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Stories about the technology, business, policies, and people of APIs.
I was getting ready to write my usual, “wish there was actual data behind this story about a database” story, while reading the Fatal Force story in the Washington Post, and then I saw the link! F...
While I’m still investing in defining the API discovery space, and I’m seeing some improvements from other API service and tooling providers when it comes to finding, sharing, indexing, and publis...
I am working with a group that has begun defining their API governance strategy. We’ve discussed a full spectrum of API lifecycle capabilities that need to be integrated into their development pra...
When I first started diving into what Streamdata.io does, and thinking of their role in the wider API landscape, I was pretty exclusively focused API providers. Meaning, if you are an API provider...
I’m continuing to break down the technology stack as I get to know my new partner Streamdata.io. Yesterday I wrote about their use of JSON Patch for returning partial responses of changes made to ...
I am working with a group that has begun defining their API governance strategy. We’ve discussed a full spectrum of API lifecycle capabilities that need to be integrated into their development pra...
While I’m still investing in defining the API discovery space, and I’m seeing some improvements from other API service and tooling providers when it comes to finding, sharing, indexing, and publis...
I’m continuing my studying into what my new partner in crime Streamdata.io does, and part of this research is understanding the details of their technology stack. Today’s work involves understandi...
I am evaluating an existing continuous integration and deployment workflow to make recommendations regarding how they can evolve to service their growing API lifecycle. This is an area of my resea...
Part of my partnership with http://streamdata.io centers around me investing more time into studying the banking industry, starting with the rollout of PSD2 in Europe next month. I’ll be working t...
Sharing stories around your API is something you hear me talk about a lot. Many of my readers like to let me know how they are serious API people, and my storytelling emphasis is silly. Just do AP...
Sharing stories around your API is something you hear me talk about a lot. Many of my readers like to let me know how they are serious API people, and my storytelling emphasis is silly. Just do AP...
Part of my partnership with http://streamdata.io centers around me investing more time into studying the banking industry, starting with the rollout of PSD2 in Europe next month. I’ll be working t...
I am evaluating an existing continuous integration and deployment workflow to make recommendations regarding how they can evolve to service their growing API lifecycle. This is an area of my resea...
You hear a lot about being API design first out of the API echo chamber these days. I’m finding that concept to be challenging for many groups I’m working with due to some of uninformed perception...
I’m working hard on what I consider to be my definition of a robust API deployment toolbox, and was enjoying the 100K perspective. As I explore, I wanted to share some of my thoughts about by you ...
I’ve partnered with Streamdata.io, resulting in me getting more acquainted with their API solutions, and telling the story of that process here on API Evangelist. I figured I would dive right in a...
I am playing with Streamdata.io as I learn how to use my new partner’s service. Streamdata.io proxies any API, and uses Server-Sent Event (SSE) to push updates using JSON Patch. I am playing with ...
I’m working hard on what I consider to be my definition of a robust API deployment toolbox, and was enjoying the 100K perspective. As I explore, I wanted to share some of my thoughts about by you ...
You hear a lot about being API design first out of the API echo chamber these days. I’m finding that concept to be challenging for many groups I’m working with due to some of uninformed perception...
Even before I engaged with Streamdata.io on our current partnership, I was working with them to quantity the value they bring to the table with their service. As I was working on my story regardin...
Some of you in my backchannels know that I’ve been shopping around for a job lately. I’m looking to make a shift in API Evangelist, as I’ve written about some (and will write about more), and I’m ...
My new partner in crime Damian Odoemena the technical account manager for Streamdata.io has said he is ready to work with me to deliver on the road map for the real-time streaming API. I explained...
My new partner in crime Damian Odoemena the technical account manager for Streamdata.io has said he is ready to work with me to deliver on the road map for the real-time streaming API. I explained...
Even before I engaged with Streamdata.io on our current partnership, I was working with them to quantity the value they bring to the table with their service. As I was working on my story regardin...
I named my blog, company, as well assumed my own title as “API Evangelist” in 2010. Every year since making that decision I’ve questioned it, and wonder if the concept and acronym will fade away. ...
I’ve been watching, and trying to move forward the API conversation across all business sectors for seven years now. I’m not a startup. I’m not an API service provider. I’m not steering an enterpr...
I got some expected flack this week for some stories on database to API deployments, and allowing folks to just auto-generate APIs from database structures. This approach is notorious for produci...
I fell down the rabbit hole of the latest Facebook version release, trying to understand the deprecation of their User Insights API. The story of the deprecation of the API isn’t told accurately a...
People have been asking me for more stories on API governance. Examples of how it is working, or not working at the companies, organizations, institutions, and government agencies I’m talking with...
I fell down the rabbit hole of the latest Facebook version release, trying to understand the deprecation of their User Insights API. The story of the deprecation of the API isn’t told accurately a...
I’m still kicking around my API Transit strategy in my head, trying to find a path forward with applying to API governance. I started moving it forward a couple years ago as a way to map out the AP...
This is a sponsored post by my friends over at SlashDB. The topic is chosen by me, but the work is funded by SlasDB, making sure I keep doing what I do here at API Evangelist. Thank you SlashDB for...
According to AdWeek, Facebook is quietly shutting down its Audience Insights API by the end of the year. They have a statement from Facebook stating, “We have decided to focus marketers on our more...
I’m still kicking around my API Transit strategy in my head, trying to find a path forward with applying to API governance. I started moving it forward a couple years ago as a way to map out the A...
According to AdWeek, Facebook is quietly shutting down its Audience Insights API by the end of the year. They have a statement from Facebook stating, “We have decided to focus marketers on our mor...
This is a sponsored post by my friends over at SlashDB. The topic is chosen by me, but the work is funded by SlasDB, making sure I keep doing what I do here at API Evangelist. Thank you SlashDB fo...
I’m preparing to publish a bunch of transit related data as APIs, for us across a number of applications from visualizations to conversation interfaces like bots and voice-enablement. As I’m learn...
I get it. It takes money to operate APIs. I’m a big advocate for making sure API providers, even public data API providers can sensibly charge for access to their valuable resources. I’m also pain...
I get it. It takes money to operate APIs. I’m a big advocate for making sure API providers, even public data API providers can sensibly charge for access to their valuable resources. I’m also pain...
This is a sponsored post by my friends over at SlashDB. The topic is chosen by me, but the work is funded by SlasDB, making sure I keep doing what I do here at API Evangelist. Thank you SlashDB for...
I am always looking for ways to introduce people to the concept of APIs, and that they are right below everything digital you do in your daily life. Even with my prolific writing, and sharing on s...
I was turned onto a developing problem within the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) around a recent terms of service change made around the transit data API by Technically DC....
I was turned onto a developing problem within the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) around a recent terms of service change made around the transit data API by Technically DC....
I am always looking for ways to introduce people to the concept of APIs, and that they are right below everything digital you do in your daily life. Even with my prolific writing, and sharing on s...
I get a lot of emails from companies asking me to look at their APIs. Too many for a one person operation like me to consider. I have to be picky about the APIs I’m taking a look at, and over time...
I’ve been learning about a new API definition format called AsyncAPI that allows you to define message-driven APIs in a machine-readable format. It is protocol-agnostic, which means you can use it...
This is a sponsored post by my friends over at SlashDB. The topic is chosen by me, but the work is funded by SlasDB, making sure I keep doing what I do here at API Evangelist. Thank you SlashDB fo...
I get a lot of emails from companies asking me to look at their APIs. Too many for a one person operation like me to consider. I have to be picky about the APIs I’m taking a look at, and over time...
I’ve been talking with the folks over at Bitscoop about their integration platform as a service (iPaaS) offering. I would API mapping as a service, but that is another story. After talking with the...
I showcased Stripe’s OpenAPI definition the other week, so I wanted to also highlight a side effect of Stripe deciding to be OpenAPI-Driven. Stripe recently published an OpenAPI-powered mock serve...
This is a sponsored post by my friends over at SlashDB. The topic is chosen by me, but the work is funded by SlasDB, making sure I keep doing what I do here at API Evangelist. Thank you SlashDB fo...
I showcased Stripe’s OpenAPI definition the other week, so I wanted to also highlight a side effect of Stripe deciding to be OpenAPI-Driven. Stripe recently published an OpenAPI-powered mock serve...
I’ve been deploying two project using AWS API Gateway, Lambda, and Amazon RDS lately. I’ve become so sold on this approach to deploying APIs as part of this work, that I am evolving my own interna...
