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Stories about the technology, business, policies, and people of APIs.
I am reworking the API Evangelist developer area, and shifting most of my content to be available as YAML and JSON data on the Github repositories that drive my network of sites. I’m doing this par...
Talking to people, and telling stories on a regular basis always pushes me to evolve my understanding of how people see (or don’t see) APIs, and pushes me to keep shifting the way I tell stories. I...
My friend and partner in crime Nicolas Grenié (@picsoung), and operator of our open source API search engine APIs.io, just let me know that the Taiwanese government just added an APIs.json file for...
I tried to get back to normal last week on API Evangelist – I failed. The previous week was @APIStrat in Boston, which was a success. It was the Presidential election that caused me to swerve and p...
There aren’t too many startups doing interesting things in the API space right now. One of the exceptions is Stoplight.io. I am working really hard to find some of the good things in the API space ...
The 7th edition of API Strategy & Practice wrapped up last week. It has been difficult to gather my thoughts with the election going on, but I wanted to shift my attention back to the API commu...
The 7th edition of API Strategy & Practice Conference happened last week. While I wasn’t fully engaged throughout the planning process for this edition, due to my summer being disrupted, I want...
**Difficult To Keep My Attention **When I was young I was always curious when it came to technology. I set up the entire computer lab for my 7th-grade math teacher back in 1983. I programmed comput...
I was reading the latest Yahoo transparency report, as well as the Tumblr. When a company releases their latest version of this data, it tends to prompt me to take a look at some of the other provi...
Photo: Drones and Society I went down to the police department in Hermosa Beach and filed my application for a drone permit. It’s been two weeks and I haven’t heard back. When I get done with @...
I thought the microservices platform Nanoscale.io have an interesting argument for why you would upgrade to a paid plan. On their pricing page, after they break down each of the pricing plans they ...
Adrian Cockroft (@adrianco) turned me on to a DNS aggregation solution the other day while I was working on updating the API definitions for the API providers that are included in my API DS researc...
Managing developers access to an API is API management 101. Managing the relationships between developers, and allowing for multiple users associated with an API application isn’t something I have ...
I am diving deep into the DJi drone developer platform, and one of the elements of the DJi Drone Guidance API that caught my attention was the data transfer control methods. In this situation, the ...
Many folks see me simply as a cheerleader for APIs when in reality I am more of an evangelist for the bad that can happen with APIs. I believe that sharing of data, content, and algorithms using we...
I am going through the DJi DJI drone developer area which has three distinct SDKs, which allow us to leverage a variety of APIs that make the drone magic happen. I’m still wrapping my head around t...
I get why people are interested in voice-enabled solutions like Alexa and Siri. I’m personally not a fan of speaking to get what I want, but I get the attraction for others. Similarly, I get why pe...
One of the things I love about my world as the API Evangelist is the time I get diving into rabbit holes and learning about different areas where technology is being applied. I do not always agree ...
Internet-connected devices generate data. The most recent wave of mobile devices has opened up an unprecedented world of data generation and harvesting from the network, device, and application lay...
I am learning about observability from reading Stripes post on Veneur, a high performance and global aggregation for Datadog. While the math of it all is over my head, the definition makes a lot of...
As I curate the interesting news from across the API space each week I tag things to put them into different buckets. At the end of each week, I look through each bucket, deciding which area(s) I w...
I am seeing more people asking that we put on the brakes when it comes to technology, looking to slow the adoption of new technology, in favor of mastery of the existing, and getting our house in o...
I have been tracking on API related patents for some time. I regularly pull XML dumps from the US Patent Office, a process in which I am getting more refined, so that I am able to easily tag, and o...
I have blogged about this topic in the last 60 days, but I predict it is an area you will hear from me about regularly until I see it baked into more software solutions. CloudFlare, one of my favor...
I was pretty happy when my friend Arnaud Lauret (@arno_di_loreto) developed API Stylebook. I want to see his work expand and grow into someday containing hundreds or thousands of API design guides....
I’m a fan of the human elements of this technological shift that is going on in our world. We tend to focus on the technology, and the dudes who do the technologies (the cyber is HUGE), but what wi...
The sharing of common API design patterns is something we are really bad at in the API space. I’m not a believer that there is one API design pattern to rule them all, but I am a believer in learni...
Amazon Web Service teams sure have been rocking their architectural icons across their storytelling lately. They standardized a set of icons for each of their cloud services and published in a vari...
I’ve been thinking about the concept of a wholesale API for some time. Going beyond how we technically deploy our APIs, and focusing more on how we can provide a wholesale version of the same API r...
If you are selling services to the API space you should have an API, it is just how this game works (if you are savvy). I was going through Tyk’s API for their open source API management solution a...
This is a topic that has come up in several discussions lately and is a topic I struggle with on a regular basis. What is more important, helping new users, both developer and non-developer be more...
While it can be easy to bash on API providers for being tight with their API resources, it can be very difficult to be an API provider operating in today’s online environment. Some developers are j...
I enjoy learning from the OpenAPI Specs of the API providers I track on. Just having an OpenAPI Spec present tells a lot about an API provider in my book, but the level of detail some providers put...
I keep an eye on things that are trending daily and weekly on Github because it is a great way to discover new companies and individuals doing interesting things with APIs. While looking at this ea...
I am going through the Oxford Dictionaries API, learning about this valuable resource. Their onboarding process for registration, and learning about what the API does using interactive documentatio...
I have a number of folks at companies, organizations, institutions, and government agencies come to me saying that they want to do APIs, and they need some help. In many of these discussions, the f...
I have been playing around with different ways of using Google Spreadsheet to drive YAML and JSON data to Jekyll data projects hosted as Github repositories. It is an approach I started playing aro...
It is tough to keep a sustained fire burning in the world of technology, at the individual, organizational, and community level. I have been doing API Evangelist full time for six years, and it is ...
API branding is an area that I find to be contradictory in the space, with the loss of brand control being in the top concerns for companies when doing APIs, while simultaneously one of the most de...
I am working on a project with a 16-year-old young lady to extract and tell a story using the YouTube API. I’m pretty excited about the project because the young lady happens to be my daughter Kaia...
I was reading a virtual panel: document and description formats for web APIs, and thought the conversation was very productive when it comes to helping bring the world of API documentation and defi...
I was reading a virtual panel: document and description formats for web APIs, and thought the conversation was very productive when it comes to helping bring the world of API documentation and defi...
I look at a lot of websites for companies who are providing APIs and selling services to the API space. When I find a new company, I can spend upwards of 10 minutes looking for all the relevant inf...
One of the reasons I write so much on API Evangelist is to refine how I tell stories about APIs and hopefully make a bigger impact by being more precise in what I’m saying. I feel like one of the r...
I am spending a lot of time thinking about conversational interfaces, and how APIs are driving the voice and bot layers of the space. While I am probably not as excited about Siri, Alexa and the wa...
With a lot of my storytelling, I feel like captain obvious, but I also recognize the importance of simple, and sometimes repetitive storytelling to help reach my audience of time and resource-strap...
I tune into a number of different channels looking for signs of individuals, companies, organizations, institutions, and government agencies doing APIs. I find APIs using Google Alerts, monitoring ...
I am working on a project using the Youtube API, and came across their inline OAut 2.0 scopes, allowing you to explore what the API does as you are browsing the API docs. I am a huge fan of what in...
Someone turned me on to an OpenAPI Spec to Slate / Shins compatible markdown converter on Github this last week. I have been an advocate for making sure we are still using machine readable API defi...
I was learning about Geofeedia providing law enforcement access to social media data from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram via their API(s) this week. Geofeedia was making money by selling surveill...
While spending some time going through my API monitoring research I found myself creating an OpenAPI spec and APIs.json index for the DataDog API, and had the realization that this is the beginning...
I am working on profiling the Twitter API again, and I thought their stack of APIs have evolved significantly beyond what we tend to think of as the Twitter API, and was worth taking another look a...
I was reading the hard questions on bot ethics from Slack, and their thoughts on bot advertising grabbed my attention. Trying to understand how bots will be monetizing things has been something I’m...
One request I get from folks on a regular basis, is an example of file upload APIs. Each time I get one of these requests I regret that I do not have more file upload and storage APIs profiled, all...
We like to talk about the API economy in this space. It is kind of the grand dream of API obsessed, that helps us articulate how big of a deal we think APIs are going to be. We know APIs are going ...
We like to talk about the API economy in this space. It is kind of the grand dream of API obsessed, that helps us articulate how big of a deal we think APIs are going to be. We know APIs are going ...
My friend Jordan Walsh (@jordwalsh) just released a new take on the Swagger editor, that inches closer to my vision of a dream API sketchbook and portfolio. His swagger-gist.io tool allows you to o...
I’m following along as the Sunlight Foundation winds down their operations and gathering any lessons along the way, that can help us open data and transparency folks can learn from as we do our wor...
I’m following along as the Sunlight Foundation winds down their operations and gathering any lessons along the way, that can help us open data and transparency folks can learn from as we do our wor...
I consider about 75% of the content I create on my network of sites to be workbench blogging--where I tell the story of what I am working on each day. You can see this approach in action with my fr...
I was learning about Verizon starting to sell wireless data plans for drones in the Wall Street Journal, as part of my research on what could be a drone API stack. As an Internet of Things (IoT) co...
