on a regular basis lately, along with the ever increasing number of conversations I’m having with API providers about their own API monetizat...
I am fortunate to be able to take part in numerous conversations around API strategy, with companies, organizations, and government agencies who are trying to understand, and maximize the role they...
I was made aware of the Citi Mobile Challenge during a conversation last week with the Anypresence team about their new JustAPIs offering. The conversation with them has triggered several potential...
I found a pretty cool Github repository during my latest review of my university API research, with a mission “to provide a collection of RESTful web APIs that can allow developers to create applic...
I had another one of my regular check-ins with Anne and Bailey over at Popup Archive today, with a focus around the monetization strategy for their AudioSear.ch API. I thoroughly enjoy my conversat...
in my time as API Evangelist I’ve seen a number of API deployment as a service providers come and go. It is something that is technically hard to do properly, and something that historically had be...
I’m slowly working through all my research areas, updating the news items I’ve curated, adding and removing companies, continuing to identify some of the common building blocks, and the tools that ...
I am currently trying to move forward the 917 companies, from 223 business areas, with a total 882 APIs catalogued, and 407 Swagger definitions created, while working on a distributed way to unders...
I ask a lot of questions about the API space. In m quest to make sense of the growing number of APIs in the space, I partnered with 3Scale to define the APIs.json format. In the year since we launc...
I did a napkin doodle the other day at my favorite local hangout during lunch and beers. I was thinking about the finer points of the API economy that I dwell on, and feel are important not just fo...
Most of the APIs you find out there are read only, meaning they act like a website and just allow you to retrieve data, content, and other media types, but usually do not let you read or write any ...
I was asked by folks at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to provide some feedback on the Envirofacts Data Service API, as they prepare to work on the next iteration. I took a quick glance ...
API Evangelist has always been about helping on-board the masses with concepts involving APIs, something that takes a lot of work, because more often than not, an API is a very abstract concept, fa...
Bruno Pedro (@bpedro) who has been building APIs.json into his API Changelog service, made a pull request to the specification recently, pushing forward the link relation conversation for APIs.json...
Bruno Pedro (@bpedro) who has been building APIs.json into his API Changelog service, made a pull request to the specification recently, pushing forward the link relation conversation for APIs.json...
I open up my Thursdays to briefings, calls, demos and other phone, skype, and hangout related activities. This morning I received a walk-through of the JustAPIs platform from AnyPresence, taking my...
I open up my Thursdays to briefings, calls, demos and other phone, skype, and hangout related activities. This morning I received a walk-through of the Wavemaker Online platform, and got a look at ...
I was wallowing in the exhaust of my previous story on Amazon API Gateway, and talking with an API development team about their preferred way to launch an API today. Leaving me thinking…what is the...
I told a contact of mine at the Environmental Protection Agency I would provide some feedback for the next iteration of the Envirofacts Data Service API, and as I prepare my formal response, there ...
As I tune into the fallout around the Reddit community, I think it is a good time to pull a story out of my notebook, that I began writing a month or two ago. These thoughts are born out of my post...
I have spent a lot of time thinking about API analytics. Understanding who is signing up to access API resources, and how they are putting those API resources to use, is one of the most valuable as...
I recently went through my API design research, updating and evolving it, to help me better understand changes in the API design space, while also sharing as much of the information as I can with m...
All of my public web sites, research projects, API portals, and micro apps run on Github Pages, which means there is always a Github repository behind each website. I’d say 75% of my projects have ...
My storytelling on API Evangelist has two sides, one is about refining my own understanding of the API space, and the other is about refining, evolving, and helping make the stories I tell make sen...
A core aspect of my mission as the API Evangelist is to help bring awareness amongst “the normals” of what an API is, as just how ubiquitous they are becoming. While I am excited about the potentia...
The story of Pinboard’s sixth anniversary came up on my API monitoring this last week, and beside being funny as shit, it reminded me of how successful APIs can be, even when they do not follow tra...
Those in the know with hypermedia, often express their frustration when it comes to the overall progress of hypermedia adoption, and the bespoke approaches of many API designers. while there are ma...
I am pretty demanding today, I just asked for sandbox environments to be default for all APIs, and now I’d like to see a universal /me API. I am profiling AngelList API, as part of my API Stack wor...
I am working through every endpoint of the AngelList API, making sure I make as many successful calls as I can, as I work to generate Swagger definitions for the API, using Charles Proxy. To suppor...
I shared my view on the AWS API Gateway yesterday. I’m all about the AWS kool-aid (oh yeah!), but overall I was left underwhelmed. I feel the release of the API solutions represents a pretty signif...
It has been almost 10 years since Amazon shifted the conversation on the Internetz, with their release of Amazon S3, and Amazon EC2 -- showing us that web APIs were more than just a hobby thing you...
It has been almost 10 years since Amazon shifted the conversation on the Internetz, with their release of Amazon S3, and Amazon EC2 -- showing us that web APIs were more than just a hobby thing you...
When API Evangelist began five years ago it was a single research into the business of APIs, which ultimately became a research project which I called API management. Over the last four years, I ha...
I got an email from Amazon Web Services this morning, regarding a set of API keys I setup a while back, for a prototype I was building. The project was over a year ago, and the keys have not been e...
I wrote about Intuit’s acquisition of API reciprocity provider itDuzzit last summer, and earlier this month they made the acquired technology available as a new platform extension, they are calling...
Building on what Orlando (@orliesaurus) brings up in his story on the missing brick in the API Industry, we are missing a common place to discovery and share common API designs–something I’ve been ...
I am working hard to generate detailed profiles, that include APIs.json indexes, and Swagger definitions, for each of the 1000 companies I have listed in the API Stack. I have encouraged anyone to ...