The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) has started laying out some consumer-authorized data sharing and aggregation rules to begin moving forward the banking data scraping conversation in (...
This is a sponsored post by my friends over at SlashDB. The topic is chosen by me, but the work is funded by SlasDB, making sure I keep doing what I do here at API Evangelist. Thank you SlashDB for...
Think about the power that database administrators have in your organizations world? I’ve been working with databases since my first job in 1987. I’ve seen the power bestowed upon database adminis...
I get regular waves of commenters and tweeters who like to point out the API patterns I’m covering in the API space, have all been done before. We tried discovery docs before they are called WSDL!...
It is one of those weeks where writing API stories, and doing my API work is completely uninteresting, and my three year old self is throwing a temper tantrum when it comes to doing anything. APIs...
This is part of some research I'm doing with Streamdata.io. We share a common interest around the accessibility of public data, so we thought it would be a good way for us to partner, and Streamdat...
I remember the first time I heard someone say that they didn’t want to make the same mistake as Twitter did with their API. It was from Pinterest. After that I heard the phrase uttered by many com...
I’ve been diving into the fundamentals of API management as part of several projects I am working on. I am setting up API management for a single API project, as well as thinking through API manag...
I hear it daily in my inbox, on Twitter, and via LinkedIn. We love what you do! We’ve followed your work for a while, and love your unique voice, and the way you tell stories on your blog. I’m not...
I started developing a machine readable format for describing the API plans and pricing for leading API providers a few years back. Eventually I’d like to see the format live alongside OpenAPI, Po...
I hear it daily in my inbox, on Twitter, and via LinkedIn. We love what you do! We’ve followed your work for a while, and love your unique voice, and the way you tell stories on your blog. I’m not...
I remember the first time I heard someone say that they didn’t want to make the same mistake as Twitter did with their API. It was from Pinterest. After that I heard the phrase uttered by many com...
I started developing a machine readable format for describing the API plans and pricing for leading API providers a few years back. Eventually I’d like to see the format live alongside OpenAPI, Po...
As part of my work on my OpenAPI toolbox I am keeping an eye out for how leading API providers are using OpenAPI. One layer of this part of my research is understanding how teams are extending the...
I’m a big Github user. I depend on Github for managing all my projects, and Github Pages for the presentation layer around all my research. When anything requires authentication, whether for acces...
I’m fascinated by the baggage people bring to the table when engaging in discussions around technology with me. A common opener for many conversations with season technologists centers around REST...
I am setting up Stripe for a client, and I found myself browsing through Stripe Elements, and the examples they have published to Github. If you aren’t familiar, “Stripe Elements are pre-built ric...
I’m fascinated by the baggage people bring to the table when engaging in discussions around technology with me. A common opener for many conversations with season technologists centers around REST...
As part of my work on my OpenAPI toolbox I am keeping an eye out for how leading API providers are using OpenAPI. One layer of this part of my research is understanding how teams are extending the...
I’m a big Github user. I depend on Github for managing all my projects, and Github Pages for the presentation layer around all my research. When anything requires authentication, whether for acces...
I am always looking for new avenues to help on-board folks with APIs. I’m concerned that folks aren’t quite ready for the responsibility that comes with a programmable web, and I’m looking for way...
<p</p>The concept of rogue APIs isn’t anything new. Instagram started out as a rogue API, and many leading platforms who are less than open with their platforms have rogue APIs. They are u...
I am a fan of what WordPress has done for the online world. I feel like it has enabled a lot of folks to take some control over their web presence, and in some situations even made programmers out...
It has been a long time coming, but Twitter has finally started charging for premium access to their APIs. Until now, you could only access data via the free Twitter API with limitations, or pay t...
I am a fan of what WordPress has done for the online world. I feel like it has enabled a lot of folks to take some control over their web presence, and in some situations even made programmers out...
I’ve been operating 100% of my public presence for API Evangelist on Github for almost five years now. I really like the public layer of my world being static, but I also like the modularity that ...
The biggest deficiency I see in the world of APIs is an ability to understand the human side of what we are all doing. The space is dominated by men, and people who have an understanding of, and d...
I am increasingly tracking on OpenAPI definitions published to Github by leading API providers I track on. Platforms like Stripe, Box, New York Times are actively managing their OpenAPI definition...
The core Human Services Data API allows for adding of organizations, locations, services, and contacts one by one using a single POST on the core API paths for each available resource. However, if...
The core Human Services Data API allows for adding of organizations, locations, services, and contacts one by one using a single POST on the core API paths for each available resource. However, if...
I am increasingly tracking on OpenAPI definitions published to Github by leading API providers I track on. Platforms like Stripe, Box, New York Times are actively managing their OpenAPI definition...
I have been organizing my Human Services Data API (HSDA) specification work into separate microservices as part of version 1.0 for the API definition that cities and other organizations running 21...
I have been organizing my Human Services Data API (HSDA) specification work into separate microservices as part of version 1.0 for the API definition that cities and other organizations running 21...
I can’t write about every API provider who publishes their OpenAPI to Github, there are just too many. But, I can write about the rockstar API providers who do though, and showcase what they are d...
I published a taxonomy API as part of my Human Services Data API (HSDA) work recently, and as part of the work I wanted it to support a handful of the human services taxonomies available currently...
I’ve had people asking me for an email newsletter containing everything I’ve done over the week for quite a while now, and I finally got around to do doing it. I’m now using MailChimp to pull in t...
I published a taxonomy API as part of my Human Services Data API (HSDA) work recently, and as part of the work I wanted it to support a handful of the human services taxonomies available currently...
I spoke on a panel at the Red Hat, Fed Scoop Government Symposium in Washington D.C. yesterday. I had some great conversations with technology vendors, as well as government agencies about everyth...
One of the reasons I’m so good at APIs is because I embrace how little I know. This rolling realization keeps my appetite wet when it comes to learning to things, and working hard to discover, and...
I am struggling with helping some folks get beyond their API being just readable, and helping them understand the potential of having POST, PUT, and other writable aspects to their resources, maki...
I have seven years of API research available at apievangelist.com. I regularly publish short form, and long form versions of this information on my blogs on a weekly basis. I publish prototypes, d...
I spoke on a panel at the Red Hat, Fed Scoop Government Symposium in Washington D.C. yesterday. I had some great conversations with technology vendors, as well as government agencies about everyth...
I am struggling with helping some folks get beyond their API being just readable, and helping them understand the potential of having POST, PUT, and other writable aspects to their resources, maki...
One of the reasons I’m so good at APIs is because I embrace how little I know. This rolling realization keeps my appetite wet when it comes to learning to things, and working hard to discover, and...
This is a story from my latest API Evangelist API security industry guide. My partner ElasticBeam has underwritten my API security research, allowing me to publish a formal PDF of my guide, provid...
I’m going further down the AWS rabbit hole lately with my APIs. Historically my APIs ran on an AWS EC2 instance with leveraged Linux for the OS, Apache for the web server, and Slim for the RESTful...
This is a topic I talk about often, write about rarely, but experience on a regular basis doing APIs. It has to do with encounters I have with people in companies who do not know how to share and ...
This is a story from my latest API Evangelist API security industry guide. My partner ElasticBeam has underwritten my API security research, allowing me to publish a formal PDF of my guide, provid...
I’m going further down the AWS rabbit hole lately with my APIs. Historically my APIs ran on an AWS EC2 instance with leveraged Linux for the OS, Apache for the web server, and Slim for the RESTful...
As with most areas of the tech sector, behind the hype there are real world things going on, and machine learning is one area I’ve been studying, learning, and playing withd what is actually possi...
This edition of my API security industry guide has been underwritten by ElasticBeam, who provides next generation API security, leveraging machine learning, and behavorial analysis that works with ...
I came across the new Desktop Underwriter (DU) API from Fannie Mae which provides lenders a comprehensive credit risk assessment data that determines whether a loan meets Fannie Mae’s eligibility ...
I’ve complained about unfair API pricing tiers several times over the last couple years, even declaring API access tiers irrelevant in a mult-API consumer world. Every time I write about this subj...
I came across the new Desktop Underwriter (DU) API from Fannie Mae which provides lenders a comprehensive credit risk assessment data that determines whether a loan meets Fannie Mae’s eligibility ...
As with most areas of the tech sector, behind the hype there are real world things going on, and machine learning is one area I’ve been studying, learning, and playing withd what is actually possi...