While I still see a steady uptick in the number of hypermedia APIs out there in the wild, as well as conversations around the different media types that are available, I think we severely underesti...
The White House is looking for our thoughts on data portability. While it is the U.S. federal government asking for our thoughts, something that could apply to our tax returns, veterans records, or...
I am continuing to learn from folks studying the recent DDOS attack on Krebs on Security. While not a straightforward API story, it overlaps with the API world in several ways, from the technical a...
I was doing some research on how API providers are providing certification of their developers. I want to better understand how leading API providers are developing curriculum for certifying that d...
Now that I have API Evangelist fired back up I am spending more time with my drones, working to understand the role APIs can play in the booming industry. I have been studying how companies like Ai...
Yelp has shared some of the wisdom behind how they design, deploy, and operate their embeddable reviews. I like it when leading API providers share the story behind their tooling like this. This ty...
Zapier is up to more good things with the launch of Push by Zapier, allowing you to trigger API driven events from your browser. The new Chrome browser extension lets anyone, even non-developers to...
I wrote about having an integrations page for your API service the other day, and as I’m continuing to study the approach of other providers I find myself stuck on b DataDog’s integration page. Dat...
I was learning from the Splunk’s analysis of the Mirai Botnet, which was behind the massive attack against Krebs on Security, implemented via common Internet of Things devices like security cameras...
I am seeing some renewed interest and discussion around API driven embeddable(s)--an area of my API research that has been going on for years, focusing on buttons, badges, and widgets, but is somet...
I am watching the world of Internet of Things (IoT) unfold, not because I’m a big fan of it, but more because I’m concerned that it is happening, and often worried that much of it is happening with...
There is a lot of data coming out of the automobile industry. I was just reading about Udacity open sources an additional 183GB of driving data and the global public registry of electric vehicle ch...
We all like it when the API providers we depend on make using their APIs easier to put to work. I also like it when API providers also share the story behind how they are making their APIs easier t...
I am regularly reminded in my world as the API Evangelist that things are rarely ever what they seem on the surface. Meaning that what a company actually does, and what a company says it does are r...
I have been spending time thinking about how we can build in fault tolerance, and change resiliency into our API SDKs, and client code. I want to better understand what is necessary to develop the ...
As I was learning about behavior driven development (BDD) and test driven development (TDD) this week, I quickly found myself applying this way of thought to my existing API regulation, and algorit...
Sharing of API definitions is critical to any industry or public sector where APIs are being put to work. If the API sector is going to scale effectively, it needs to be reusing common patterns, so...
Sharing of API definitions is critical to any industry or public sector where APIs are being put to work. If the API sector is going to scale effectively, it needs to be reusing common patterns, so...
I’m neck deep in studying how Amazon is operating their Alexa platform, so I’m pretty excited about the chance to listen and learn from the Alexa team at APIStrat in Boston. Even if you aren’t buil...
Amazon launched their own questions and answers site called simply called AWS Answers. Amazon is definitely in a class of their own, but I thought the move reflects illnesses in the wider QA space ...
A friend of mine messaged me this photo of the Southwest Airlines flight API on Facebook the other day. After doing a little homework I found that every flight has this available on the planes loca...
The common approach to discovering that a SaaS provider has an API is through a single, external link in the footer of a website, simply labeled API or developers. Whenever I can I’m on the lookout...
Google just released a mobile audit solution for their Google Apps Unlimited users looking to monitor activity across iOS and Android devices. At first look, the concept didn’t strike me as anythin...
I was going through Chai, a behavior, and test driven assertion library, and spending some time learning about behavior driven development, or BDD, as it applies to APIs today. This is one of the t...
I have over 70 areas of research occurring right now as part of my API lifecycle work--these are areas that I feel directly impact how APIs are provided and consumed today. Each of these areas live...
I feel like I have said this before, but probably is something that is worth refreshing–where is the WordPress for APIs? First, I know WordPress has an API, that isn’t what I’m talking about. Secon...
I get the argument from hypermedia and linked data practitioners that we need to model our web API behavior on the web. It makes sense, and I agree that we need to be baking hypermedia into our API...
I am playing around with some new features from the SDK generation as a service provider APIMATIC, including the ability to deploy my SDKs to Github. This is just many of the ways Github, and more ...
I’ve been a big supporter of APIMATIC since they started, so I’m happy to see them continuing to evolve their approach to delivering SDKs using machine readable API definitions. I got a walkthrough...
I recently carved out some time to read A Web API ecosystem through feature-based reuse by Ruben Verborgh (@RubenVerborgh) and Michel Dumontier. It is a lengthy, very academic proposal on how we ca...
I was profiling the New Relic API, and while I was pleased to find OpenAPI Specs behind their explorer, I was less than pleased to have to reverse engineer their docs to get at their API definition...
APIs can help make technology better serve us humans when you execute them thoughtfully. This is one of the main reasons I kicked off API Evangelist in 2010. I know that many of my technologist fri...
I am seeing more examples of analytics at the API client and SDK level, providing more access to what is going on at this layer of the API stack. I’m seeing API providers build them into the analyt...
A new way that I am discovering the new tech services that the cool kids are using is from the dedicated integrations pages of API service providers I track on. Showcasing the services your platfor...
I’m always looking for specific API providers to showcase as examples we can follow when crafting different portions of our API strategies. The Amazon Alexa team is doing a pretty kick ass job at b...
I wrote a post about the emails I get from folks telling me the API definitions contained within my API stack research, something that has helped me better see why it is I do API definitions. I go ...
I was profiling the New Relic API and came across their Synthetics service,which is a testing and monitoring solution that lets you ”send calls to your APIs to make sure each output and system resp...
One of the reasons I enjoy profiling APIs is that they give an honest view of what a company does, absent of all the marketing fluff, and the promises that I see from each wave of startups. If desi...
I am spending some time profiling the companies who are part of my API monitoring research, specifically learning about the APIs they offer as part of their solutions. I do this work so that I can ...
One area I am keeping an eye on while profiling APIs, and API service providers, are any security-related practices that I can add to my research. While looking through DataDog I came across their ...
I am increasingly hearing the phrase, “the benefits outweigh the risks” applied when talking about AI, machine learning, and the increasing number of algorithmic decisions that are being made in al...
I am increasingly hearing the phrase, “the benefits outweigh the risks” applied when talking about AI, machine learning, and the increasing number of algorithmic decisions that are being made in al...
Adding to the many reasons you would want, or not want APIs these days, is the escalating cyber war playing out on the web around the world. APIs aren’t playing a role in the cyber security realm i...
Adding to the many reasons you would want, or not want APIs these days, is the escalating cyber war playing out on the web around the world. APIs aren’t playing a role in the cyber security realm i...
As I am exploring, and writing about Meya’s Bot Flow Markup Language (BFML), I came across the announcement from Google about their acquisition of API.AI, titled “Making Conversational Interfaces ...
I have been doing a lot of thinking about the client and SDK areas of my research lately, considering how these areas overlap with the world of bots, as well as with voice, and iPaaS. I’m thinking ...
I’ve had an idea for a bot-related service I call “plan b”, which would act as a secondary action for any sort of bot request / response to an API. When developers are providing common bot response...
I’m looking through a new API definition focused service provider called SchemaHub today, and I found their approach to using Github as a base of operations was interesting and provided a nice blue...
I'm looking through a new API definition focused service provider called SchemaHub today, and I found their approach to using Github as a base of operations was interesting and provided a nice blue...
I was reading an interesting post on developing bots from Meya, a bot platform provider, which I think describes the abstraction layer between what we are calling bots, and what we know as APIs. I ...
I am learning about how Twitter deploys their widgets. Extracting some insight for my research around how we can build change resiliency into our client code. As I’m doing my regular monitoring of ...
I enjoy being able to switch gears between all the different areas of my API research. It helps me find the interesting areas of overlap and potentially synchronicity in how APIs are being put to w...
I was looking the open source models available for execution via the machine learning platform TensorFlow, and couldn’t help but think there is a pretty big opportunity for a web API layer on top o...
Another story I harvested fro a story by Gordon Wintrob (@gwintrob) about how Twilio’s distributed team solves developer evangelism, was about how they invest in having a distributed team, providin...
After I wrote a piece on guidance from the USGS around writing fault-resistant code when putting their API to use, my friend Darrel Miller expanding on this by suggesting I include “change resilien...
I’m going through Amazon’s approach to their Alexa voice services, and it is making me think how bot platforms out there should be following their lead when it comes crafting their own playbook. I ...
I am spending a portion of my time each week learning about how APIs are being applied at the industrial level. An example of this can be found over at Opto 22, with their approach to using REST ac...
I wrote about my feelings that all government agencies should have a forms API like the Department of Labor (DOL), and I wanted to separately showcase their FAQ API, and say same thing–ALL governme...
I get a number of folks emailing me about their API and API-focused services. When I have the bandwidth I spend time in my inbox and respond to these emails. To help me do this a little more effici...
I’m building what I am calling “micro tools”, that run 100% on Github. To push my work forward I developed a base template I can use for deploying apps that run 100% on Github, using Github Pages, ...
I was taking another look at the API efforts out of the Department of Labor (DOL), to help refresh my awareness of what they are serving up, and I came across the DOL Forms API. The API does what i...
My friend Matthew Reinbold wrote a great post on his blog asking “what if developers aren’t meant to do API design”? I think he is touching on an important aspect of why DevOps might not work every...