This is a guest post by Guillaume Laforge (@glaforge) of Restlet. He did a very cool API deployment project over the holiday weekend, as was good enough to share the details of his project as a sto...
I’m working to profile as many of the top, publicly available APIs out there, as part of the API Stack. While I’ve come to feel that no API definition will ever actually be complete, I’m working to...
In July of 2010, I started researching what would be the next step in my career. I was VP of Technology at WebEvents global, and was in charge of the technical side of running conferences for SAP a...
I was doing one of my regular checkins with my friend Anne Wootton (@annewootton) of Popup Archive today, something we try to do regularly, to share stories about what they are up to in the world o...
I try to go through each of my areas of research as often as I can and update the content, as well as my understanding. Ideally I update the news each week, take a look at the organizations involve...
I am going through each of my research projects, and tightening things down, now that I have them all driven through my new, master stack of APIs. First up was API design, and the other day I spent...
I just read on Re/Code, that the Supreme Court declined to hear Google's appeal on the Oracle v Google case--prepare for the waves of stories from tech blogs, that this will suffocate the API econ...
I wrote that we should be generating Slate API documentation from Swagger so we maintain a machine readable core the other day--while I love the look of Slate, I want to make sure all API meta data...
I have been using the Atom editor when I work on local files on my workstation for some time now. With the latest version 1.0 release I took a fresh look at the architecture, and under the hood at ...
I have been using the Atom editor when I work on local files on my workstation for some time now. With the latest version 1.0 release I took a fresh look at the architecture, and under the hood at ...
I am a big fan of API documentation when done using Slate. It creates very beautiful, and easy to use documentation, that makes learning about an API much more pleasant. You can find some pretty go...
This is one of several stories I am evolving as part of series I’m calling API fairy tales. With these tales I want to educate business leaders, technologists, and government about the importance o...
The concept of a form, is one one of those skeuomorphs, that have taken on an entirely new life on the Internet. The concept of a form is baked into HTML, PDFs, and many other commons aspects of ou...
I am working to craft complete Swagger definitions for the 1000 companies in my API Stack, and what better place to start than with the APIs that I actually use on a daily basis. I am working hard ...
As part of my monitoring of the API space, I keep track of new posts on CodeProject, and occasionally I come across an API integration project. Some of the times it references it as an API project,...
I wrote a story yesterday about APIMATIC releasing a new API validation API to compliment their existing API client code generation API. I received an email from the APIMATIC team is how I found ou...
I wrote about the Global Change Information System (GCIS) API earlier this year, and how they what they are doing with their API design represent how APIs are the next step in the evolution of the ...
I am partnering with the Restlet team to put on a Summer of APIs, a virtual API challenge. The goal with this summer program isn’t to build apps on top of APIs, but build APIs that anyone can use, ...
I am working hard to establish a complete set of APIs for my own API stack which includes establishing complete Swagger definitions for the 25 APIs that I personally operate. These Swagger definiti...
I create a lot of machine readable API definitions for the 1000 companies I monitor as part of my API Stack. I am using Swagger to define all of my APIs, providing me with a simple, yet powerful wa...
Making sure the Swagger files I craft possess a complete definition for its underlying data model, one that is linked to each API path, and parameters where it is put to use, is important to me, bu...
I am playing around with making several stops along the API life cycle more accessible, and machine readable using APIs.json. To help me in my work, I am using my own API stack as a proving ground,...
I am playing around with making several stops along the API life cycle more accessible, and machine readable using APIs.json. To help me in my work, I am using my own API stack as a proving ground,...
I am helping a client work through their monetization strategy for an API deployment service. To help me give me a starting point for the work, I wanted to take a look at a handful of existing serv...
I use Gumroad for publishing of my white papers, and I also keep an eye on what they are up to as part of my API monitoring–they have a pretty useful publishing API. During my weekly API.Report thi...
I’ve long advocated that an API Status page should be a required building block for any API operation. As I work on monitoring for my own master API stack, and as I read stories like Pingometer Kee...
I am partnering with APIMATIC to help establish a common set of complete, and validated API definitions for the almost 1000 APIs I track on as part of my API Stack. I am using my Questions API to i...
I have been working hard to establish some sort of minimum viable definition for a complete Swagger definition is, and I think I finally have got to a point where I have it–at least enough to work ...
I have been talking about virtualized API stacks for a while now, slowly evolving my own view of whats next for the world of APIs, based upon what I’m seeing happen across the sector. I am working ...
As I work to chase an elusive answer to the question, what is a complete API Swagger definition, I’m also faced with what I know John Musser (@johnmusser) would agree is the age old question, what ...
I am working through each of my 25 APIs right now, tackling a list of changes that include some adjustment for an evolution in my service composition, generating Postman collections, APIMATIC SDKs,...
As I work to create Swagger API definitions for the almost 1000 companies in my API stack, I’m chasing an elusive definition of a complete Swagger definition for any API. Only a small portion of AP...
When I started API Evangelist, I knew I didn’t want to use WordPress or other common CMS, so I developed my own API, and page and blogging CMS. During the latest migration of my internal API infras...
I was recently reading about Google moving its corporate applications to the Internet, and as my brain works, began applying this ine of thinking to the world APIs. I am big advocate for companies ...
I have had Cloud Elements under my API aggregation research for some time now, keeping an eye on what they are up to via their blog, Twitter, and Github accounts. Cloud Elements takes a handful of ...
I am currently trying to move forward the 917 companies, from 223 business areas, with a total 882 APIs catalogued, and 407 Swagger definitions created, while working on a distributed way to unders...
I am slowly getting my new API stack in order, where I am close to opening it up for access to a wider audience. As part of this last round of work, I’m fine tuning my service composition strategy ...
As I go through the research from APIMATIC regarding automatically generating client code using Swagger, and I prepare to crank out Swagger definitions for almost 1000 companies in the API Stack, o...