I’ve complained about unfair API pricing tiers several times over the last couple years, even declaring API access tiers irrelevant in a mult-API consumer world. Every time I write about this subj...
I was listening to Mark Zuckerberg talk about how security investments will affect the platforms profitability on the Facebook earnings call this last week. This line of thinking sounds pretty con...
I’m always surprised by how secretive folks are. I know that it is hard for many folks to be as transparent as I am with my work, but if you are doing public APIs, I have a basic level of expectat...
We just wrapped up the 8th edition of APIStrat in Portland, Oregon this last week. I’ll be working through my notes, and memory of the event in future posts, but thing that stood out for me was th...
There are many reasons for having an API. The direct reason is to provide your partners and 3rd party developers access to your data, content, and algorithmic resources using the web. However, the...
There are many reasons for having an API. The direct reason is to provide your partners and 3rd party developers access to your data, content, and algorithmic resources using the web. However, the...
I wrote about a simple API with AWS DynamoDB, Lambda, and API Gateway last week. I like this approach because of the simple nature of AWS DynamoDB. One benefit of going this route is that you can ...
I’ve been on the AWS train since day one. I’ve been integrating Amazon S3 and EC2 into my business(es) since they first launched a decade ago. While the platform has faithfully provided my storage...
The Slack team has published the most robust and honest story about using OpenAPI, providing a blueprint that other API providers should be following. What I like most about approach by Slack to d...
The Slack team has published the most robust and honest story about using OpenAPI, providing a blueprint that other API providers should be following. What I like most about approach by Slack to d...
I’ve tried picking up Node.js as a server side approach to delivering APIs a couple of times in the past few years. Both times express, and a handful of other issues ran me off from using it as my...
I’ve tried picking up Node.js as a server side approach to delivering APIs a couple of times in the past few years. Both times express, and a handful of other issues ran me off from using it as my...
I am working with my partners in the government API space (Skylight, 540, Agile Six) to respond to a request for information (RFI) out of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), for what they cal...
I am working with my partners in the government API space (Skylight, 540, Agile Six) to respond to a request for information (RFI) out of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), for what they cal...
When I talk to ordinary people about what I do as the API Evangelist, they tend to think APIs don’t have much of anything to do with their world. APIs exist in a realm of startups, technology, and...
Static website, and headless CMS approaches to providing API driven solutions have grown in popularity in recent years. Jekyll has been leading the charge when it comes to static website deploymen...
Every single API project I’m working on currently has one or more business users involved, or specifically leading the work. With every business user, no matter how fearless they are, there is alw...
I’m needing to quantify some of the work that has occurred around my Human Services Data Specification work as part of a grant we received from Stanford. The grant shas helped us push forward almo...
Static website, and headless CMS approaches to providing API driven solutions have grown in popularity in recent years. Jekyll has been leading the charge when it comes to static website deploymen...
Every single API project I’m working on currently has one or more business users involved, or specifically leading the work. With every business user, no matter how fearless they are, there is alw...
When I first started API Evangelist I spent two days trying to create a logo. I then spent another couple days trying to find a service to create something. Unhappy with everything I produced, I r...
I am working through a project for a client, helping them deliver a portal for their API. As I do with any of my recommendations with my clients, I take my existing API research, and refine it to ...
I wrote about being able to import an OpenAPI into the AWS API Gateway to jumpstart your API the other day. OpenAPI definitions are increasingly used for every stop along the API life cycle, and b...
There are many reasons you want to have a road map for your API. It helps you communicate with your API community where you are going with your API. It also helps you have a plan in place for the ...
There are many reasons you want to have a road map for your API. It helps you communicate with your API community where you are going with your API. It also helps you have a plan in place for the ...
I wrote about being able to import an OpenAPI into the AWS API Gateway to jumpstart your API the other day. OpenAPI definitions are increasingly used for every stop along the API life cycle, and b...
My partner in crime Audrey Watters crafted a phrase that I use regularly, that “APIs reduce everything to a transaction”. She first said it jokingly a few years back, but is something I regularly ...
I am always looking for the cheapest, easiest ways to get things done in the world of APIs. As a small business owner I’m always on the hunt for hacks to get done what I need, and hopefully make t...
I’ve setup a few Lambda scripts from time to time, but haven’t had any dedicated project time to push forward API serverless concepts. Over the weekend I had a chance to deploy a couple of APIs us...
I am learning about the AWS Marketplace through the lens of selling your API there, adding a new dimension to my API monetization and API plan research. I’ve invested a significant amount of energ...
I am learning about the AWS Marketplace through the lens of selling your API there, adding a new dimension to my API monetization and API plan research. I’ve invested a significant amount of energ...
I’m helping some clients think through their approach to API management. These projects have different needs, as well as different resources available to them, so I’m looking to distill things dow...
I am getting intimate with AWS API Gateway. Learning about what it does, and what it doesn’t do. The gateway brings a number of essential API management elements to the table, like issuing keys, e...
I’m helping some clients think through their approach to API management. These projects have different needs, as well as different resources available to them, so I’m looking to distill things dow...
I’m helping some clients think through their approach to API management. These projects have different needs, as well as different resources available to them, so I’m looking to distill things dow...
I’m helping some clients think through their approach to API management. These projects have different needs, as well as different resources available to them, so I’m looking to distill things dow...
I am getting intimate with AWS API Gateway. Learning about what it does, and what it doesn’t do. The gateway brings a number of essential API management elements to the table, like issuing keys, e...
I’m helping some clients think through their approach to API management. These projects have different needs, as well as different resources available to them, so I’m looking to distill things dow...
I’m an old database person. I’ve been working with databases since my first job in 1987. Cobol. FoxPro. SQL Server. MySQL. I have had a production database in my charge accessible via the web sinc...
I am adding another building block to my webhooks research out of Github. As I continue this work, it is clear that Gthub will continue to play a significant role in my webhook research and storyt...
As my friend John Sheehan over at Runscope says, “the spreadsheet is the most underrated API client”. The spreadsheet is where a significant amount of business gets done each day in the business w...
I’ve been learning more about AWS API Gateway, and wanted to share some of what I’m learning with my readers. The AWS API Gateway is a robust way to deploy and manage an API on the AWS platform. T...
I’ve been learning more about AWS API Gateway, and wanted to share some of what I’m learning with my readers. The AWS API Gateway is a robust way to deploy and manage an API on the AWS platform. T...
I believe in the potential of what APIs can do, and care about learning how we can do things right. Part of it is my job, but part of it is me wanting to do things well. Master my approach to deli...
API design is something that many have tried to quantify and measure, but very few ever establish any meaningful way of doing so properly in my experience. I’ve been learning about the approach to...
APIs are not forever, and eventually will go away. The trick with API deprecation is to communicate clearly, and regularly with API consumers, making sure they are prepared for the future. I’ve be...
Operating on Github is natural for me, but I am regularly reminded what a foreign concept it is for some of the API providers I’m speaking with. Github is the cheapest, easiest way to launch a pub...
I am developing a basic API management strategy for one of my client’s API. With each area of their API strategy I am taking what I’ve learned monitoring the API sector, but pausing for a moment t...
Around 2010, the world of APIs began picking up speed with the introduction of the iPhone, and then Android mobile platforms. Web APIs had been used for delivering data and content to websites for...
You don’t find me showcasing specific APIs often. I’m usually talking about an API because of their approach to the technology, business, or politics of how they do APIs. It just isn’t my style to...
It is always funny how long some concepts take to fully capture my attention. Sometimes I understand a concept on the surface, but never really invest the time into thinking deeply about how it ac...
I’m dialing in a set of machine learning APIs that I use to obfuscate and distort the images I use across my storytelling. The code is getting a little more hardened, but there is still so much wo...
I was doing some API security research and stumbled across vFeed, a “Correlated Vulnerability and Threat Intelligence Database Wrapper”, providing a JSON API of vulnerabilities from the vFeed data...
I study the API universe every day of the week, looking for common patterns in the way people are using technology. I study almost 100 stops along the API lifecycle, looking for healthy practices ...
I wrote about Tyk’s API surgery meetups last week, and adding a new approach to our API event and workshop toolbox, and next I wanted to highlight the gRPC Meetup Kit, a resource for creating your...
API evangelism and even advocacy at many organizations has always been a challenge to introduce, because many groups aren’t really well versed in the discipline, and often times it tends to take o...
I study the API universe every day of the week, looking for common patterns in the way people are using technology. I study almost 100 stops along the API lifecycle, looking for healthy practices ...