I wrote about SoundCloud beginning to require approval before developers get access to any API resources yesterday, a concept that I want to keep exploring. I’m going to be going through the APIs t...
Someone asked me about the current state of the Department of Labors (DOL) API efforts the other day, and since I hadn’t actually taken a look in a few months I wanted to spend some time in there s...
I am perpetually working to publish all of my API definitions my API Stack Github repository, with the front available as the API Stack. I regularly push the latest copies of all of my OpenAPI Spec...
I have showcased examples of API providers allowing you to deploy your API into various regions around the world like Algolia does, but it is a topic that I think will keep gaining traction as data...
SoundCloud recently made changes to the signup process for their API and are now requiring approval before any 3rd party developer can get an API key and access the API. While I encourage API provi...
I was adding dreamfactory as one of my sponsors today. I have them in my in my API monitoring system already, so I have a logo for them, but whenever there is a significant event involving one of t...
As I’m processing some guidelines around the importance of sharing data in the cybersecurity.theater a story on NPR came on the radio about the importance of data sharing when it comes to the emerg...
As I work through the APIs, and Github repositories of soon to be gone Sunlight Foundation, I wanted to take some more time to help open data and API efforts realize the important of real-time tran...
I am saddened to hear the news of the Sunlight Foundation dimming the lights on their important work around government transparency. They have provided me a constant spotlight on government activit...
I am always fascinated by the online fence sitting persona that is the enterprise tech industry employee. I know many them are there, but few ever retweet my work, respond to my posts via comments,...
I come across a number of really useful stories about APIs in my regular monitoring of the space that can’t seem to separate the solution their product delivers from the product itself. I get that ...
I wrote a skeptical piece the other day about GraphQL, which I followed up with another post saying I would keep an open mind. I’ve added GraphQL to my regular monitoring of the space, but I don’t ...
Now that I have API Evangelist up to regular levels of operation after a summer break, I’m working to expand where I publish my content, and next up on the list is Medium. Like many other popular d...
I am tracking on the approaches of API providers who have branding world together when it comes to platform operations. I’m always surprised at how few API providers actually have anything regardin...
I was watching my partner in crime Audrey Watters (@audreywatters) build the weaponized edu Twitter bot using a Google Spreadsheet as an engine. Something she learned from Zach Whalen, a professor ...
I’m expanding on my API branding research, putting some thought into how we might be able to include branding and attribution in API responses. Next, I’d like to brainstorm ways to incentivize both...
People love to tell me the limitations of my usage of the acronym API. They like to point out they were around before the web, that they are used in hardware, or are not an API unless it is REST. T...
I was turned on to the API program out of Groupe PSA, the French multinational manufacturer of automobiles and motorcycles sold under the Peugeot, Citroën and DS Automobiles brands from a friend o...
A recent story from Gordon Wintrob (@gwintrob) about how Twilio’s distributed team solves developerevangelism has given me a variety of seeds for stories on API Evangelist this week. I love that in...
I was working on a forkable definition of my API portal and I wanted to evolve the icons that I usually use as part of my API storytelling. I primarily use the Noun Project API, to associate simple...
People love to tell me how unreliable APIs are, while also echoing this sentiment across the tech blogosphere. I always find it challenging to reconcile how the entrenreurs who spread these tales c...
As the API Evangelist, I spend a lot of time thinking about evangelism (*your mind is blown*). TFrom what I’m seeing, the world of technology evangelism has been expanding, where database, containe...
I have been slowly evolving the data core of each of my research projects from JSON to YAML. I’m still providing JSON, and even XML, Atom, CSV, and other machine-readable representations as part of...
I am increasingly using D3.js as part of my storytelling process. Since all my websites run using Jekyll, and published entirely using Github repositories wich are shared as Github Page sites, it m...
I am increasingly using D3.js as part of my storytelling process. Since all my websites run using Jekyll, and published entirely using Github repositories wich are shared as Github Page sites, it m...
I am reworking the management layer for my APIs. For the last couple of years, I had aspirations of running my APIs with a retail layer generating revenue for API Evangelist–something which require...
APIs come in all different shapes and sizes. I focus on a specific type of APIs that leverage web technology for making data, content, and algorithms available over the Internet. While these APIs a...
I am updating my minimum API portal definition so I can apply to my own API infrastructure, and since I operate 100% on Github using Github Page and Jekyll, I have made it a forkable API portal def...
I have a vision of an API notebook in my head I desperately want to get out. First of all, I want to come up with another name for it, which is a journey that always starts with playing around with...
Leading API providers do not always make me happy with they way they conduct themselves, but it always makes me smile that one of the top API providers consistently over the last five years, contin...
I’ve been pushing for better API design tooling for some time now, something that significantly overlaps with movements I would also like to see around API documentation as well. In my opinion, we ...
I feel like we haven’t really sat down and studied the success of Swagger UI. I’m not talking about the OpenAPI Spec (fka Swagger Spec), I am only talking about the interactive API documentation th...
A friend of mine was asking where he should get started with upgrading the documentation for an existing API, and was asking for assistance on what tools or services he should be considering. The s...
Looking through the numbers for my API Evangelist research, and tallying up what I’ve learned along the way, I feel like the next opportunity out there will be about API design and definitions. The...
As I was firing back up API Evangelist after a break this summer, I took the opportunity to add in a couple of new areas to my research, that I’ve had sitting on the backburner, bringing the number...
Octopart is the products company that I regularly use as a reference for how product-focused companies should be doing APIs. Octopart’s is an electronic parts company who have a physical, product c...
While reviewing the details of Twilio’s new enterprise plan, the one thing that stood out for me was the strong emphasis of the security and legal elements within this level of business integration...
I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about the website traffic numbers for API Evangelist. Once a week I’ll take a look at my Google Analytics or CloudFlare dashboards. I don’t write for page views...
Press releases continue to be one of the best ways for me to discover companies who have embarked on their API journey. From what I can tell, even with the shrinkage around funding for startups, th...
I am trying to get better at showcasing the early stories I find about APIs making their moves into new industries. It helps to have a post to reference when I add an area as an official research p...
I was reading the rules of retention, and how long does Bronto save data. Their clarity around offering a data retention policy grabbed my attention, but I also found the ability to pay for longer ...
I came across a story about Stage Intelligence Adds Support for the GBFS Open Data Standard in my regular monitoring, and wanted to add the specification to my API definition toolbox, and share her...
As I was reading artificial intelligence is hard to see by Kate Crawford (@katecrawford), my brain once again begins crunching the different ways APIs can be applied to help us “see” the algorithms...
I am preparing for my hangout with the #TC1019 Fundamentals of Software Engineering (3rd-semester course) out of the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Guadalajara. In my own style, I didn’t just wan...
Building on my earlier coverage of how API providers are investing in their API community like Amazon and Slack, I wanted to document the incubator over at Box. Acknowledging that “the enterprise a...
One of the popular narratives for why companies should be doing APIs emerged out of the last couple waves of startup investments, which encouraged investment in public APIs so that developers could...
Spotify recently updated the available design resources and branding guidelines including their logos, icons and colors in their developer portal. I’m a big fan when any company has a dedicated pa...
I was playing around Prose.io’s Gatekeep solution, a proxy for enabling the client-side application dance OAuth with GitHub. I tend to use Oauth.io for all of my oAuth dancing, especially client-si...
I was playing with a new API design and deployment solution, from some of my favorite developers out there this weekend called Materia, which bills itself as “a modern development environment to bu...
The news came in late last week that Google was acquiring API management pioneer Apigee. The news caught me by surprise. I thought if there was still going to be an acquisition of Apigee that it wo...
I have been playing around with different ways to craft a web concepts and specification JavaScript library for API providers, and one of the approaches I’ve been considering is out of the annotati...
My friend Arnaud Lauret (@arno_di_loreto), the API Handyman, has released a very cool new project called the API Stylebook–a collections of resources for API designers. It is a brilliant aggregatio...
As I listened to the news about flooding coming out of Louisiana, and the impending hurricane headed up the east coast, I’m momentarily distracted from my monitoring of the API space. As I switch b...
I am working on taking the JSON feed of web concepts and specs and developing a simple website JavaScript tooltip library that API providers can employ to inject web literacy into their API develop...
I like Postman’s approach to using Youtube for providing walk-through’s for specific actions users will want to take in their API client service. All of their video walk-throughs are very simple, s...
I just went through all the APIs in my monitoring system looking for a diverse set of them to showcase in an API economy story I’m working on, and while I can point to some pretty exciting mileston...
I was working through some thoughts around programming language dependencies, looking through a service I came across called Bundler, and found myself thinking about API dependencies (go figure, ma...
As I was working my way through the USGS water services APIs, I came across their page for writing fault-resistant code. There are many things going on in the USGS developer portal I think are wort...
I come across a lot of really bad ideas for startups and APIs, as well as many badly behaved companies with great API implementations. With so much money flowing around space, the incentives for be...
I’m investing some time learning about the USGS Water Services. They have some pretty interesting APIs, providing access to a wealth of data about water table levels, river flows, and other key poi...
I consider Netflix to be the most successful API failure ever. Even though their public is completely private, exclusively for internal and partner uses, they are still very transparent and open wi...
I am working on taking the JSON feed of web concepts and specs and developing a simple website JavaScript tooltip library that API providers can employ to inject web literacy into their API develop...