I have met with the APIMATIC team several times over the last couple weeks to discuss the state of API definitions. If you aren’t familiar with APIMATIC, they are a API code as a service provider, ...
I recently added a new tool to my hacker storytelling toolbox, that allows me to easily assemble walk through, that help me guide my readers through a scripted series of steps around any of my rese...
3Scale and I have been working hard to craft APIs.json files for the top public APIs out there, including machine readable Swagger definitions, ever since we launched the open source API search eng...
Darrel Miller(@darrel_miller) reminded me of the desktop development platform Electron the other day, with his story on Moving Beyond the Browser with JavaScript and Hypermedia. I had been eyeballi...
Helping people understand the potential you see around a particular approach to API design, is hard stuff. Providing easy to follow stories, and implementations that the average person can follow i...
I wrote about a simpler example of API to SPA the other day, continuing my journey for apps, services, and tooling that easily deploys a Single Page App (SPA) or light-weight web and mobile clients...
This is a guest post from Marsh Gardiner, who knows a little secret…that anyone can submit stories to API Evangelist. All you do is submit a pull request on the Github repo that runs the site. Of c...
My first emotion after reading the brief filed by the US Solicitor General, is that the federal government’s stance is so wrong, antiquated, and shows how behind the curve our government actually i...
This is a guest post from Marsh Gardiner, who knows a little secret…that anyone can submit stories to API Evangelist. All you do is submit a pull request on the Github repo that runs the site. Of c...
I enjoy playing with simple, meaningful ways of leaning about APIs. The other day, during the regular monitoring of the API space, I came across a simple dice rolling API, which I decide to map out...
One of my areas of research that got boost of energy at Gluecon last week, was the area of Single Page Applications, aka SPAs. SPAs are one huge area of potential growth for the API space, but like...
Yeah, I know, it is a click-bait title. My goal is to not flame the haters, but educate everyone involved, both the people looking to learn about microservices, and those who are practicing microse...
I am going on five years of API Evangelist this summer, and I’ve been doing some reflecting about what the next five years will be about. While listening to my friend Mike Amundsen (@mamund), I had...
I look at a lot of API documentation, something that until recently has been pretty static–pun intended. As an API consumer I really appreciate standardized approaches to documenting an API, like u...
While at Gluecon this week, one of the events I particpated in was the Swagger API Meetup, Tuesday evening. There was a small group of Colorado Bros (TM) there, admittedly there “just for the beers...
I have written many times before about the right way to onboard with an API, as well as how not to onboard with an API. I see a lot of APIs, and can tell you which APIs have put thought into the pr...
This is a Github issue submission I received, in response to whether or not anyone is doing anything interesting with Swagger. In the lead up to talks about Swagger next week at Gluecon, in Colorad...
I am preparing for a big week of discussion around API definitions at Gluecon, and in addition to working on my Swagger research, I kicked off deeper research into API Blueprin, looking for the com...
I am preparing to head to Colorado next week for Gluecon--one of my can’t miss events in the API space. Gluecon is always a great place to be, to discuss the API space with the folks who are leadin...
I am preparing for a big week of discussion around Swagger next week, and I’m spending time going through Swagger research project, refreshing some of the companies I know are doing interesting thi...
The Weekly API.Report represents the best of what I've read throughout the week, and is only what I personally felt should be showcased. Each news item comes with a link, and some thoughts I had a...
I enjoy documenting APIs that I come across on the Internet. Not all designs catch my attention, but when they do, I like to add them to my monitoring systems, and with some of the smallest, open s...
I enjoy documenting APIs that I come across on the Internet. Not all designs catch my attention, but when they do, I like to add them to my monitoring systems, and with some of the smallest, open s...
I get hypermedia at a high level, but have no real experience designing or deploying a hypermedia API or client. For the longest time I just watched the hypermedia conversation from afar, but in th...
I am spending a small amount of time each week, adding a new hypermedia layer to my link curation API. My goal is to better understand hypermedia, while also improving the designs of the APIs that ...
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) -- READ MORE I'm one day late this week, but got er done--yay!! My Weekly API.Report represents the best of what I've read throughout the week, and...
I had a great conversation with Chris Taggart (@countculture), the CEO of OpenCorporates, after his keynote at APIDays Berlin / APIDays Europe 2015 last week, about how they get the data they need,...
Has Owen Rubel emailed you, commented on your thread, called you or your co-workers? Your not alone, feel free to contact me for more information. This a guest post by Owen Rubel, fellow API arch...
I was taking a look at a new healthcare API recently, adding it to my stack, for deeper review at a later date. Whenever I add a company to my monitoring and review system, I go through the site to...
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) – **READ MORE** This is a review of the communication API platform CallFire, crafting a snapshot of platform operations, from an external viewpoi...
In 2010 I started API Evangelist, as part of my effort to better understand the world of APIs. I was looking to not just the technology of how it was done, I saw there were plenty of people doing t...
After recovering from an amazing week in Berlin for APIDaysBerlin / APIStrat Europe 2015, and catching up on some work, which included a 20 hour push to get the last weeks API.Report completed, I a...
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) -- READ MORE This week's report was a painful one, because I did very little work last week when it came to monitoring the space, thus I was forced...
I am still coming off the high that was @APIDaysBerlin / @APIStrat Europe this last April 23rd through 25th in Berlin. There were a number of talks that I enjoyed, ranging from open data, to 3D pri...
In addition to helping be the MC for the API event, one of the conversation I am facilitating at @APIDaysBerlin / @APIStrat Europe this Friday in Berlin, is an open data discussion on the main stag...
My Weekly API.Report represents the best of what I've read throughout the week, and is only what I personally felt should be showcased. Each news item comes with a link, and some thoughts I had af...