I wrote about Tyk’s API surgery meetups last week, and adding a new approach to our API event and workshop toolbox, and next I wanted to highlight the gRPC Meetup Kit, a resource for creating your...
I was doing some API security research and stumbled across vFeed, a “Correlated Vulnerability and Threat Intelligence Database Wrapper”, providing a JSON API of vulnerabilities from the vFeed data...
I’m regularly looking through API providers, service providers, and open data platforms looking for interesting ways in which folks are exposing APIs. I have written about Kentik exposing the API ...
Monitoring your API availability should be standard practice for internal and external APIs. If you have the resources to custom build API monitoring, testing, and performance infrastructure, I am...
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about algorithmic transparency, as well as a more evolved version of it I’ve labeled as algorithmic observability. Many algorithmic developers feel their algorith...
Creating regular content for your blog is essential to maintaining a presence. If you don’t publish regularly, and refresh your content, you will find your SEO, and wider presence quickly becoming...
Monitoring your API availability should be standard practice for internal and external APIs. If you have the resources to custom build API monitoring, testing, and performance infrastructure, I am...
Creating regular content for your blog is essential to maintaining a presence. If you don’t publish regularly, and refresh your content, you will find your SEO, and wider presence quickly becoming...
We all (well most of us) strive to deliver as stable of an API presence as we possibly can. It is something that is easier said than done. It is something that takes caring, as well as the right r...
I am still working through my notes from a recent visit to Capital One, where I spent time talking with Matthew Reinbold (@libel_vox) about their API governance strategy. I was given a walk throug...
I consider a road map for any API to be an essential building block, whether it is a public API or not. You should be in the business of planning the next steps for your API in an organized way, a...
</a> Coming up with things creative things to write about regularly on the blog, and on Twitter when you are operating an API is hard. It has taken a lot of discipline to keep posts going up ...
I am still working through my notes from a recent visit to Capital One, where I spent time talking with Matthew Reinbold (@libel_vox) about their API governance strategy. I was given a walk throug...
</a> Coming up with things creative things to write about regularly on the blog, and on Twitter when you are operating an API is hard. It has taken a lot of discipline to keep posts going up ...
I’ve been playing with Tensor Flow for over a year now, specifically when it comes to working with images and video, but it has been something that has helped me understand what things looks like ...
I am helping a client think through their API management solution at the moment, so I’m working through all the moving parts of how, and why of API management solutions. The API management landsca...
It is interesting to take a fresh look at the API management landscape these days. It has been a while since I’ve looked through all the providers to see where their pricing is at, and what they o...
Speaking to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, former Equifax CEO Richard Smith pointed the finger at a single developer who failed to patch the Apache Struts vulnerability. Saying that prot...
It is interesting to take a fresh look at the API management landscape these days. It has been a while since I’ve looked through all the providers to see where their pricing is at, and what they o...
I am working with a client to develop a simple user interface on top of a Human Services Data API (HSDA) I launched for them. They want a basic website for searching, browsing, and navigating the ...
I’ve covered this topic several times before, but I figured I’d share again for folks who might have just become readers int he last year. Providing an overview of how API Evangelist works, to hel...
I am a big fan of user interfaces that bring APIs out of the shadows. Historically, APIs are often a footnote in the software as a service (SaaS) world, available as a link way down at the bottom ...
I’m neck deep in research around data and APIs right now, and after looking at 37 of the Apache data projects it is pretty clear that web APIs are not a priority in this world. There are some of t...
I am a big fan of user interfaces that bring APIs out of the shadows. Historically, APIs are often a footnote in the software as a service (SaaS) world, available as a link way down at the bottom ...
I’m neck deep in research around data and APIs right now, and after looking at 37 of the Apache data projects it is pretty clear that web APIs are not a priority in this world. There are some of t...
I remember when almost all the APIs out there gave us developers access to things we couldn’t ever possibly get on our own. Some of it was about the network effect with the early Amazon and eBay m...
I’ve talked about this before, but after reading several articles recently about various federal government agencies collecting, and using social media accounts for surveillance lately, it is a dr...
I encounter a number of folks who really, really, really want to do APIs. You know, because they are cool and all, but they just can’t do what it takes to let go a little, so that their valuable A...
I’m always learning from the API communication practices from out of the different AWS teams. From the regular storytelling coming out of the Alexa team, to the mythical tales of leadership at AWS...
I’m always learning from the API communication practices from out of the different AWS teams. From the regular storytelling coming out of the Alexa team, to the mythical tales of leadership at AWS...
I remember when almost all the APIs out there gave us developers access to things we couldn’t ever possibly get on our own. Some of it was about the network effect with the early Amazon and eBay m...
I’m continuing my research into bot platform observability, and how API platforms are handling (or not handling) bot automation on their platforms, as I try to make sense of each wave of the bot i...
I’m spending time investing in my data, as well as my database API research. I’ll have guides, with accompanying stories coming out over the next couple weeks, but I want to take a moment to publi...
I’m evolving forward my thoughts on algorithmic observability and transparency using APIs, and I was recently introduced to TLA+, or the Temporal Logic of Actions. It is the closest I’ve come to w...
I am working with a team to expose a database as an API. With projects like this there can be a lot of anxiety in exposing a database directly as an API. Security is the first one, but in my exper...
I’m spending time investing in my data, as well as my database API research. I’ll have guides, with accompanying stories coming out over the next couple weeks, but I want to take a moment to publi...
As each wave of technology comes crashing on the shores of the API space you’ll mostly find me silent, listening and watching what is happening. Occasionally you’ll hear me grumble about the aggre...
You won’t find me talking about the acquisition of API startups very often. I’m just not a fan of the game. I am not anti-venture capital, but I find the majority of investment in the API startup ...
I have been helping my partner in crime Audrey Watters (@audreywatters) evolve her data work as part of her Columbia Spencer Education Journalism Fellowship, where she is publishing a wealth of ed...
I am preparing my Schema.org Github repo with a variety of data sources for use across my API tooling and other projects. I’m trying to get better at using a common vocabulary, and not reinventing...
I am preparing my Schema.org Github repo with a variety of data sources for use across my API tooling and other projects. I’m trying to get better at using a common vocabulary, and not reinventing...
I know people don’t understand why I’m so obsessed with APIs. Sometimes I ask the same question. When I began in 2010, it was 75% about my belief in the good that APIs can do, and 25% about pushin...
After seven years of telling stories on API Evangelist I’ve had to repeat myself from time to time. Honestly, I repeat myself A LOT. Hopefully I do it in a way that some of you don’t notice, or at...
I was having one of my regular calls with the Tyk team as part of our partnership, discussing what they are up to these days. I’m always looking to understand their road map, and see where I can d...
This post is from the latest copy of my API Evangelist API Design Industry Guide, which provides a high level look at the API design layer of the industry. Providing a quick look at the services, ...
I know people don’t understand why I’m so obsessed with APIs. Sometimes I ask the same question. When I began in 2010, it was 75% about my belief in the good that APIs can do, and 25% about pushin...
After seven years of telling stories on API Evangelist I’ve had to repeat myself from time to time. Honestly, I repeat myself A LOT. Hopefully I do it in a way that some of you don’t notice, or at...
This post is from the latest copy of my API Evangelist API Design Industry Guide, which provides a high level look at the API design layer of the industry. Providing a quick look at the services, ...
I was hanging out with my friend Mike Amundsen (@mamund) in Colorado last month and we ended up discussing folks uncertainty with APIs. You see, many folks that he has been talking to were extreme...
This post is from the latest copy of my API Evangelist API Design Industry Guide, which provides a high level look at the API design layer of the industry. Providing a quick look at the services, ...
We are getting closer to APIStrat in Portland, Oregon, October 31st through November 2nd. So I’m going to keep crafting stories that help convince you should be there. It is the first APIStrat con...
You hear a lot about doing APIs at scale in our space. Many folks dismiss web APIs because they feel they won’t scale, and aren’t performing at the scale they envision. The majority of these discu...
This post is from the latest copy of my API Evangelist API Design Industry Guide, which provides a high level look at the API design layer of the industry. Providing a quick look at the services, ...
I had a scare this last weekend regarding my Github infrastructure. My Github organization for API Evangelist was flagged as SPAM and taken down. The Github organization contains almost 100 reposi...
I am spending a lot of time lately thinking about event sourcing, evented architecture, real time, and webhooks. I’m revisiting some of the existing aspects of how we move our bits around the Inte...