I am spending a lot of time reviewing patents that mention application programming interface or API in their title, abstract, or in the detail of the patent. Many of the patents lightly reference p...
I am spending a lot of time reviewing patents that mention application programming interface or API in their title, abstract, or in the detail of the patent. Many of the patents lightly reference p...
I have written about the continuing Netflix API story over the years, which despite shuttering their public API, is an API effort that just keeps giving to the public. It is an API story that bette...
I am working through the USGS water data services, which include some REST APIs, and investing some of my work hours to one of my passions and concerns–water data and APIs. There is a wealth of wat...
The response on Twitter and via email to my post about how the enterprise does not know(care) how big and destructive it is to APIs, is usual to this type of post, which I usually write about every...
One of the prototypes I am going to build on top of Erik Wilde’s (@dret) WebConcepts.info work, is a simple JavaScript library that you can embed on any API documentation page, and point at the bod...
I usually don’t have to look very far to find good examples of API evangelism in the field, because the best technology providers are usually pretty consistent and vocal about their practices–allow...
I was doing some maintenance on my bots and APIs research, and processing the information for the bot analytics provider Botlytics, and as I was going through their API I noticed the prominent plac...
I’m back wallowing through my API patent work, which I’m sure a portion of my readership is like, “oh gawd, hurry up and move on”, which is the same way I feel, but the shit is so deep in this area...
As I’m spending time learning more about what my DNS provider CloudFlare offers when it comes to securing my APIs. To facilitate this, I am playing around with how I can utilize my Apache log files...
I created a JSON feed of the web concepts and specs over at Erik Wilde’s (@dret) site WebConcepts.info, so that I could easily import the specs into my Twitter and LinkedIn scheduling tools. I want...
I wrote a post the other day sharing my thoughts around GraphQL seeming like we were avoiding the hard work of API design. Shortly after publishing Sashko Stubailo (@stubailo) from Apollo, a GraphQ...
I see an increasing number of job postings on LinkedIn and other job websites from companies who are actively seeking an API rockstar, ninja, lead, owner, or product manager, and because of my conn...
I have been pulling all the patent applications from the USPTO for a while now. As I work to fire API Evangelist back up, I’m working to be more regular about processing these files, and track on w...
After looking through the 23,414 API related patents from between 2005 and present day from 4,283 companies, it is clear that the API patent game will be all about which companies decide to litigat...
I am working to organize the 23,414 API related patents from between 2005 and present day, submitted by 4,283 companies–present in my API patent research. Not all of these APIs are “web APIs”, but ...
When processing the news for API.Report, and the over 150 areas of my API industry research, I spend a good deal of time looking for images to represent my stories, and the companies I’m covering. ...
After monitoring the tech space, and specifically the API space for six years now I really have feel for how stories are used try incite change in a variety of industries. There are many different ...
Profiling the social media footprint of API related companies is what I do for a living. If you are doing something mildly interesting with an API I will add your Twitter, and Github accounts to my...
.gist-data {max-height: 500px;} I took the Github repository for Erik Wilde’s (@dret) Web Concepts work and forked it, then generated some JSON which I could use to import into my API monitoring...
It is hard for me to track on everything in the API space as a one man show, but one thing I keep an eye on, but rarely add to my research (yet) are the increasing number of job postings I come acr...
I am always amazed at the amount of hype, rhetoric, and FUD that is stirred up by analysts, vendors, and the tech blogosphere when it comes to APIs. APIs are the next big wave in vendor solutions! ...
I get a number of eager new entrepreneurs contacting me, looking for wisdom and insight about the API space. I’ve always worked to make myself accessible to people who are looking for knowledge aro...
Overall I am pretty underwhelmed by the Internet of Things. Most of the ways in which devices are being connected to the Internet are not very interesting, if not just a bad idea. Even with the ove...
I feel like the enterprise has successfully rounded up the escaped experiment that is API, and got it under control. With its size and scope it didn’t really even notice APIs until 2012 or so, and ...
I have been thinking about the Twilio IPO a lot lately, as it seems to be well received by the market. I am trying to be realistic about this, and work to understand how much the API thing actually...
I have been thinking about the Twilio IPO a lot lately, as it seems to be well received by the market. I am trying to be realistic about this, and work to understand how much the API thing actually...
I recently added a new area of research to API Evangelist focused on cybersecurity. I added this area of research not because APIs are being used to hack systems, which does happen occasionally. I ...
I am using Twitter more like an RSS feed these days. I pull the Tweets of the companies I track on once a day, and I scan / read them (when I have time), and either curate them or mark as read. I’m...
Maybe with the current funding priority shifts in the tech world, and some of the push back on the startup way of life, we could pause a little bit and just let everyone catch up with their API str...
I was just getting started evolving upon my API definition discovery tools before I left this summer, and is something I am just picking up again, now that I am back at it. Historically there are t...
We were talking about GraphQL in the API Evangelist Slack channel the other day, and the consensus seemed to be that GraphQL is a way to avoid the hard work involved with properly getting to know y...
It is the 10th anniversary of the launch of Amazon EC2 this month, and I think it is a good time to revisit what this has meant to the API space. If you have heard any of my keynote talks where I v...
I have monitored the Github accounts and organizations for individuals and companies doing interesting things with APIs for some time now. However, recently this channel is increasingly being the w...
I was included in a conversation the other day on Twitter about runtime API discovery which reminded me of some thoughts I was processing before I walked away from work this summer, and before I di...
I was included in a conversation the other day on Twitter about runtime API discovery which reminded me of some thoughts I was processing before I walked away from work this summer, and before I di...
In the Silicon Valley rat race users often become collateral damage amidst the entrepreneurial quest to get rich building the next killer startup. I’ve heard many startups like Snapchat and Pintere...
In an effort to help folks understand the many layers of just exactly what is an API and how people are using them, I’m going to emphasize (again) the importance of sharing your API definition publ...
I was going through some of the Twitter feeds of the APIs that I track on and noticed Spotify’s team providing support to some of their API users with quick links / anchors to the answers in their ...
I am blessed to have people in the space who have supported what I do for the last six years. Companies like 3Scale, Restlet, WSO2, Cloud Elements, and others have consistently helped me make ends ...
I am digging Stripes new documentation release, and specifically their interactive API documentation walkthrough. The new “try now” section of their documentation provides an evolve look at what is...
I am always amazed at how difficult it can be to obtain the API keys, or fire up an initial set of oAuth tokens when kicking the tires on a new API. I would also say that I am also regularly impres...
I was just learning about Auth0’s new password breach detection service, adding to the numerous reasons why you’d use their authentication service, instead of going at it on your own. It’s an impor...
I was just learning about Auth0’s new password breach detection service, adding to the numerous reasons why you’d use their authentication service, instead of going at it on your own. It’s an impor...
Every API provider will have slightly different needs, but there are definitely some common patterns which providers should be considering as they are kicking off their API presence, or looking to ...
I wrote a post the other day about Postman.io having a limited, anonymous version of their API modeling tool. I stumbled across it while I was trying to upgrade my Stoplight.io account. Shortly aft...
I am going through all of my online accounts changing passwords, and one of the things I do along the way is check which applications have access to my digital self. Increasingly my accounts have t...
The API Evangelist platform is far from perfect, there are always portions of it that just aren’t finished yet (always work in progress). I am always thankful that people put up with my API Evangel...
I see a lot of companies doing things with APIs, and I often find myself struggling to find companies who are doing important things that benefit the community, have a coherent business model, and ...
I have long been a proponent of using API definitions, not just because you can deploy interactive API documentation, but because they open up almost every other stop along the API life cycle. Mean...
Having quotes from your customers on your company website is a no-brainer. Finding the best examples of brands and companies putting your valuable service, or tool to work demonstrates it has value...
One of the reasons why crafting API definitions like OpenAPI Spec for our APIs, and openly sharing them on the web, is so that the pattern will get used, and reused by other API providers. That mig...
I was introduced to a new open source, Dockerized API operations solution called Wicked, that was developed by the integrated cloud and desktop solutions provider, the Haufe Group. There are a numb...
There are two distinct types of APIs I keep an eye on. One is what I call my life cycle APIs, which are the APIs of the service providers who are selling services and tools to API providers and dev...
I wrote the other day about the interesting opportunity opening up within the satellite imagery API layer, and earlier about the similar opportunity that is being expanded within the fast growing d...
Sharing your platform’s road map with the public, and your community is an often overlooked aspect of API operations but is one that can go a long way to communicate your plans for the future with ...
Sharing your platform’s road map with the public, and your community is an often overlooked aspect of API operations but is one that can go a long way to communicate your plans for the future with ...
I was reading the post from open data service provider Socrata about “putting citizens first“ when it comes to opening up city, county, state, and federal government data. One of the headlines they...
I am coming across more API providers who have carved off specific “skills” derived from their API, and offering up as part of the latest push to acquire new users on Slack or Facebook. Services li...
I’m pretty skeptical about many of the reasons behind why companies are connecting devices to the Internet using APIs–I am just not convinced this is the best idea when we already have so many secu...
The APIs which have seen the greatest adoption across the API space, always provide the functionality that developers are needed in their applications. It is either because the platform is already ...
My “fellow” Presidential Innovation Fellow Mollie Ruskin (@mollieruskin), was doing some work with veterans recently and stumbled across a pretty disturbing example of how racial bias is being bake...