I wrote a post the other day laying out what I'd consider a minimum viable footprint for API operations. My vision of just exactly what an API is, has gone beyond just the technical, ever since I ...
I wrote a post the other day laying out what I’d consider a minimum viable footprint for API operations. My vision of just exactly what an API is, has gone beyond just the technical, ever since I s...
I’m very fortunate to be the API Evangelist, as I get to spend my days discussing, some very lofty ideas, with extremely smart and entrepreneurial folks from across many different business sectors....
I was reading Obama administration agrees with Sunlight: Agencies should disclose what data they keep private, which is a topic I follow closely, as I’m passionate about government opening up their...
I see a lot of software come and go. I adopt applications, tools, and online services for a variety of reasons, with some of these tools remaining a regular part my operations, with others coming a...
I get a number of folks contacting me about their API ideas, and email or call me, looking to schedule a meeting or briefing to discuss the API ideas. This is something I always reply with a reques...
I have been slowly adding Postman Collections to many of the APIs indexes for my new master stack. I index each API using an APIs.json file, as well as provide a master APIs.json which brings toget...
I have had Steve Willmotts of 3Scale’s response to the announcement that Twitter was cutting off firehose access for over a week now, and bringing the higher level access completely in house via th...
The most important stories told across the API space, the ones that have the biggest impact on API providers, and ultimately API consumers, are the stories that come out of the trenches of the API...
The most important stories told across the API space, the ones that have the biggest impact on API providers, and ultimately API consumers, are the stories that come out of the trenches of the API ...
The most important stories told across the API space, the ones that have the biggest impact on API providers, and ultimately API consumers, are the stories that come out of the trenches of the API...
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) -- READ MORE My Weekly API.Report represents the best of what I've read throughout the week, and is only what I personally felt should be showcased...
I’ve been monitoring an emerging slice of the API, that has been dubbed “microservices” for some time now, and you’ve even heard me explore its use, when describing my architectural approach to red...
This is something I talk about often, but it has been a while since I’ve done a story dedicated to it, so I wanted to make sure and take a fresh look at what I’d consider to be a minimum viable foo...
Somewhere during my weekly monitoring I found the Fiber Locator API, which like all APIs, especially the ones that ask me to “request access”, I signed up for the service. Understanding where telec...
APIs are very much a virtual concept, something that is very abstract, often difficult to explain, and is something that very much lives in the online world. Spending much of my daily life in this ...
This is a topic I’ve had an increasing number of conversation with folks about in the last couple months, and a friend of mine Tweeted in response to today, resulting in this lovely rant. This is a...
I was just doing on of my regular check-ins with Pratap Ranade (@pratapranade), the CEO of Kimono. We try to make time to catchup on what each other are up to, and find where we can work together t...
This is another story that came to mind while listening to the last episode of Traffic and Weather. As John and Steve were talking about the API definition format Swagger switching from Reverb to S...
Yay! Another story generated by listening to Traffic and Weather (blame John and Steve). I do enjoy sharing my random thoughts while listening to those two. This one is around the SDK discussion du...
I had one of my followers ask me if there as a “gold standard for API deprecation policies” out there. I’d say that deprecation policies are a little different than some of the other legal building...
If I find a new company during my research, it takes me about a minimum of 15 minutes to lightly profile what they are up, and add to my system, and if I do a full profile, it can take several hour...
This story is derived from listening to the API podcast, Traffic and Weather. One of the things John Sheehan (@johnsheehan), and Steve Marx (@smarx) discussed during the recent show, was a post Ste...
As my Internet of Things (IoT) research continues, I’m applying much of my API thinking from the mainstream API space to the world of IoT. A couple weeks ago I stumbled across the 3D Robotics Drone...
I was dedicating some time to researching APIs in the Internet of things (IoT) space, and stumbled across the Myfox API, serving the Myfox home security products. While the developer portal for the...
API design service provider Apiary, quietly launch a new sharing button for API Blueprints, in their interactive API documentation, the other week. They added a setting in their account area, which...
I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to cut back on my travel in 2015, and focus on some important research, coding, and writing. I apologize to all the events I’ve said no to over the last couple...
I spend a lot of time looking through the developer portals of API providers. I see a lot of things, both the good and bad, while navigating these portals, and while some of the bad stuff I see are...
I was doing my regular monitoring, and found myself on the AlchemyAPI site. Not exactly sure how I got there, but I stumbled across their HTMLGetCombinedData API, which can be used for analysis on ...
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) -- READ MORE My Weekly API.Report represents the best of what I've read throughout the week, and is only what I personally felt should be showcased...
The one thing I’ve learned in five years as the API Evangelist is that us technologists and developers don’t always see the world like everyone else. We focus on the perfection of the technology, o...
I was introduced to StreamData.io the other day, by Gabriel Dillon (@gjdillon) of Readme.io. StreamData.io provides a caching, and push layer for apps to take advantage of, that can be deploy on to...
I was reading Are You Or Your Customers Leaking Your API Keys? from Daryl Miller (@darrel_miller) the other day, which spurred me to float up a story in my Evernote, from a couple months back. My t...
I swear 3D Printing is continuing to cross over in some interesting ways: Sensors Embedded into 3D Printed Casts and Braces Will Track Patients Progress - An interesting intersection of healthcar...
This post is extracted from a deep dive I’ve been doing into the Swagger ecosystem, as part of regular conversations I have been having with Tony Tam (@fehguy), trying to understand how we can bett...
I’ve been tracking on the potential for voice APIs since Siri was first announced, a topic that often meant telephony like from Twilio, or audio transcription from Popup Archive and Clarify. When I...
I am evolving my own personal microservices definition, something that is constantly changing, as I work on my infrastructure, read other people’s own definitions (no shortage these lately), and co...
There are many areas I track on as part of my research. Things that do not show up on my weekly API.Reports, or in my analysis on API Evangelist. One of these is the area of drones. I’m fascinated ...