I’m encountering more API providers who have performance and scalability concerns with their APIs, who are making technical procurement decisions (gateways, proxies, etc) based upon these challeng...
You hear a lot about doing APIs at scale in our space. Many folks dismiss web APIs because they feel they won’t scale, and aren’t performing at the scale they envision. The majority of these discu...
I’m encountering more API providers who have performance and scalability concerns with their APIs, who are making technical procurement decisions (gateways, proxies, etc) based upon these challeng...
This post is from the latest copy of my API Evangelist API Design Industry Guide, which provides a high level look at the API design layer of the industry. Providing a quick look at the services, ...
I’m slowly learning more about Kafka, and the other messaging and data streaming solutions gaining traction in the API space. If you aren’t on the Kafka train yet, “Kafka is used for building real...
Amazon Web Services recently updated their billing for EC2 instances to be by the second, which I really like, because I’ll fire up an instance and run for minutes, then shut things down. I’m just...
When I started API Evangelist in 2010, API usage in mobile phones was the biggest factor contributing to me quitting my job, and becoming a independent voice for all APIs. I was being asked to del...
I know that I make some tech companies nervous. They see me as being unpredictable, with no guarantees regarding what I will say, in a world where the message should be tightly controlled. I feel ...
I’m slowly learning more about Kafka, and the other messaging and data streaming solutions gaining traction in the API space. If you aren’t on the Kafka train yet, “Kafka is used for building real...
I know that I make some tech companies nervous. They see me as being unpredictable, with no guarantees regarding what I will say, in a world where the message should be tightly controlled. I feel ...
When I started API Evangelist in 2010, API usage in mobile phones was the biggest factor contributing to me quitting my job, and becoming a independent voice for all APIs. I was being asked to del...
I’ve been struggling to get the latest edition of my industry guides out the door. I have a new Adobe Indesign format which I really like as a constraint, but is also pushing my desktop publishing...
I’m a member of the OpenAPI Iniative (OAI). I’m not very active on the governance or marketing, but I enjoy hanging out in the hallways of the Slack channel, and being part of the conversation. I’...
I was taking a fresh look at my real time API research as part of some data streaming, and event sourcing conversations I was having last week. My research areas are never perfect, but I’d say tha...
I have been having more conversations with federal agencies as part of my work with my Skylight partners about API related microconsulting. One recent conversation, which I won’t mention the agenc...
I’m regularly working to make APIs more accessible to non-developers, and Zapier is the #1 way I do this. Zapier provides ready-to-go API integration recipes for over 750 APIs, providing IFTTT-lik...
I’m regularly working to make APIs more accessible to non-developers, and Zapier is the #1 way I do this. Zapier provides ready-to-go API integration recipes for over 750 APIs, providing IFTTT-lik...
I know that catering to the enterprise is where the money is at. I know that playing with all the cool new containerized, event sourcing, continuously integrated and deployed solutions are where y...
A regularly question I get from business folks out in the space, is regarding where they should start with APIs. My world is usually broke into two areas: 1) Providing APIs, and 2) Consuming APIs....
I was talking to my friends TC2027 Computer and Information Security class at Tec de Monterrey via a Google hangout today, and one of the questions I got was around managing API sessions using JWT...
API management was the first area of my research I started tracking on in 2010, and has been the seed for the 85+ areas of the API lifecycle I’m tracking on in 2017. It was a necessary vehicle for...
I am always surprised at the folks who I meet for the first time who automatically assume I’m all about the REST. It is always something that is more telling about the way they see the world (or d...
Darrel Miller has a thought provoking post on OpenAPI not being what he thought, shining a light on a very important dimension of what OpenAPI does, and doesn’t do in the API space. In my experien...
API management was the first area of my research I started tracking on in 2010, and has been the seed for the 85+ areas of the API lifecycle I’m tracking on in 2017. It was a necessary vehicle for...
I was talking to my friends TC2027 Computer and Information Security class at Tec de Monterrey via a Google hangout today, and one of the questions I got was around managing API sessions using JWT...
I am picking up some of my past work, so that I can move forward in a new way. A while ago, I began working on my subway map API to help me articulate aspects of the API lifecycle, and provide a “...
I am spending two days this week with the Capital One DevExchange team outside of Washington DC, and they’ve provided me with a list of questions for one of our sessions, which they will be record...
I am spending two days this week with the Capital One DevExchange team outside of Washington DC, and they’ve provided me with a list of questions for one of our sessions, which they will be record...
I am spending two days this week with the Capital One DevExchange team outside of Washington DC, and they’ve provided me with a list of questions for one of our sessions, which they will be record...
I am spending two days this week with the Capital One DevExchange team outside of Washington DC, and they’ve provided me with a list of questions for one of our sessions, which they will be record...
I am picking up some of my past work, so that I can move forward in a new way. A while ago, I began working on my subway map API to help me articulate aspects of the API lifecycle, and provide a “...
I am spending two days this week with the Capital One DevExchange team outside of Washington DC, and they’ve provided me with a list of questions for one of our sessions, which they will be record...
I am spending two days this week with the Capital One DevExchange team outside of Washington DC, and they’ve provided me with a list of questions for one of our sessions, which they will be record...
I am spending two days this week with the Capital One DevExchange team outside of Washington DC, and they’ve provided me with a list of questions for one of our sessions, which they will be record...
I am spending two days this week with the Capital One DevExchange team outside of Washington DC, and they’ve provided me with a list of questions for one of our sessions, which they will be record...
I am spending two days this week with the Capital One DevExchange team outside of Washington DC, and they’ve provided me with a list of questions for one of our sessions, which they will be record...
I am spending two days this week with the Capital One DevExchange team outside of Washington DC, and they’ve provided me with a list of questions for one of our sessions, which they will be record...
I am spending two days this week with the Capital One DevExchange team outside of Washington DC, and they’ve provided me with a list of questions for one of our sessions, which they will be record...
I am spending two days this week with the Capital One DevExchange team outside of Washington DC, and they’ve provided me with a list of questions for one of our sessions, which they will be record...
I am spending two days this week with the Capital One DevExchange team outside of Washington DC, and they’ve provided me with a list of questions for one of our sessions, which they will be record...
I am spending two days this week with the Capital One DevExchange team outside of Washington DC, and they’ve provided me with a list of questions for one of our sessions, which they will be record...
I am spending two days this week with the Capital One DevExchange team outside of Washington DC, and they’ve provided me with a list of questions for one of our sessions, which they will be recor...
I am spending two days this week with the Capital One DevExchange team outside of Washington DC, and they’ve provided me with a list of questions for one of our sessions, which they will be record...
I wrote an piece earlier today about not fearing AI, but possessing a significant amount of concern when it comes to the people behind. I figured I’d continue with the trend on this Friday afterno...
Our team at a hackathon I’m participating in this week is working on a data aggregation tool for helping merge multiple hurrican shelter data sources from Irma in Florida. While the need for the d...
There is a lot of FUD out there when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). The tech press enjoy yanking people’s chain when it comes to the dangers of artificial inte...
We are putting the finishing touches on the schedule for APIStrat in Portland, OR, October 31st through November 2nd. We have all the workshops, sessions, and keynotes dialed in (not all keynotes ...
Our team at a hackathon I’m participating in this week is working on a data aggregation tool for helping merge multiple hurrican shelter data sources from Irma in Florida. While the need for the d...
We are putting the finishing touches on the schedule for APIStrat in Portland, OR, October 31st through November 2nd. We have all the workshops, sessions, and keynotes dialed in (not all keynotes ...
I’m participating in a hackathon in Princeton, New Jersey as part of my work on the Human Services Data API (HSDA). We are at a large enterprise financial group’s office, as part of a three day so...
I got on the New York Subway today heading for Penn Station to catch a train (New Jersey Transit) out to Princeton for a hackathon. As I was navigating my way through Metropolitan Transit Authorit...
I am investing more time into my Schema.org work, alongside my learning about OpenAPI 3.0. I’m pretty excited about the components object, and I want to push forward some of my Schema.org dictiona...
I’ve been doing my regular trolling of Github lately, looking for anything interesting. I came across a repository this week that contained JSON Schema for Kubernetes. Something that is interestin...
I’ve written about VersionEye a couple of times. They help you monitor the 3rd party code you use, keeping an eye on dependencies, license violations, and security issues. I’ve written about the l...
I am continuing my learning about Webhooks, and Github keeps my notebook full with interesting building blocks we can use when crafting our own webhook strategies. I’m not using everything I’m lea...