Technology evangelists are nothing new, but are something I think is continuing to expand as the Internet continues to crack open more of the core areas of the tech sector. I specifically chose the...
I have been talking with Nick Houghton over at Sandbox about the state of OpenAPI Spec driven API documentation, and the lack of a machine-readable core when you deployed Slate driven documentation...
I saw that the contact API solution FullContact recently purchased the professional network management solution Conspire. Thankfully FullContact is good about blogging about the move, and the detai...
I was going through the Cisco Devnet ecosystem and stumbled across their sandbox environment. I thought it was worth noting that they provided several different types of sandbox environments, with ...
I was playing around with the free and the now paid layers of Stoplight.io, and wrote a previous piece about their lack of a public pricing page, and I noticed they provided an anonymous layer to t...
I was playing around with the free and the now paid layers of Stoplight.io, and wrote a previous piece about their lack of a public pricing page, and I noticed they provided an anonymous layer to t...
I received an email from Stoplight.io about their version updates, which included the phasing out of the free beta period–makes sense. I clicked on the “you can view pricing, and setup billing, on ...
I’ve been an advocating for API providers to embrace integration platform as a service provider (iPaaS) for three years now, encouraging them to make sure their API is accessible via popular platfo...
It always bums me out that the cool kid startup APIs always get the lion share of the attention when it comes to APIs in the tech news. Which I guess makes it my responsibility to show the ACTUAL c...
As I was writing up a story on Mailjet tweeting out the iPaaS opportunities around their email API, I noticed their Twitter bio. It is subtle, but having spent a great deal of time looking for the ...
In September of 2015, I asked when are we going to get a save as JSON in our spreadsheets? I was doing a lot of work saving spreadsheets as CSV files, something I can easily do programmatically, bu...
In September of 2015, I asked when are we going to get a save as JSON in our spreadsheets? I was doing a lot of work saving spreadsheets as CSV files, something I can easily do programmatically, bu...
I work as hard as I can to understand every sector being opened up using web APIs, and the network level is one that I need to push my awareness of, partially because I find it interesting, but mos...
Early on in 2013, I started a research project to keep an eye on a specific type of API driven service provider, like IFTTT and Zapier, who were enabling individuals and businesses to move data aro...
I have been finding quite a few nuggets of wisdom out of the recent release of the Microsoft Excel API. This is what I enjoy doing as the API Evangelist, evaluate and gather any positive or negativ...
I am pretty impressed with the casual release of the Microsoft Excel API, which I think is a pretty significant milestone for the world of APIs. One of the subtle elements of their API release that...
I regularly come across organizations who have blogs without RSS feeds. Sometimes I will drop people a line and ask if they have one, or let them know it would be very useful to have an RSS feed ea...
I’ve heard of numerous API providers shutting down their API programs after a couple months because they didn’t see the number of new users, and integrations they had hoped for. It is so easy for u...
At any point in time, there are numerous emails in my inbox, LinkedIn messages, and DMS, asking me if I would “just jump on the phone to discuss the latest” about an API. I get a regular stream of ...
I was learning more about the Programmable Automation Controller (PAC) API from Opto 22 and fouind myself intrigued by their usage of the word strategy to describe the role a web API can play when ...
As the debate over whether you need an SDK for your API or not has rumbled over the last couple of years, API specification formats like OpenAPI Spec, Postman, and API Blueprint have been gaining t...
When you hear about the Internet of Things (IoT) you often hear about the hopeful consumer side of thing, like with Nest thermostat, and the next wave of Internet-connected devices that will change...
I’m a big fan of the concept of serverless APIs and microservices, but not so much of the name. I get it, the space needs new concepts to rally around, and I’m the first to admit even the concept o...
Being able to provide different levels of access for a single API has been one of the telltale characteristics of any modern web API. Savvy API providers know they don’t just make their valuable AP...
I was going through the getting started pages for the APIs that I keep an eye on, pulling together an outline of what I’d consider to be some of the best elements across all the API providers. Then...
I am all about marking down the important milestones that help define the API sector. It is what I’ve been working to define as my history of the web APIs for the last six years. An API has to make...
The messaging platform Slack made waves when they launched their Slack Fund as part of their API release, putting up $80M to invest in developers who were interested in building cool things on the ...
I am always looking for simple advice I can give to API providers to make their developers and would-be developers integration as friction-less as possible. When it comes to making the code availab...
I am still learning about the recent API release out of Apple, and working to keep up with the volume of resources coming out of the Amazon Alexa ecosystem, but one thing I know for sure is Amazon ...
I was reading a post from the Electronic Frontier Foundation asking some great questions about having a safety protocol for things like the DARPA’s Cyber Grand Challenge. It is good to see EFF lead...
According to Wikipedia, in mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is a self-contained step-by-step set of operations to be performed. Algorithms perform a calculation, data processing, and/...
When I talk about how much I believe in APIs, all I am really saying is how much I believe in the web. The web is how humans are consuming and sharing data, content, and algorithms with each other ...
I wrote a story last week about how Airmap is positioning itself to be an API broker within the fast growing Drone industry. I also stumbled across the satellite imagery API out of Astro Digital, a...
In 2006 Amazon introduced me to the idea that you could deploy global infrastructure using web APIs. This was when web APIs went from the hobby level (ie. photos, social, links) workbench, and beca...
I have done a lot of reading in the last week, catching up on my monitoring of the API space. I have read a couple of posts about the reliability of APIs, and the overall viability of building appl...
I’ve seen quite a few incomplete API efforts in my time as the API Evangelist. It is why I aggregate the most common building blocks I see across successful API providers like Twilio and organize t...
As the number of available API definitions out there grows, I am increasingly coming across variations of APIs that I already have included in my API Stack. It can be tedious to try and sync these ...
I first came across Airmap as I was learning about them acting as the middle man for DJI drone updates via the Department of Interior. After this story, I added them to my database of companies tha...
I was happy to stumble across the Better Business Bureau API the other day. I was working on a piece about “the API economy”, and looking for real world examples of how APIs could actually contribu...
I was reading some of the blog posts, Reddit and Hacker News threads about Microsoft’s release of their API design guide. While many of the comments are technically correct, the tone in which they ...
I saw the potential for collaboration when it came to using web APIs back around 2004 and 2005. I was seeing innovative companies opening up their digital assets to the world using low-cost, effici...
I find myself thinking about what the terms of service we agree to for online services are doing to our lives. Whether we see the effects or not, they are guiding almost everything we do in our per...
I am working my way through Title 45, which is the principle set of rules and regulations issued by federal agencies of the United States regarding public welfare. I’ve made my way through the secu...
I am working my way through Title 45, which is the principle set of rules and regulations issued by federal agencies of the United States regarding public welfare. I’ve made my way through the secu...
I had heard about the Zika virus research that was going on at the University of Wisconsin listening to an NPR episode this last spring. I finally had the time to dig into the topic a little more, ...
I’ve been reading a number of stories about concerns within the Department of Interior about the usage of DJI drones as part of their UAV operations. Whether or not the federal agency actually issu...
I wish every time you came across facts and statistics in any news story, blog post, report, and beyond, there would be an interactive experience like you get with the US Census Bureau’s QuickFacts...
API Evangelist is focused on helping push for sensible API-driven transparency wherever I can get it. When done in sensible ways an API can crack open the often black box that is the algorithm, giv...
I have been spending a lot of time this summer thinking about how devices are being connected to the Internet, specifically when it comes to drones. As I was traveling around the countryside flying...
I am starting the process of getting back to work on API Evangelist, and wrapping up our Drone Recovery project. We will continue working on things throughout the summer, but I need to start lookin...
I came out of the wilderness this week (literally, the Kalmiopsis Wilderness) to an inbox full of emails and a Twitter stream full of messages and DMs. I expected a little buzz from my exit, but no...
It has been six years since I started API Evangelist. A personal matter has come up which will require my attention for at least six months, probably upwards of a year. Which in the tech world can ...
API management is the oldest area of my research. The area has been being defined since Mashery first opened its doors in 2006 and continues to be defined with the recent IPO by Apigee, and the ent...
In the last couple of years, I’ve seen the concept of API design go from being something the API elite discuss, to something that involves business users, and something that has spawned a whole eco...
One of the things that stood out for me reading through the Oracle v Google trial coverage today was Sarah Jeong’s acknowledging how APIs are kind of hard to understand, and is something that is ca...
I am reading through the API task force recommendations out of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), to help address privacy and security concerns around m...
The next round of the Oracle v Google Java API Copyright battle has kicked off again in San Francisco after being sent back to the lower court by the United States Supreme Court. This round is all ...
The next round of the Oracle v Google Java API Copyright battle has kicked off again in San Francisco after being sent back to the lower court by the United States Supreme Court. This round is all ...
I am reading through the API task force recommendations out of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), to help address privacy and security concerns around m...
How we define our APIs has dramatically changed in recent years. Since Swagger came onto the scene around five years ago, there has been a rapid growth in the number of open formats, tooling, and s...
I get brought into a lot of API discussions with IT departments from companies, institutions, and government agencies, which are often coordinated by business groups who are interested in better me...
I get brought into a lot of API discussions with IT departments from companies, institutions, and government agencies, which are often coordinated by business groups who are interested in better me...
I am reading through the API task force recommendations out of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), to help address privacy and security concerns around m...