There was a quick post from Mashable the other day about a conversation with WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton, called WhatsApp cofounder: Sorry developers, no API for you. Its pretty common argument ...
When I started API Evangelist, I was all about the Business of APIs, something I still focus on, but increasingly over the last couple years I am focusing more on what I call the politics of APIs. ...
After reflecting on API management and the Apigee IPO, I’m thinking deeper on how the API space has come to be a “thing”. To kick off this story, you have to start with the API itself, something ve...
The news came out yesterday that SmartBear was taking over ownership of Swagger, from Reverb. Swagger has been outgrowing its home at Reverb for some time now, becoming much more than I think even ...
It has been a little over three years since I published my first roundup of API management providers. I’ve been tracking on this new breed of companies long before I started API Evangelist, but in ...
Ok, it seems like Monday is going to be the regular posting day for my weekly API.Report. No matter how hard I try to get done over the weekend, something always seems to get in the way. Regardles...
I was listening to too infrequent Traffic and Weather API podcast today, and one of the topics John and Steve covered was an interesting approach to API consumption, and getting past API rate limit...
I’m slowly migrating my own infrastructure, towards a microservice first approach, something you can follow the details of on my alpha.apievangelist.com blog. I’ve been running on my own custom bre...
I am putting a lot of thought into the value of an API request and response lately. I’ve talked about the potential of a Postman collection as a unit of measurement, for the API economy. I’m also s...
I’m working with multiple partners to define what I’d consider to be the firsts stops along the API lifecycle, when you use APIs.json as the scaffolding for your API operations. APIs.json is a mach...
I was just talking with my friend Oliver Seiler (@0seiler) in New Zealand via email. Oliver is great at keeping me in tune with API related stories out of New Zealand. I was making sure he knew how...
Running the perfect API operation is pretty much a delusional dream. Even leaders like Twilio and AWS have platform, and ecosystem produced problems on a regular basis. In my opinion, API are all ...
Like API, the term microservice has emerged as a force, along with a meaning that is very precise, or very broad, depending on who you are. The only thing I’m sure of at this point, is the term mic...
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) -- READ MORE Phew!! This week was hard. I just couldn't find the mojo to plow through, but I did it. A little late on Monday evening, but still so ...
I would say the enterprise space fleet has successfully shifted their course, heading in the general direction of everything API. SAP, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, and the rest of the usual suspects hav...
I’m immersed in deep thoughts about the implications of machine readable API definitions like APIs.json, Swagger, and Postman Collections, which are being applied to APIs, in some very different, b...
If you are following some of my recent stories, I’m heavily focused on APIs.json, as I work to organize my own stack of microservices, using APIs.son and Swagger. I’m working hard to define additio...
I’ve said it before, and I will say it again — Excel and spreadsheets will continue to be super critical for the growth of the API industry. There are an increasing number of solutions like APISpar...
My API hero of the day is Alan deLevie (@adelevie) over at 18F. I was tweeting out my story “Going Beyond Excel As A Data Source For API Deployment And Focusing On It As An API Client” today, and h...
I use many types of APIs. Some are public APIs, operated by other people, and then there are the APIs I have designed, operate, and consume on my own. As I design, redesign, deploy, and manage my A...
I was listening the APIsâUncensored podcast last weekend, where Ole Lensmar (@olensmar), and Lorinda Brandon (@lindybrandon) sat down for a conversation with Tony Tam (@fehguy), the creator of AP...
I am revisiting some work that I started when I was working in Washington DC as a Presidential Innovation Fellow(PIF). Actually there are several things going on here, a sort of perfect storm of AP...
I came across an interesting piece of technology today while doing new curation for API.Report. RASON, an interesting approach to API driven analytics and potential UI and visualization, that kind ...
I was watching an open thread around ALPS over at API Craft, something that is on my working list to better understand, apply more in my world, and tell the story all along the way. ALPS author, an...
There are lots of good visualization stories recently, or maybe I’m more focused on API driven visualizations. Who knows? This particular post is an API story because Mohiomap, the company at the c...
As I look through more APIs, and I don’t just play around in their developer portal, and look at documentation, I am actually get my hands dirty generating Swagger definitions, and authenticating a...
While processing the news today over at API.Report, I came across a story about Broadcom delivering an API for managing their latest network infrastructure. The intersection of Software Defined Net...
I’m a big fan of private APIs, and all for keeping API access tailored to meaningful groups of users vs. just opening up data to the public, without first thinking critically about the possible pro...
A short, concise, portable description of what your API does, is one of the most critical building blocks of API management, and is essential to reducing friction when new users are on-boarding wit...
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) -- READ MORE This is the third week in a row I've managed to do this weekly report, something that took me about 9 hours of work, so I can see that...
Tony Hirst (@psychemedia) wrote an interesting story about what I would consider the API journey, which he called, “What’s The Point Of An API?”. I’m the first to call bullshit on the term API, whi...
I’m adding a new layer to my monitoring of the API space, what I consider to be the people layer of the API Evangelist network–the actual people who are executing on much of what I talk about, acro...
If you are an API developer, it is likely you have used Postman, the simple tool for building, testing, and documenting your APIs. I have Postman open as a Google Chrome App, which allows me to mak...
I was profiling the video sharing API Dailymotion the other day, going through their developer area and profiling their API operations. One of the things I do as part of the profiling of any compan...
I was spending time profiling APIs late last night while putting back a couple of IPAs. Yes this is what I do on a Friday night, you have a problem with that? Anyways, I was crafting Swagger defini...
I’m continuing my work, to help people understand what APIs.json is, and the varying ways that it can be put to use. My post the other week, breaking down Fitbits APIs.json file is a good example o...