Every aspect of my business runs as either YAML or JSON. This blog post is YAML stored on Github, viewed as HTML using Jekyll. All the companies, services, tooling, building blocks, patents, and o...
I’ve been setting aside time to browse through and explore tagged projects on Github each week, learning about what is new and trending out there on the Githubz. It is a great way to explore what ...
There were a number of changes made to the structure of Open API in the move to version 3.0 that I am a fan of, but if I had to point at a single seismic shift that I think will move the conversat...
The Office Of Inspector General for US Postal Service published an audit report on the federal agencies API strategy, which has opened their eyes to the potential of API management, and the direct...
The Office Of Inspector General for US Postal Service published an audit report on the federal agencies API strategy, which has opened their eyes to the potential of API management, and the direct...
Every aspect of my business runs as either YAML or JSON. This blog post is YAML stored on Github, viewed as HTML using Jekyll. All the companies, services, tooling, building blocks, patents, and o...
I’m just coming out of a sprint for my Human Services Data API (HSDA) work. Throughout the process of gathering feedback across emails, Slack Channels, and Github Issues, and trying to decide wher...
I wrote about this in a mean way during my rant week, but I wanted to bring up the topic of education and training when it comes to APIs in a more constructive way this week. Amidst the regular re...
I’m working on v1.2 of my Human Sevices Data API (HSDA), and with this wave of work I’m making sue there is a functional API for validating all JSON that gets posted as the body in requests, as we...
I have been working on the next version of the Human Services Data API (HSDA) OpenAPI lately, taking all the comments from the Github repository, and pushing forward the specification as far as I ...
I have been working on the next version of the Human Services Data API (HSDA) OpenAPI lately, taking all the comments from the Github repository, and pushing forward the specification as far as I ...
I wrote about this in a mean way during my rant week, but I wanted to bring up the topic of education and training when it comes to APIs in a more constructive way this week. Amidst the regular re...
There are a number of API service and tooling providers that I still get excited about in the space. 3Scale, Restlet, Runscope, and Tyk - to begin with my sponsors! ;-) ;-) ;-) However, there are ...
If you have followed my work in the API space you know that I consider myself an API storyteller before I ever would an API evangelist, architect, or the other skills I bring to the table. Telling...
There are many details of doing APIs you don’t think about until you either a) gain the experience from doing APIs, or b) learn from the API providers already in the space. When you are just getti...
I’m keeping an eye on the AWS Marketplace, as well as what Azure and Google are up to, looking for growing signs of anything API. I’d have to say that, while Azure is in close second, that AWS is ...
There are a number of API service and tooling providers that I still get excited about in the space. 3Scale, Restlet, Runscope, and Tyk - to begin with my sponsors! ;-) ;-) ;-) However, there are ...
If you have followed my work in the API space you know that I consider myself an API storyteller before I ever would an API evangelist, architect, or the other skills I bring to the table. Telling...
I was brainstorming with Shelby Switzer (@switzerly) yesterday around potential projects for upcoming events we are attending, looking for interesting ideas we can push forward, and one of the ide...
I am currently crafting a set of services as part of my Human Sevices Data API (API) work. The core set of services for organizations, locations, and services are grouped together as a single serv...
I’m gearing up for a conversation about the next edition of the FOIA API, and in preparation I’ve created an OpenAPI definition to help guide the conversation, which I drafted based upon the speci...
Today’s stories are all based around my preparation for providing some feedback on the next edition of the FOIA.gov API. I have a call with the project team, and want to provide ongoing feedback, ...
I am currently crafting a set of services as part of my Human Sevices Data API (API) work. The core set of services for organizations, locations, and services are grouped together as a single serv...
I’m gearing up for a conversation about the next edition of the FOIA API, and in preparation I’ve created an OpenAPI definition to help guide the conversation, which I drafted based upon the speci...
I am at that all too familiar place with a project where I am having to decide whether I want to build what I need, or depend on an API service provider. As an engineer it is always easy to think ...
I was creating a very light-weight API management solution for one of my projects the other day, and I wanted to give my API consumers a quick and dirty way to begin making calls against the API. ...
I consume a huge amount of blog and Twitter feeds each week. I evaluate the stories published by major tech blogs, cloud providers, and individual API providers. In my work there is a significant ...
I have been working on the next version of my human services work, which provides a way for cities to make information about organizations, locations, and services available on the web. Part of th...
I have been working on the next version of my human services work, which provides a way for cities to make information about organizations, locations, and services available on the web. Part of th...
I consume a huge amount of blog and Twitter feeds each week. I evaluate the stories published by major tech blogs, cloud providers, and individual API providers. In my work there is a significant ...
I was reading a story on GraphQL this weekend which I won’t be linking to or citing because that is what they want, and they do not deserve the attention, that was just (yet) another hating on RES...
I am a big fan of Jekyll, the static content management system (CMS). All of API Evangelist runs as hundreds of little Jekyll driven Github repositories, in a sort of microservices concert, allowi...
I think I freaked a couple of folks out last week, so I wanted to take a moment and remind folks that API Evangelist is a performance. Sure, it is rooted in my personality, and I keep it as true t...
With such a dark week of blog posts last week I wanted to make sure and start this week off with a brighter post, talking about the good I see in the API space. It can be easy to find than some of...
I am a big fan of Jekyll, the static content management system (CMS). All of API Evangelist runs as hundreds of little Jekyll driven Github repositories, in a sort of microservices concert, allowi...
I know many of you are thinking Kin Lane has lost his marbles (again). In reality, I lost them last week for a couple days because someone really pissed me off, then after a couple more folks piss...
Don’t who know who I am? I am the API Evangelist. Ok, I know this post is dripping with ego. However, it is the last post in my week of API rants, and I’m just pumped from writing all of these. Th...
You know your API stuff. You know it so well, you don’t even need to look at other APIs. There is no reason to Google and look for other APIs because your stuff is that good. Your idea came to you...
I know you are used to people telling you that you are creative, and your ideas are great, but I’m here to tell you they aren’t. You lack any imagination, creativity, or sensibility when it comes ...
You know your API stuff. You know it so well, you don’t even need to look at other APIs. There is no reason to Google and look for other APIs because your stuff is that good. Your idea came to you...
I know you are used to people telling you that you are creative, and your ideas are great, but I’m here to tell you they aren’t. You lack any imagination, creativity, or sensibility when it comes ...
I know many of you are thinking Kin Lane has lost his marbles (again). In reality, I lost them last week for a couple days because someone really pissed me off, then after a couple more folks piss...
Don’t who know who I am? I am the API Evangelist. Ok, I know this post is dripping with ego. However, it is the last post in my week of API rants, and I’m just pumped from writing all of these. Th...
Your API service is the next big thing. It is something that every API provider will be needing, and you are confident it will be something that makes the API management space look like a momentar...
Just admit it, you could care less about your API consumers. You are just playing this whole API game because you read somewhere that this is what everyone should be doing now. You figured you can...
A growing number of SMBs, SMEs, and other institutions, organizations, and government agencies are launching APIs, but the age APIs as the core product will thin, and those that do emerge and oper...
People love to point out that APIs are unreliable. You can’t depend on them. They go away at any point, and they just aren’t something you want to be building your business on top of. When in real...
Just admit it, you could care less about your API consumers. You are just playing this whole API game because you read somewhere that this is what everyone should be doing now. You figured you can...
We tend to look at APIs as something we opt into. As an API consumer we choose to integrate with these external APIs. We made a conscious decision to put an API to work. We navigate our way to the...
I get regular emails from folks telling me how much they love what I do, then asking me to work for free. I’m totally happy for folks to inform me about their company, products, case studies, and ...
I’m really honored that some of my partners are kind enough to offer me a piece of the action in their companies, in exchange for what I do. I really am. However, going forward I’m going to have t...
I am the first to admit that I suck at the money game. I just don’t care. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve made a significant amount of money in my career, and command a phat six figure salary when I’ve d...
I spend a lot of time defending my space as the API Evangelist. I’ve had lengthy battles with folks in the comments of my blog for defending women, charging for my services, being pay for play, ha...
I get regular emails from folks telling me how much they love what I do, then asking me to work for free. I’m totally happy for folks to inform me about their company, products, case studies, and ...
I am the first to admit that I suck at the money game. I just don’t care. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve made a significant amount of money in my career, and command a phat six figure salary when I’ve d...