I wrote a post about Twilio using magic phone numbers that let their developers test out functionality without incurring any charges for deploying live phone numbers, making calls, and sending SMS....
As I push out stories on the next round of the Oracle v Google API copyright case, considering how I will write about API deprecations and acquisitions I’m privy to, and document the continued marc...
I’m spending a lot of time in the Twilio API ecosystem this week, so you will hear multiple stories about what they are up to. This one is highlighting their Call Feedback API and the growing amoun...
One thing I look at closely when I review API platforms is how they approach the monetization of their API resources, and the resulting plans, pricing, and access tiers. How platforms think about, ...
I am sure there is some equation we could come up to describe the amount of ideology and / or dogma present alongside each bit and byte of code. Something that exponentially increases with each add...
I am always on the hunt for the little things that make API integration easier, and while working to certify my Twilio API definition, I noticed their test credentials. When you are playing with th...
I am doing way more work on the creation of machine-readable OpenAPI Specs for APIs, indexed using machine-readable APIs.json files than I am the actual creation of APIs lately. About half of the A...
There are many different ways to actually deploy an API. If you are a larger, more established company, you probably have existing tools, services, and processes set forth by IT for deploying APIs....
I have been tracking on how APIs are used in higher education for some time now, keeping an eye on almost 50 campus API related efforts. I have my University API guide that I regularly update, but ...
I am always working as hard as I can to develop as complete as possible OpenAPI Specs for the APIs that I monitor. I call this my API Stack research. When possible, in addition to mapping out API o...
I was learning more about using the Link header for pagination yesterday, as part of my work on the Human Services Data Specification (HSDS), and this approach to putting hypermedia links in the he...
As my API Stack work gets more attention, folks are reaching out to me to see if I have done certain APIs, or see if I’d prioritize some of the ones already on the list. One thing I’m also noticing...
I was revisiting the concept of pagination for a specific project I am working, and after consulting my API research, I came up with a suitable approach using a Link Header. Beyond applying this in...
I was playing with Microsoft’s API Catalog, a tool to visualize and analyze the API overlap between standards specifications and type systems within browsers, and their footer caught my eye. I am a...
We are picking up speed with the planning for @APIStrat in Boston this November, and with the event committee assembled, and the call for talks open, we are looking at what the possible topics are ...
The relationship between API provider and consumer is a fragile one. As an API provider I am offering up my valuable digital asset, data, content, and digital resources. I would like you to take th...
I was reminded by my friend Mike Amundsen of the importance of storytelling in our world. When I am asked by anyone doing APIs, what is the most important thing they should be doing, my answer is a...
I came across the Wikimedia Unique Devices data set, which also is served up as an API endpoint, along with the other APIs the platform offers. The data set and API provides access to a list of uni...
I am working with my partner Cloud Elements to build out a community of evangelists, who are interested in delivering on many of the essential building blocks I track on when it comes to API evange...
One of the side effects of the recent bot craze, is that I’m getting to showcase the often very healthy API practices of Slack, as they grow, scale, and manage their developer ecosystem. Slack is b...
One of the side effects of the recent bot craze, is that I’m getting to showcase the often very healthy API practices of Slack, as they grow, scale, and manage their developer ecosystem. Slack is b...
Despite popular belief in Silicon Valley, there are many different ways to fund the design, development, deployment, and operation of valuable API resources. Not all APIs are destined to be the nex...
I am using my minimum viable API operations definition tool to continue profiling the API sector, this time to size up the Slack API community. Slack is kind of a darling of the API space, so it ki...
I am gearing up for another wave of API definition work, so I am taking the opportunity to produce some more tooling that assists me in the process. One of the tools I want to build, is a simple so...
I am gearing up for another wave of API definition work, so I am taking the opportunity to produce some more tooling that assists me in the process. One of the tools I want to build, is a simple so...
I am working on one possible API definition for the Human Services Definition Specification (HSDS), and the next phase of this work involves bringing in a small group of technical, and non-technica...
I am working on one possible API definition for the Human Services Definition Specification (HSDS), and the next phase of this work involves bringing in a small group of technical, and non-technica...
I tend to only work in environments where I have full control over the server, so Cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) is never really an issue for any of the APIs I have control over, but is a per...
I’m always on the hunt for like-minded folks who I can partner with, and bring needed products, services, and tools to the API space. If someone is selling something to the API space, its likely I ...
I’m always on the hunt for like-minded folks who I can partner with, and bring needed products, services, and tools to the API space. If someone is selling something to the API space, its likely I ...
I was just participating in an interesting conference call about multiple API implementations, which are putting the Human Services Definition Specification (HSDS) to use. The call was brought toge...
My friend Tom Woodward is continuing his personal API journey on his blog, sharing more of his thoughts around taking control over his information, and sharing some of the conversational exhaust th...
I always have an inbox full of requests from companies asking me to take a look at their APIs, and provide any feedback that I can. I do conduct a more formal review for some companies, but I also ...
I always have an inbox full of requests from companies asking me to take a look at their APIs, and provide any feedback that I can. I do conduct a more formal review for some companies, but I also ...
A huge pet peeve for me is when a company has a blog, but not provide an RSS feed–it really grinds my gears! Although it is something that aggravates me, I understand many of the reasons behind it...
I’ve heard the same thing for years–that the average person will never care about their digital stuff enough to ever want to learn about APIs, let alone for the concept of the personal API to ever ...
I was reading a post about how having an unclear sense of ownership hurts API security, which showcases the different views on who owns security, when it comes to exposing corporate digital assets ...
I track on the API operations of around 2000 companies. Honestly, most of the 10K+ APIs in the ProgrammableWeb API directory have long been gone, deprecated, acquired, and had the lights shut off. ...
I track on the API operations of around 2000 companies. Honestly, most of the 10K+ APIs in the ProgrammableWeb API directory have long been gone, deprecated, acquired, and had the lights shut off. ...
I was going through the Expedia Affiliate Network again yesterday, as part of my Travel Stack Network work. Having individual research projects that pop up on my radar, and force to me take a fresh...
I sign up for a lot of APIs, and I am always surprised at what I see, or don’t see, when I first signup for an API service. Personally I really enjoy the ones that have a simple, getting started fo...
Over the last five years many of us have been pushing forward our API design skills to deliver valuable resources to mobile apps. The multi channel opportunity for delivering data, content, and oth...
I am working to identify the low hanging fruit for deploying APIs at Davidson College. It is a process where I target the domain, at the request of someone on campus, then slowly spider the website...
I spend my days mapping out the API life cycle, keeping track of what I consider to be the 50+ areas of a modern API life cycle, based upon the approach I am seeing from leading providers. One area...
I get approached by folks all the time who are looking to do APIs at their company, organization, institution, or government agency. The reasons behind these desires to do APIs vary widely. Some wa...
While I am on the subject of API deprecation, showcasing some of the interesting ways folks deprecate their APIs, I want to actually send out a message to API operators, that if you are considering...
When I am review API services and tooling, the majority of what I see is targeting the API elite, the most technical, and specialized of us in the API space. Rarely do I come across approaches that...
When I am review API services and tooling, the majority of what I see is targeting the API elite, the most technical, and specialized of us in the API space. Rarely do I come across approaches that...
I’m in the middle of a sprint, where I am going through 50 of my main API stacks, to see what has changed, and who is still home. I’m always fascinated by the number of APIs that just fade away int...
I was going through the list of APIs that I depend on, auditing the services that I’m paying for, and trimming the budget where I can, a process that involves spending time on the pricing and plan ...
I see a lot of APIs in my daily work. The diverse number of ways in which APIs are being used is one of the things that keeps my ADD brain interested in all things APIs. While the technical, busine...
I just published the OpenAPI Spec I just created for the Human Services Data Specification (HSDS) into one of my default portals, which once the OpenAPI Spec is indexed via the portals API.json, I ...
As I was preparing for my talk with Dan from Open Referral, I published some of my thoughts on the organization, and the Human Services Data Specification (HSDS). One of the things I did as part of...
I had another conversation with an API service provider today about their freemium accounts not converting. I’ve been sharing my thoughts about these freemium service account conversations, as I wo...
I am spending time evaluating the evolution of the three applications offered by Restlet, as they work to bring the experience across API Spark, Restlet Studio, and DHC, into closer alignment. To d...
It always makes me smile, when I talk to someone about one or many areas of my API research, sharing how I conduct my work, and they are surprised to find how many areas I track on. My home page ha...
API definitions like OpenAPI Spec, API Blueprint, and Postman, have been gaining in popularity over the last couple of years, mostly because of the their ability to deploy interactive documentation...
I see quite a few rogue APIs, and often rogue SDKs, but this is the first time I’ve come across a rogue embeddable button. While browsing Product Hunt this morning I came across this rogue Snapchat...
Many of the core areas of my API research, and the common building blocks of the API life cycle that I talk about regularly, often seem trivial to the technically inclined, or the purely business f...
One common thing you hear from the growing number of integrations and bots that are leveraging the Slack API, is all about injecting some specific action into the platform and tooling, we are all a...
I am regularly reminded of the wide spectrum of what API means to any single person. What is API, and what APIs enable, are all in the eye of the beholder, with only a handful of common aspects sha...
It is pretty easy to design, define, and deploy APIs these days, and I get a number of folks who approach me with questions about how to get going with the operations and management side of things....
To augment my last post about when you have an API, but you need some help to identify what is needed to manage your presence, I wanted to talk about some of what you can do once you’ve established...