I had a conversation with some folks who are building a wikipedia of API definitions the other day, looking to employ formats like Swagger, and APIs.json to make an open, authoritative directory of...
When I come across a new company, during the course of my monitoring and information gathering across the API space, I enter them into my company API. Once a company is in there, and I’ve deemed it...
I am giving each of my primary API research sites a refresh, and first up is the home page of my API discovery research. As I update each home page, I’m going to publish here on API Evangelist to h...
I was reviewing one of the many entries in my review queue of companies who are doing interesting things with APIs, and stumbled across the data visualization API—Lightning. Their implementation gr...
I work to isolate all of my calls on Thursdays, leaving other days of the week to more asynchronous forms of communication, and deep dives into coding, research, and storytelling efforts. Last Thur...
I am giving each of my primary API research sites a refresh, and first up is the home page of my API design research. As I update each home page, I’m going to publish here on API Evangelist to help...
Making a list of valuable APIs has been a staple of my tech blogging for 10 years now, and as I work to find even more meaningful ways of defining the API space, I’m pushing the envelope on how I d...
I am adding four new building blocks, to my list of suggested building blocks that API providers should consider when crafting their API management strategy. These four building blocks, are based u...
I had the pleasure of finally meeting someone in person, that I feel like I’ve known for years, while I was over in Australia, for API Days Sydney—Keran McKenzie (@keranm), API Evangelist for MYOBa...
I spend a lot of time wading through press releases at the number of the dominate aggregate news outlets, looking for API news. I also have a number of scripts running, keeping an automated eye on ...
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) -- READ MORE I am a couple days late on this weeks API.Report, after being sick last week, taking the weekend to recover--at least I got it done. T...
I’m just getting started exploring the ways to use APIs.json when it comes organize my new Docker fueled, micro services stack. I’ve been using APIs.son to describe each micro service, as well as d...
A topic I’ve written about before, and one that I answer regularly on forums, via email, and on Twitter is, “Are there any write APIs in the federal government?” It is a valid question, and as I sa...
I had the pleasure of attending a gathering at Heavybit Industries last week, a community for developer-focused entrepreneurs, where one of the headlining speakers was Nike CTO Chris Satchell. I wi...
This post has been open for almost two weeks now in Evernote. It began as a simple story about the possibility for generating code samples and libraries using Swagger. The longer it stays open, the...
I’ve been talking about the possibilities around wholesale APIs for a while now, something that is only going to become more prevalent with the popularity of micro services and containers. I though...
The API Evangelist network is my open workbench, and I understand for many, it can be confusing to see some of my half-baked ideas alongside some of my more hardened API 101, business of APIs, and ...
During my monitoring of the API space this last week I had one of those rare discoveries, amongst thousands of misses, and around a hundred slightly interesting nuggets, a simple move forward calle...
In my day to day operations, I get regular calls from VC’s (Venture Capitalists) looking to better understand APIs, the role they are playing within specific industries, working towards a better aw...
I’ve written about this topic before, in an effort to understand the possible incentives for API providers to generate their own machine readable API definitions in formats like Swagger and API Blu...
I constantly struggle to stay in tune with the scope of the API space, and keep pace with its rapid expansion. As part of this struggle, I am always on the hunt for new ways to shift the way I look...
Some of the side effects of being so open and transparent about my ideas, like the one I had around API visualizations, is that people who are doing similar things, like Ardoq, eventually find you....
I have API tooling on the brain, a result of conversations on multiple fronts, and the evolution of my own thoughts on creating what I’d see as the perfect API design tool. My thoughts on API tooli...
I was just listening to segment on NPR, All Things Considered, about educating students around the environment. Throughout the program I couldn’t help be reminded of a similar imbalance in the worl...
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) -- READ MORE I have been inspired by my partner in crime Audrey Watter's (@audreywatters) approach to her weekly news on Hack Education, and will b...
There is an interesting story about Twitter trolling over at Yahoo News from CBCNews.ca, which includes recommendations from Adria Richards (@adriarichards) for using the Twitter API to crack down ...
I was playing catchup on my feeds over the weekend, and came across a nice, meet the Mendeley platform team post, from the academic research API. I’m a big fan of these types of efforts, that help ...
If you were at Defrag in Colorado last November, or in Sydney, Australia for API Days last week, you’ve heard me talk about what containers are doing to APIs. There is a subtle, but important shift...
I just found one of the coolest API stories I’ve seen in a while over at CHANCE, the quarterly magazine designed for “anyone who has an interest in the analysis of data, informally highlighting sou...
LinkedIn recently announced some changes to their developer program, which involves further tightening down the screws on who has access to the API, limiting public access to only a handful of very...
After seeing the conversation around my In The Future There Will Be No Public vs. Private APIs, I’m reminded of my own mission. I write on API Evangelist first and foremost for my own education, an...
The API savvy folks over at Apimatic are at it again, pushing forward the conversation around generating of software development kits, using machine readable API formats, and this time the doorway ...
I’m continuing my work to help people understand what APIs.json is, and the varying ways that it can be put to use. My post the other day, breaking down Fitbits APIs.json file is a good example of ...
I’m continuing my work to help people understand what APIs.json is, and the varying ways that it can be put to use. My post the other day, breaking down Fitbits APIs.json file is a good example of ...
David Berlin has a rebuttal post on ProgrammableWeb to my recent post In The Future There Will Be No Public vs. Private APIs, called Long Live The Private API. I’m a big fan of doing story response...
I’m a big fan of putting my ideas for new tools, services, and other stuff out on the Internet, for public consumption. My mother taught me how to manifest things in my life, and this is my digital...
I’ve been talking about developing virtual API stacks for a while now, and as I continue understand current shifts in cloud computing, I am doing my own reshuffling towards a more microservices, an...
As I travel around talking to folks about APIs, I spend as much time as I can educating folks about API Commons, and I’m constantly reminded how little people, who have even heard, and read about A...