I spend a lot of time defending my space as the API Evangelist. I’ve had lengthy battles with folks in the comments of my blog for defending women, charging for my services, being pay for play, ha...
You are full steam ahead with your microservices campaign. You’ve read Martin Fowlers blog post, and talked about the topic with your team for the last six months. After a couple pilot projects, y...
You just got three separate calls, and countless emails alerting to the fact that you just had a major security breach. You don’t know the extent of the damage yet, but it looks like they got into...
You are in a sweet spot. You got a fat six figure job in the coolest department of your company, building out your API platform. You have a decent budget (never as much as you want) to throw hacka...
I know that many of you are insecure about your APIs. You aren’t transparent with your numbers, and many aspects of your API operations. You are stressed out because you built it, and nobody came....
I know that many of you are insecure about your APIs. You aren’t transparent with your numbers, and many aspects of your API operations. You are stressed out because you built it, and nobody came....
You just got three separate calls, and countless emails alerting to the fact that you just had a major security breach. You don’t know the extent of the damage yet, but it looks like they got into...
You hear a lot of discussion regarding public API vs private API. From my vantage point there is only web APIs that use public DNS, but I find that folks hung up on the separation usually have man...
I know many of you read my blog for the valuable nuggets of information extracted from my regular research into the world of APIs. I spend a great deal of time sifting through very boring, mundane...
This API operations consideration won’t apply to every API, but for APIs that provide essential resources in a time of need, I wanted to highlight an API rate limit cry for help that came across m...
I found myself looped into another API patent situation. I’m going to write this up as I would any other patent story, then I will go deeper because of my deeper personal connection to this one, b...
This API operations consideration won’t apply to every API, but for APIs that provide essential resources in a time of need, I wanted to highlight an API rate limit cry for help that came across m...
I know many of you read my blog for the valuable nuggets of information extracted from my regular research into the world of APIs. I spend a great deal of time sifting through very boring, mundane...
Counties across the State of California are scrambling to get everything in order now that marijuana is legal, and the 3rd party vendors working with the state are using an API to try and bridge t...
I am preparing a training section of my API Evangelist research, and part of the process involves learning about what other API providers and API service providers are up to in this area. On my li...
I was reading about how Carbon Black, an endpoint detection and response (EDR) service, was exposing customer data via a 3r party API service they were using. The endpoint detection and response p...
Tony Tam, the creator of the OpenAPI specification, formerly known as Swagger, has announced he will be exiting his role at OAI and SmartBear. Tony says the specification is in good hands with Ron...
I was doing some more work on my list of potential female speakers from the API space. I have some slots to fill for @APIStrat, and I saw another API event was looking for suggestions when it came...
I was doing some webhooks research as part of my human services work and I found myself studying the types of events used as part of webhook orchestration for Github, Box, Stripe, and Slack. Each ...
I was in Colorado this last week at a CA internal gathering listening to my friend Erik Wilde talking about APIs. One concept he touched on was what he called API gardening, where different types ...
Deploying an API is an interesting concept that I’ve noticed folks struggle with a little bit when I bring it up. My research into API deployment was born back in 2011 and 2012 when my readers wou...
The more I learn about the world of APIs, the more I understand how technology, business, and politics are all woven together into one often immovable monolith. Many things in the world of APIs se...
I stumbled across the Patent Application Information Retrieval Bulk Data API from the US Patent Office the other day. It provides a much more usable approach to getting at patent information than ...
It isn’t often that I make up acronyms, terms, or phrases. For a number of years I pushed forward the concept of API reciprocity, but eventually conceded to the notion of integration platform as a...
Earlier this week at the CA API Academy virtual gathering I spoke at in Boulder CO, the question around why there aren’t more API focused agencies came up. We were talking about the need for consu...
Earlier this week at the CA API Academy virtual gathering I spoke at in Boulder CO, the question around why there aren’t more API focused agencies came up. We were talking about the need for consu...
I am preparing a talk for tomorrow, and I needed a new list of each stop along the API lifecycle, and since each of my project exist as Github repositories, and are defined as a YAML and JSON data ...
I have been studying the approach of a variety of webhook implementations in preparation for an API consulting project I’m working on. Even though I’m very familiar with how webhooks works, and co...
I am an API storyteller before am an API architect, designer, or evangelist. My number one job is to tell stories about the API space. I make sure there is always (almost) 3-5 stories a day publis...
I’m working on a number of API courses and lessons lately. Some of these are API 101 courses, while others are more advanced courses for the seasoned API provider, and consumer. As I think about w...
I am preparing a talk for tomorrow, and I needed a new list of each stop along the API lifecycle, and since each of my project exist as Github repositories, and are defined as a YAML and JSON data ...
I’m working on a number of API courses and lessons lately. Some of these are API 101 courses, while others are more advanced courses for the seasoned API provider, and consumer. As I think about w...
I spend a lot of time monitoring API platforms, thinking about different ways of identifying which ones are taking control of the conversation around how their platforms operate. One example of thi...
I was looking at the set of security APIs over at Elasticsearch as I was diving into my API security research recently. I thought the areas they provide security APIs for the search platform was w...
I am getting to work on a base set of webhook specification for my human services data API work, and I wanted to take a fresh drive through a handful of the leading APIs I’m tracking on. I’m needi...
Part of the feedback I’ve received from the Human Services Data API (HSDA) evolution from v1.0 to v1.1 was that the API didn’t allow for volume or bulk GET, POST, PUT, or DELETE. This was intentio...
I spend a lot of time monitoring API platforms, thinking about different ways of identifying which ones are taking control of the conversation around how their platforms operate. One example of thi...
I was looking at the set of security APIs over at Elasticsearch as I was diving into my API security research recently. I thought the areas they provide security APIs for the search platform was w...
The Human Services Data API I have been working on is about defining a set of API paths for working with organizations, locations, and services that are delivering human services in cities around ...
I’ve been looking at my human services API work through a microservices lens, triggered by the deployment of a reduced functionality version of the human services implementation I was working on t...
The discussion around whether or not you should be hosting your own questions and answers (QA) and frequently asked questions (FAQ) for your API has continued, with many of the leading API pioneer...
I was on a call the other day with a group of people who are in the trenches of organizations and companies working hard to deliver human services in cities around the country. We were meeting to ...
I was on a call the other day with a group of people who are in the trenches of organizations and companies working hard to deliver human services in cities around the country. We were meeting to ...
The discussion around whether or not you should be hosting your own questions and answers (QA) and frequently asked questions (FAQ) for your API has continued, with many of the leading API pioneer...
I have been reading through a number of specifications lately, trying to get more up to speed on what standards are available for me to choose from when designing APIs. Next up on my list is Link ...
I’m going to borrow, modify, and improve on the content from api.data.gov, because it is an important effort I want my readers to be aware of, because I want more of them to help apply educate oth...
I have been studying JSON Home, trying to understand how it sizes up to APIs.json, and other formats I’m tracking on like Pivio. JSON Home has a number of interesting features, and I thought one of...
I went up to San Francisco on Wednesday to participate in a social good hack day at Optimizely. They held their event at their downtown offices, where 20+ employees showed up to hack on some socia...
I went up to San Francisco on Wednesday to participate in a social good hack day at Optimizely. They held their event at their downtown offices, where 20+ employees showed up to hack on some socia...
I have been slowly evolving my network of websites in 2017, overhauling the look of them, as well as how they function. I am investing cycles into pushing as much of my infrastructure towards bein...
The main reason that I tend to rail against API specific patents is that much of what I see being locks up reflects the parts and pieces that are making the web work. I see things like hypermedia,...
A regular thing I hear from folks when we are having conversations about the API lifecycle, is that I focus on public APIs, and they are more interested in private APIs. Each time I hear this I tr...
I’m looking into how to make API security more transparent and observable lately, and looking for examples of companies, institutions, organizations, politicians, and the government are calling f...
A regular thing I hear from folks when we are having conversations about the API lifecycle, is that I focus on public APIs, and they are more interested in private APIs. Each time I hear this I tr...
I was reading the Open by Default Portal Procurement Pilot for the Treasury Board of Canada, where section 6, Licensing states: “To support the objectives of the open government initiative, the So...
I was reading about GOSINT, the open source intelligence gathering and processing framework over at Cisco. “GOSINT allows a security analyst to collect and standardize structured and unstructured ...
I’m always on the hunt for healthy patterns that I would like to see API providers, and API service providers consider when crafting their own strategies. It’s what I do as the API Evangelist. Fin...