I process many press releases to feed the of API.Report beast. The primary reason I do this work each week, is to identify new APIs, being done in interesting business sectors. One common thing I s...
I am spending time talking to more API providers, and API service providers, about the challenges they are facing, while reaching out to potential customers, thanks to the support of my partners Cl...
As I study the approach of bot, and messaging platform integrations like Current, I keep thinking about the potential for API injection at this layer of messaging. In this scenario I am thinking ab...
It has been acceptable for integration platform as a service providers (iPaaS) like IFTT and Zapier to focus on delivering the end-solutions that their consumers have needed, and requiring them to ...
During the latest IFTTT flareup, I realized how much I haven’t written about my feelings surrounding API integratio service providers, iPaas, or whatever else you call it. Something that always fru...
Here is the email I received from the CEO of IFTTT, in response to the whole Pinboard kerfuffle, a few minutes ago. It looks like they’ve done a little soul searching, and wanted to apologize: Hel...
I am working on several very rewarding API efforts lately, but one I’m particularly psyched about is Open Referral. I’m working with them to help apply the open API format in a handful of implement...
I’m engaging in another conversation with a higher education institution about where to start with APIs on campus. A new CIO has assumed a leadership position, and some very forward thinking folks ...
I always dig it when API stories spin out of control, and I end up down story holes. I’m sure certain people waiting for other work from me do not appreciate it, but these are where some of the bes...
One thing that struck me as I wrote my post about Best Buy stopping issuing API keys to free email accounts, was the fact that Best Buy operates their developer blog on Medium--something I am seein...
Best Buy is one of the many of the recent responses I am seeing from public API providers, as they work to strike a healthy balance within their API community. In an attempt to incentivize the beha...
I am always trying to identify the common building blocks employed by leading API providers, and Twilio is one of the usual suspects I showcase. This time it is focusing their annotated code walk-t...
I was disappointed to see the email in my inbox this morning from IFTTT about their Pinboard integration. I also helped amplify Pinboard when he was Tweet’n up a storm earlier, and I recommend you ...
The news out of Runscope makes today a good day to kick off discussion around a project that I’ve been helping push forward with the API Garage team, assisting them find the healthiest path forward...
I recently caught a glimpse of how APIs are going to deliver the change we need in this world. It began while I was attending a gathering of indie ed-tech folks on the campus of Davidson College in...
History is everything. Understanding where we have come from is critical to knowing where we are going. While pushing forward with the latest technology, it is always healthy to pause and take a lo...
As I was reviewing patent #20160070605: Adaptable Application Programming Interfaces And Specification Of Same, from yet another person I know, after I pick my head up off the desk, I begin thinkin...
I spend a lot of time gathering, creating, and organizing machine readable OpenAPI Specs, as part of my API Stack, and personal API stack work. I’m not insane enough to think I can create OpenAPI S...
I get these regular updates from FullContact when there is new information available about the contacts I have added to my contact list of people I care about. Anytime there is a new photo, social ...
I play with a lot of services that are looking to provide solutions to the API industry, and I’m always looking to better understand what leading API services providers are using to deploy their wa...
As I’m working through my morning work monitoring the API space, I’m proccesing stories about the availability of valuable resources, like the House Rules Committee data being released in XML forma...
I have self-censored stories about microservices, because I have felt the topic is as charged as linked data, REST, and some parts of the hypermedia discussion. Meaning there are many champions of ...
I have looked at way more Bots than I should have in the last couple days, and I’m beginning to see similar patterns emerging across bot implementations, in sync with what I shared as part of my a...
I’m constantly working to hand-craft, scrape-craft, and auto-generate OpenAPI Specs, and APIs.json files for as many of the top APIs I can. It is something Steve Willmott (@njyx), the CEO of 3Scale...
I’m seeing a significant shift in the conversations around how SaaS, and API-first platforms are planning access to their APIs. I’m seeing a pretty significant back peddling around free, and freemi...
I am slowly getting sucked into the world of bots. I’ve been tagging stories related to Twitter bots for some time, but it was the growing buzz of Slack bots that has really grabbed my attention. I...
For some workshops preparation this week, I needed to isolate just the best of the API calls and documentation from handful of APIs I am trying to teach my intended audience about. I have almost tw...
I am preparing a project for the conversations, and a workshop I have on my schedule this week at Davidson College, called: Indie EdTech & The Personal API. I’ll be going on campus, talking to ...
I am preparing a project for the conversations, and a workshop I have on my schedule this week at Davidson College, called: Indie EdTech & The Personal API. I’ll be going on campus, talking to ...
I’m evaluating the Alexa Voice Service ecosystems alongside leading API messaging platforms like Telegram, and Slack, who are changing the way users engage and communicate, but also are evolving ho...
I was experimenting with breaking apart API definitions over the weekend, and exploring different ways of assembling the moving parts into different types of tools, visualizations, and other goodie...
I am playing with different ways of exploring APIs, building on documentation solutions like Swagger UI, Lucybot Console, and Slate. I want to push the boundaries of how we document, tell stories, ...
I was reading a post on Amazon’s new SMART(Surveillance Marketed As Revolution Techonology) water pitcher, which is more about Amazon’s new connected device partner commerce strategy, than it is ab...
I am borrowing from the very prescient post from Martin Fowler, an older post, but is a topic that should be revisited regularly. Google translate tells me Datensparsamkeit means “data minimization...
One topic that has been present in numerous discussions lately is just how much work goes into designing, deploying, and managing APIs, as well as around the integration between the growing number ...
When a startup goes away, either through acquisition, or any other reason, and I find the site dormant, with a friendly goodbye message, or just gone, I usually just remove the tag from them in my ...
I was being interviewed by an IBM group the other day, and I scribbled some thoughts on a piece of paper as I was rambling, which I just picked up trying to make sense of what was going through my ...
It definitely sucks that Parse went away like they did, but you have to commend them on the page they left behind. Facebook put up the download link to an open source version of Parse Server, and a...
I am building on my conversation with Abhinav Asthana (@a85), the Co-founder and CEO of Postman, around how we can simplify the API documentation we are providing to our API consumers. As part of m...
If you follow my blog at all you know I love Noun Project icons. I started using them with my last minimal website design, and is something I’ve carried over with the latest edition. I’ve been usin...
As I made my way through nine of the leading SMS providers, profiling the details of their API plans, trying to bring it all together into a single, machine readable definition, Messente’s pricing ...
I try to spend time each week evaluating what types of companies are looking for API / developer evangelist / advocates, to help keep my awareness in sync with what mainstream companies are needing...
As I finish writing a piece on the 70 platforms who are looking for an API evangelist or developer advocate currently, sharing the wisdom of leading evangelist I follow in the space, I am also work...
I had an exchange with Abhinav Asthana (@a85), the Co-founder and CEO of Postman on Twitter today. He was tweeting about API documentation, and I chimed in with my support, about how we need to kee...
I was pushing forward my API plan research this weekend, building on some of the tooling I developed during the last round, and the machine readable API plan format I hammered out late last year to...
I was looking to create an APIs.json plus OpenAPI Spec(s) for the WordPress.org API, and the Instructure Canvas Learning Management System (LMS) API. I am pulling together a toolkit to support a wo...
As I’m thinking about the bigger picture of how startup acquisitions are impacting the world of APIs, I am also having several conversations with folks about their brand spank’n new API focused sta...
As I look through API portals, profiling the building blocks of successful API platform, I’m always looking for bite-size stories for my readers. I was working to complete my Instagram API definiti...
I have had several conversations with API providers lately who are somewhat frustrated with the way their API operations are going. While their APIs have brought in many new conversations, and supp...
The NextWeb had a great story today that Google has redesigned its developer policies with clearer language and visual examples, and normally I don’t jsut parrot what the tech blogosphere publishes...
I’ve been moving forward with my efforts to better on-board folks with the sometimes overwhelming amounts of research available via API Evangelist. I have several groups looking for guidance on whe...
I need some help with APIs! Ok, where can I help you? Well, I have multiple systems, that we use to operate our business on a daily basis, and when we do things in one system, we need the other sys...
I often push back against API consumers when they complain about the deprecation of API platform, focusing on the fact that we cannot depend on APIs to be around forever. I also push back against A...
As part of a renewed focus on the API discovery definition format APIs.json, I wanted to revisit the propsed machine readable API discovery specification, and see what is going on. First, what is A...
As part of a renewed focus on the API discovery definition format APIs.json, I wanted to revisit the propsed machine readable API discovery specification, and see what is going on. First, what is A...
In the last six months I was fortunate enough to be able to push forward one of my side projects, with the help of a prototype grant from the Knight Foundation. The mission of the project, is to he...
In the last six months I was fortunate enough to be able to push forward one of my side projects, with the help of a prototype grant from the Knight Foundation. The mission of the project, is to he...
I had the pleasure of hanging out with Wade Foster (@wadefoster), co-founder and CEO of Zapier (How do you pronounce Zapier? It rhymes with happier :-) recently. As I travel less, I’m looking at do...
As I listen to my hangout with Wade Foster of Zapier, I’m considering the overlap between my API reciprocity, bots, virtualization, containerization, webhooks, and even voice research. At the same ...
When I talk about companies using APIs to be more transparent, one of the immediate comments I receive from folks is that “not everyone can be public by default”. I agree with this situation, but I...