I remember the vision clearly from 2004, when I first changed the URL for my Delicious social bookmarking account to make it return a list of bookmarks as XML instead of HTML. It was a vision of th...
My work on APIs for the Department of Education, and the FAFSA API began while I was working in Washington DC as a Presidential Innovation Fellow. Shortly after leaving DC, I was informed that conv...
I’ve been pretty focused on web APIs in my API Evangelist world, steering clear of hardware, networking, desktop software, and the American Petroleum Institute. While you will never catch me paying...
I get a lot of folks who come to my blog, see the title, read one or two posts, and assume that I’m a blind lover of API technology, and that I see APis as a solution to everything. While some of t...
I spent a portion of my time each day reviewing press release sites, in addition to the 1000+ blogs I keep an eye on, for syndication to API.Report. During the course of my work this year, I’m noti...
I spend a significant portion of my day looking for company logos, for use in the API stories I tell. When I come across a proper implementation of a logo page, one of the business building blocks ...
I’m on the hunt for new ways to deploy attractive, interactive API documentation, from machine readable API definition formats like Swagger and API Blueprint. I am advocating for the development of...
As I continue to evovle my service composition definition, using my 3Scale API infrastructure, across my microservices stack, the thought of public vs private doesn’t even enter the equation. I am ...
As I continue to evovle my service composition definition, using my 3Scale API infrastructure, across my microservices stack, the thought of public vs private doesn’t even enter the equation. I am ...
I’m spending a lot of time reading API related patents lately. I downloaded all of the patent applications between 2005 and 2015, filtered for all patents that mention “application programming inte...
The release of the the president’s fiscal year 2016 budget in a machine readable format on Github was one of the most important things to come out of Washington D.C. in a while when it comes to ope...
I was having a Twitter conversation with John Sheehan(@johnsheehan) about the easiest way to generate interactive API documentation this weekend, without getting all tangled up in having to get int...
As I work to redefine my world using microservices, I have this sudden realization how important my API management infrastructure is to all of this. Each one of my microservices are little APIs tha...
In 2010, when I started API Evangelist, I sat down to create a logo, and after six hours of frustration in photoshop, I eventually just typed out my logo as a basic JSON representation, kind of as ...
I went up to California State University Channel Islands the other day to talk APIs with their tech team, and I was happy to find at least one strong API skeptic on the team. API skeptics also give...
I went up to California State University Channel Islands the other day to talk APIs with their tech team, and I was happy to find at least one strong API skeptic on the team. API skeptics also give...
The quantified-self API Fitbit recently added an APIs.json for their domain. Their usage of APIs.json is a perfect, dead-simple, introductory example of how APIs can start putting APIs.json for the...
The quantified-self API Fitbit recently added an APIs.json for their domain. Their usage of APIs.json is a perfect, dead-simple, introductory example of how APIs can start putting APIs.json for the...
I started doing research on API patents recently, and after about 5 days of processing XML files from the US Patent Office, I’m going to stop processing at the year 2004 (way back). This gives me 2...
I’m using APIs.json to organize my swagger defined microservices running in docker containers, and using the machine readable API index to drive navigation between microservices organized in a sing...
I spent the day yesterday up in Camarillo, at California State University Channel Islands (CI). Half my time I spent speaking with a mix of folks from the campus tech team about APIs, and the other...
APITools is a simple, open source, API middleware that allows you to “track, transform and analyze the traffic between your app and the APIs”. With just a few clicks you can proxy any API you use, ...
I was struggling with exactly how much API surface area can exist for a service before it stops being micro the other day, and while I don’t think I’ll ever find a precise measurement for this, I’d...
I’m fascinated by the rise of Twitter bots. Little automated bundles of social media joy, built to spew mostly nonsense, but everyone once in a while you find nuggets of wisdom in the Twitter API f...
I’m rebuilding my underlying architecture using microservices, and docker containers, and I’m using APIs.json for navigation and discovery within these new API stacks that I use to make my world go...
I’m rebuilding my underlying architecture using microservices and docker containers, and the glue I’m using to bind it all together is APIs.json. I’m not just using APIs.son to deliver on discovera...
I’m rebuilding my underlying architecture using microservices and docker containers, and the glue I’m using to bind it all together is APIs.json. I’m not just using APIs.son to deliver on discovera...
I spend time each day reviewing about 15 different press release distribution websites, looking for API related news for API.Report, and potentially seeds for stories elsewhere on the API Evangelis...
I have most of the core platform that I run API Evangelist on re-engineered as individual microservices, defined on Github, and running using Docker instances. I’m using APIs.json for discovery, na...
I cringe, when I think about the number of mobile applications out there, that people depend on in their personal and professional lives, that are using insecure APIs, allowing personally identifia...
As we get close to wrapping up the first month in 2015, it is clear that Internet security and privacy will continue to be front and center this year. As technology continues to play a central role...
When you start talking about generating server or client side code for APIs, using machine readable API definition formats like Swagger or API Blueprint, many technologists feel compelled to let yo...
I’m slowly processing XML files of patents from the US Patent Office. You can read the origin of my journey here, but as of today, I finished processing 50 files of patent applications for 2013, ad...
David Berlind’s (@dberlind), Amid The API Copyright Controversy, An API Patent Claim Surfaces story from this last Friday, planted some ideas in my head around APIs and patents—something that once ...
i’m spending a lot of time lately, playing around with different approaches to deploying APIs in Docker containers. Part of this is because it is the latest trend in API deployment and management, ...
The API space is continuing its rapid expansion, and along with the number of API design, deployment, management, and integration providers, and the number of API conferences, there are some new so...
There is a new podcast on SoundCloud called APIsUncensored, from the folks over at SmartBear. I was honored to have a mention in the first episode, where they brought up a project I did a couple of...