I have been working for a month or so on what some of the common tasks that developer advocates and evangelists would like to see occur around their API operations. These are small little tasks tha...
I was going through the SendGrid API and profiling their available plans and pricing, using my new API plan tracking format, and I just have to stop and say–I wish everyone would present their pric...
I like my API service providers like I like my APIs, doing one thing and doing it well. Sure services can work together (using APIs), and companies can launch multiple services, but I prefer select...
I like my API service providers like I like my APIs, doing one thing and doing it well. Sure services can work together (using APIs), and companies can launch multiple services, but I prefer select...
Stoplight.io is a very cool new API modeling and proxy tool. I just wrote a post about the overall features of the platform, but I wanted to zoom in on a specific benefit that Stoplight.io brings t...
After I’ve talked about my mapping of the public, and mobile APIs with various folks over the last couple of months, I can usually put folks into one of three camps 1) they do not understand what t...
I stayed up way too late playing with some of the new features in Stoplight.io. If you aren’t familiar with what the Stoplight team has been cooking up–they have been hard at work crafting a pretty...
I stayed up way too late playing with some of the new features in Stoplight.io. If you aren’t familiar with what the Stoplight team has been cooking up–they have been hard at work crafting a pretty...
I have had multiple conversations with folks in the space who are building services and tooling for the API sector lately, where I was asked whether or not they should only be using existing API de...
I’m spending some time going through v2 docs for the Zapier API, following the release of multi steps work flows, and code steps for calculating, converting, and manipulating data and content, last...
I just finished looking through the documentation for the Zapier API, and for the Alex Voice Service, trying to understand the approach these platforms are taking to incorporate API driven resource...
I shared a list of just the essential building blocks from across only 21 areas of my API areas of the API life cycle with a company I’m helping craft an API strategy for, and I got some very commo...
A couple of weeks ago I started playing with a machine readable way to describe the pricing, and plans available for an API. I spent a couple of days looking through over 50 APIs, and how they hand...
Evaluating exactly what is the “right” API can be very difficult. This is what I do full time, and its hard for me to understand the differences–I cannot image what it is like for people who have r...
One reason for having a well thought out, comprehensive API strategy, is that you are thinking about all the moving parts, and at ever turn you can weave things together, and potentially amplify th...
I was in Philadelphia last week, hanging out with educational technology practitioners, and at one of the dinners I found myself talking to a young lady who was a digital learning assistant at a un...
I look at a lot of APIs, and one characteristic I judge them by, is their ability to simply explain what their API does. The most import aspect to any individual or company when doing APIs, is the ...
I am continuing to push forward my API plans research, where I look closely at the common building blocks of the service composition, pricing, and plans available for some of the leading API provid...
The popular API client tool Postman just launched an embeddable “run in Postman” button, that you can use to fast track integration with your API(s). Shortly after I wrote a post about the importan...
One of the approaches to API plans I was studying recently is from the data provider Factual, who provides access to places, products, and other valuable data-sets. I felt Factual had a pretty stra...
I have been working hard for about a year now trying to craft machine readable API definitions for the leading APIs out there. I’ve written before about my use of Charles Proxy to generate OpenAPI ...
I am continuing to work through notes from a recent push forward of my API monetization, and API plan research. Something that yielded a number of valuable nuggets that I think API providers shoul...
I’m going to keep beating the patent API drumbeat, until I bring more awareness to the topic, and shine a light on what is going on. While I will still be my usual self and call out the worst behav...
The mobile backend as a service (MBaaS) platform Parse is shutting down. I started tracking on Parse as part of my BaaS research a couple years back, something that resulted in having all of the Ba...
If you caught my keynotes at @Defrag and @APIStrat last year, you know I’m working on using the subway map as a method for visualizing, understand, and eventually exploration of the API life cycle....
Supporting your community is not unique to the API space, but supporting API operations does have some unique needs, and approaches that are proven by leading platforms. Like other areas of my rese...
My post the other day on the hypermedia API focused patents from ElasticPath, has resulted in some very interesting conversations, with folks trying to understand this world, to those who are paten...
I’m seeing a resurgence in my embeddable API research lately, based upon signals I’m seeing across the space, and conversations I’m having with folks. The interesting part for me is that this wav...
I held a hangout with API Evangelist this morning, with Steve Willmot (@njyx) of @3scale, & Jakub Nesetril (@jakubnesetril) of @apiaryio today, where we discussed API definitions. Both Steve an...
As I work to complete more API definitions, with all API endpoints defined as an OpenAPI Spec, API Blueprint, and Postman Collection, with everything wrapped in a complete APIs.json index--I can’t ...
There are many inconsistencies I struggle with in the API space, and the lack of meaningful icons to express myself is one of them. I was meeting with my friend Jerome Louvel of Restlet this last w...
Join me, Steve Willmott(@njyx) of 3Scale, and Jakub Nesetril(@jakubnesetril) of Apiary, for a hangout on API definitions this week. I wanted to explore doing more hangouts under the APIStrat, as w...
I am happy to be showcasing a new open source, OpenAPI Spec driven, interactive API documentation, from the LucyBot team. The API definition driven documentation solution is one of the best impleme...
I was on the road last week, so I didn’t maintain my usual barrage of API analysis. As I go through my monitoring for the week, I’d say the biggest news of the week was Apiary’s support of the Open...
My API industry research is constantly moving forward, shifting, and being added to–much like the space itself. As I work to update each of my research areas each week, my process involves adding a...
I just finished spending an hour talking with Brent Baker (@norcaljhawk), head of product for Dwolla, and Jordan Lampe (@JsLampe), about the vision behind the developer experience for their new dev...
One of the benefits of doing an API, is so that you can take advantage of the potential for a community feedback loop, driven by internal groups, external partners, and even in some cases the pubic...
I was just talking API documentation with Brent Baker (@norcaljhawk), and Jordan Lampe (@JsLampe) from Dwolla. As we were going through their API documentation, they mentioned how they were using S...
I got an email in my inbox, about a new API modeling language from Elastic Path earlier today. The product is called Helix, and is sold as being “the first enterprise-class API modeling language de...
I was emailed by someone working in government, asking some pretty interesting questions around using an application showcase, to make trusted applications available to an ecosystem of partners. I’...
API Evangelist has long been dedicated to helping the average business user understand all that is API. I saw early on in 2010, the potential of APIs, when used to empower the IT, or even shadow IT...
I struggle a lot with how I separate out my research areas–there are a lot of reasons why I will break off, or group information in a certain way. Really it all comes down to some layer of separati...
I feel pretty strongly that for the next wave of growth in the API sector, we need the majority of public APIs in use today, to have well crafted, as complete as possible, API definitions in either...
I feel pretty strongly that for the next wave of growth in the API sector, we need the majority of public APIs in use today, to have well crafted, as complete as possible, API definitions in either...
Another story I wanted to tell from my work to expose an API yesterday, so I could get help with it, was focused around the service composition that I used. I feel like this is a powerful story, th...
I see a lot of APIs, and honestly I’m not excited about all of them. Some are public. Some are private. I am feeling that I could put the APIs I see into 3 different buckets: valuable, some value, ...
I pulled the title for this post directly from understanding the impact of cross-border routing of data during an era of emerging geographic restrictions, from Dyn. I’m writing about this to add it...
I have been working to clean up the the web presence for the API Strategy & Practice conference. We concluded the 6th edition of @APIStrat in Austin this last november (check out the videos), a...
I came across the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, while conducting a search that turned up the chronology of data breaches, which provides details on 4,725 data breaches that have been made public si...
I was profiling the Facebook API as part of my API Stack work. While I only use a handful of the endpoints available to me via the Facebook API, as the API Evangelist, I feel like I should have an ...
I am finding all sorts of interesting examples as I push forward my API plans research, where I study the API planning approaches employed by over 50 of the leading APIs. One of the items, on my AP...
As I look through the business models of leading API providers I am profiling, I’m increasingly seeing security as a selling point. When API providers break down their pricing into tiers, they are ...
Amazon has a new blog dedicated to just their Command Line Interface (CLI). I use AWS as anchor for many of my API stories, but I also acknowledge that many API providers will never be at the scale...
Octopart is a search engine for electronic parts. They have been on my API monitoring radar for some time now, because they have a very well done API. Octopart was one of the first API providers I ...
A road map for your API, is one of those essential building blocks that can go a long way in building trust with your API consumers. Sharing your plans, helps developers prepare for the future, and...
It is a new year, and we have a lot of work to do when it comes to defining APIs in the new year. One of the results of 2015, was that the specification known as Swagger was spun off into the Lin...
Last week I was playing with defining API monitoring APIs so I can map to each stop along the API life cycle. I took three of the API monitoring services I use (APIMetrics, API Science, and Runscop...
As the number of API definitions increases out there, I’m coming across many duplicates of APIs I already have in my collection(s). In 2016, I will increasingly need to be able to execute a diff on...
I have done a lot of work hand crafting, and often scrape crafting, machine readable OpenAPI Spec, as part of the work on the API Stack. Creating a usable API definition is a lot of work, making it...
Z (@zdne) over at Apiary published a pretty interesting blog post before christmas which highlights two important elements of profiling APIs using popular API definition formats. Z is key to the vi...
This is my walk-through of the concepts involved with the monetization of public data using APIs. In this work I am not advocating that companies should be mindlessly profiting from publicly availa...
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...
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 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...