I come across a lot of API related companies during my monitoring of the space, which I queue up, and as I have time, I work to explore and understand what they do. One company that I’ve had open i...
I’ve been a Postman user for a while, as a tool for quickly making API calls against the APIs I use most, and explore the new APIs I discover daily. As I use Postman, I can’t help but think the con...
I sign up for a lot of APIs, and when I encounter a frictionless on-boarding process, I feel the need to showcase, and help everyone understand how important it is to make the process as easy as po...
I referenced the Recreation Information Database (RIDB), in my story late last year, when I was asking for your help to make sure the Department of Agriculture leads with APIs in their parks and re...
API storyteller J(a)son Harmon (@jharmn) has a new YouTube channel up called API Workshop. He’s going to be publishing regular API design workshop episodes, with the latest one titled REST API Desi...
I wrote a piece earlier today about the kick-ass on-boarding process at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) 3D Print Exchange API--within two clicks I had my API key and was making an API call....
There is an very interesting new 3D Print Exchange API from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH 3D Print Exchange is designed for publishing “biomedically-relevant” 3D models, that any...
We just added three new speakers to the lineup for @APIStrat Berlin this April 24th and 25th. I get pretty excited about this part of the event planning lifecycle, which is all about reviewing talk...
An open project for me this month, is about better understanding how API keys are provisioned, and how developers are given access to valuable resources. As the number of APIs grows, so do the numb...
My public websites have been running on Github Pages for almost two years now, and slowly the private management tools for my platform are moving there as well. Alongside my public websites, I’m ad...
My public websites have been running on Github Pages for almost two years now, and slowly the private management tools for my platform are moving there as well. Alongside my public websites, I’m ad...
When I discuss what is possible when it comes to generating both server and client side code using machine readable API definitions like Swagger, I almost always get push-back, making sure I unders...
I continuing to evolve my use of Swagger as a kind of central truth in my API design, deployment, and management lifecycle. This time I’m using it as a fingerprint for defining how APIs or micro-se...
As I read and listen to all of the Internet of Things stories coming out of CES, I’m happy to be hearing discussions around privacy and security, come out of the event. I feel better about IoT secu...
I find it more valuable to scrub the names of the APIs from about 75% of my stories, which I feel helps them be received by a widest possible audience as possible. If I say “API Provider X”, other ...
I talked about Twitter’s inclusion of rate limits inline with documentation the other day, which is something I added as a new building block, that API providers can consider when crafting their ow...
As I read and listen to all of the Internet of Things stories coming out of CES, I’m happy to be hearing discussions around privacy and security, come out of the event. I feel better about I...
I’m about 1/3 of the way into generating Swagger specifications for the APIs at the 700+ companies that I monitor. I have the Swagger specs for almost 250 APIs so far, and have no idea how many I’l...
A blog post that caught my attention recently was Fuse, Kynetx, and Carvoyant, by Phil Windley (@windley). Phil is pushing the boundaries of connecting devices to the Internet, and is very vocal ab...
As I am designing my APIs, one of the first things I decide is whether or not I will be making this public. If its a simple enough resource, and doesn’t put too much load on my servers, I will usua...
When you use a well designed, and I hate saying it, but a RESTful API, you know it. I’m not a restafarian, who is super strict about API design, but I do know an easy-to-use, intuitive interface wh...
The properties of each API that is listed in an APIs.json file can be called anything, as long as you preface it with X-, and the URL can point to anything you wish–to me this is one of the most fl...
I was cruising around the Google Developer area and I stumbled across Google Helpouts. A service being billed as “Experts with Answers, Meet Developers with Questions”. Seems like a more one-to-one...
If I had to pick one API that I worship the ground they walk on, and yet for some insane reason I don’t write about very often—it would be the Digital Public Library of America. I can go on for day...
I have read several stories about security breaches in the past couple days, ranging from exploitation of APIs across the distributed systems we are increasingly depending on, to no security at Moo...
I was working in APISpark, playing around with different approaches to creating APIs for data stores i have in Amazon S3, Github, and in Google Spreadsheets. The cloud API deployment solution allow...
I was taking another look at the Reddit API over the weekend, and thought their listing of API endpoints was pretty interesting. They provide two ways of looking at the platform APIs: API Secti...
In 2015, I will enter the 5th year of API Evangelist. To quote one of my favorite bands–“What a Long Strange Trip Its Been”. I couldn’t be more thankful for the career choice I made in 2010, and ex...
I saw a story of yet another security breach related to how mobile phones are using APIs today. This one is from Paul Price, on his blog ifc0nfig.com, about the greeting card site MoonPig. Paul hi...
Your company’s secret sauce doesn’t involve keeping your APIs closed and proprietary—it is about making them as open and accessible as possible, to the point where even your competition can’t help ...
As I travel around talking to folks about APIs, I spend as much time as I can, educating folks about APIs.json. In the course of my evangelism, I’m constantly reminded how little people, who have e...
I am beginning to track on reverse engineering API story that I come across, so if you find any, feel free to share my way. If you aren’t familiar with this growing trend, I’m talking about the rev...
I am spending a lot of time lately reviewing Internet of Things (IoT) providers, as I work on a white paper for Gigaom. There are some very interesting approaches to APIs out there in IoT-land, and...
I am spending a lot of time lately reviewing Internet of Things (IoT) providers, as I work on a white paper for Gigaom. There are some very interesting approaches to APIs out there in IoT-land, and...
Here we go again. If you were in Chicago for APIStrat this September, then you know we are planning to have the next edition of APIStrat in Berlin, this spring. This round 3Scale and API Evangelist...
APIs are quickly moving into the mainstream. In 2012, companies, organizations and government agencies all took notice of the need for deploying and consuming APIs. In 2013 there is still a lot of ...