Over the years I have regularly showcased Twitter as an example API driven embeddable tools like buttons, badges, and widgets. In 2017, after spending some time in the Twitter developer portal, it...
I was reading the Open by Default Portal Procurement Pilot for the Treasury Board of Canada, where section 6, Licensing states: “To support the objectives of the open government initiative, the So...
I was reading about GOSINT, the open source intelligence gathering and processing framework over at Cisco. “GOSINT allows a security analyst to collect and standardize structured and unstructured ...
I found a couple more API patents in my notebook that I wanted to get published. I try to take time regularly to publish the strangest API related patents I can find. Today’s patent is out of Amaz...
I am spending a significant amount of time reading RFCs lately. I find the documents to be very cumbersome to read, but the more you read, the more tolerant you become. When I browse through RFCs ...
I don’t have any production experience deploying JSON Web Tokens (JWT), but it has been something I’ve been reading up on, and staying in tune with for some time. I often reference JWT as the lead...
A topic that keeps coming up in discussions with my partner in crime Audrey Watters (@audreywatters) about our podcast is around the future of labor in an API world. I have not written anything ab...
I have my own URL shortener for API Evangelist called apis.how. I use it to track the click through rates for some of my research projects, and partner sponsorships. I’ve had the URL shortener in ...
A topic that keeps coming up in discussions with my partner in crime Audrey Watters (@audreywatters) about our podcast is around the future of labor in an API world. I have not written anything ab...
I found a couple more API patents in my notebook that I wanted to get published. I try to take time regularly to publish the strangest API related patents I can find. Today’s patent is out of Amaz...
I have my own URL shortener for API Evangelist called apis.how. I use it to track the click through rates for some of my research projects, and partner sponsorships. I’ve had the URL shortener in ...
I am spending a significant amount of time reading RFCs lately. I find the documents to be very cumbersome to read, but the more you read, the more tolerant you become. When I browse through RFCs ...
I don’t have any production experience deploying JSON Web Tokens (JWT), but it has been something I’ve been reading up on, and staying in tune with for some time. I often reference JWT as the lead...
I’m rarely surprised by, but still often caught off guard by the subtle ways in which power asserts itself when faced with change the introduced by API projects. In my 30 years as a database profe...
I was reading about the difficulties the City of New York was having when it comes to migrating off of the Palantir platform, while also reading about the latest cybersecurity drama involving rans...
I am trying to help push forward the conversation around the API definition for the Human Services Data Specification (HSDS) in a constructive way amidst a number of competing interests. I was han...
I was playing around with the Style Thief, an image transfer API from Algorithmia, and I noticed the citation for the algorithm behind. The API is an adaptation of Anish Athalye’s Neural Style Tra...
I was reading about the difficulties the City of New York was having when it comes to migrating off of the Palantir platform, while also reading about the latest cybersecurity drama involving rans...
I’m neck deep into my assessment of the world of API security this week, a process which always yields plenty of random thoughts, which end up becoming stories here on the blog. One aspect of API ...
I was learning about Pivio, a discovery specification for microservices the other day, and found their focus on microservice dependency to be pretty interesting. API dependencies has been an area I...
I spend a lot of time trying out new APIs, working to understand what it is they do, or do not do. I have a pretty robust way of looking at APIs, profiling the company, and the APIs they offer, bu...
I spend a lot of time trying out new APIs, working to understand what it is they do, or do not do. I have a pretty robust way of looking at APIs, profiling the company, and the APIs they offer, bu...
I was learning about Pivio, a discovery specification for microservices the other day, and found their focus on microservice dependency to be pretty interesting. API dependencies has been an area I...
I’m continuing my integration platform as a service (iPaaS) research, understanding how API providers are quickly integration with other platform, I am also looking into how API service providers ...
I’m spending a significant amount of time learning about machine learning APIs lately. Some of what I’m reading is easy to follow, while most of it is not. A good deal of what I’m reading is techn...
I’m continuing my integration platform as a service (iPaaS) research, understanding how API providers are quickly integration with other platform, I am also looking into how API service providers ...
I’m have finally dedicated some time to learning more about Home Documents for HTTP APIs, or simply JSON Home. I see JSON Home as a nice way to bring together the technical components for an API, ...
I was learning about the microservices discovery specification Pivio, which is a schema for framing the conversation, but also an uploader, search, and web interface for managing a collection of m...
I’m finally feeling the ground move in the area of API discovery a little bit. It is an area I’m perpetually trying to create my own seismic activity with APIs.json, but it always makes me happy t...
I’m spending a significant amount of time learning about machine learning APIs lately. Some of what I’m reading is easy to follow, while most of it is not. A good deal of what I’m reading is techn...
APIMetrics has a pretty addictive map showing the performance of API calls between multiple cloud providers, spanning many global regions. The cloud location latency map “shows relative performance...
I was learning about real-time bidding transparency using Ads.txt from Lukasz Olejnik. The mission of the ads.txt project is to “increase transparency in the programmatic advertising ecosystem. Ad...
I am taking a deeper look at Open311, as part of some wider municipal level API research and development I am doing. I am going to be helping evolve an OpenAPI for the project, as well as JSON sche...
I am continuing my integration platform as a service research, and spending a little bit of time trying to understand how API providers are offering up integrations with other APIs. Along the way,...
I am continuing my integration platform as a service research, and spending a little bit of time trying to understand how API providers are offering up integrations with other APIs. Along the way,...
I wrote about the opportunity around developing an aggregate threat information API, and got some interest in both creating, as well as investing in some of the resulting products and services tha...
I was looking through a number of federal government API implementations last week in preparation of a talk I did in Washington DC. The result of research like this is always a notebook full of in...
I have been watching VersionEye for a while now. If you aren’t familiar, they provide a service that will notify you of security vulnerabilities, license violations and out-dated dependencies in y...
I recently wrote about the opportunity around developing an aggregate threat information API, and got some interest in both creating, as well as investing in some of the resulting products and ser...
I recently wrote about the opportunity around developing an aggregate threat information API, and got some interest in both creating, as well as investing in some of the resulting products and ser...
I wrote about the GSA API prototype the other day. It is an API prototype developed by the GSA, providing an API that is designed in alignment with GSA API design guidelines, complete with an API ...
I have been immersed in how APIs are being done in the federal government for the last week or so, looking for positive API behavior I can showcase and focus on in my storytelling. I was walking t...
Someone asked me on Twitter recently how I deal the duplicate work required to manage a large volume of OpenAPIs. All the same things you have to do when crafting the headers, parameters, response...
APIs aren’t good, or bad, nor are they neutral. APIs do the bidding of their providers, and sometimes their consumers. In my experience APIs are more often used for bad than they are ever used for...
APIs aren’t good, or bad, nor are they neutral. APIs do the bidding of their providers, and sometimes their consumers. In my experience APIs are more often used for bad than they are ever used for...
This is my talk from Washington DC with Steve Willmott of 3Scale by Red Hat about transforming enterprise IT with containers, APIs, and integration, where I assess the current state of APIs in the ...
As I work my way through almost one hundred federal government API developer portals, almost 500 APIs, and 133 Github accounts for federal agencies the chilling effect of the change of leadership ...
I personally understand the challenges with communicating publicly when you work for the federal government. It is one of the top reasons I do not work in federal government anymore. It would kill...
This isn’t a new drum beat for me, but is one I wanted to pick it up again as part of the federal government research and speaking I’m doing this month. It is regarding the management of APIs acro...
I am working through the almost 100 federal government agency developer portals and the almost 500 APIs that exist across these agencies, looking for the good and bad of APIs in government at this...
I am joining my friend Steve Willmott in DC this week to talk about federal government APIs. We will be gathering at Tysons’ Biergarten between 1:30 and 5:00 PM this Thursday to talk APIs. Both S...
I haven’t written much about APIs in the federal government since the election. I’m still having conversations, and investing time into monitoring what is going on in the federal government, but h...
I have been helping my partner in crime Audrey Watters (@audreywatters) adopt my approach to managing data project(s) using Google Sheets and Github, as part of her work on ed-tech funding. She is...
You ever wake up some days, and find yourself not caring about APIs, or much else in the realm of technology? No? Well, I do. Regularly. I find myself in this headspace on this fine Monday morning...
With my recent shift to using Google Sheets as my data backend for my research, and my continued usage of Github as my data project publishing platform, I started pushing out some new API related ...
I wrote about the opportunity around developing an aggregate threat information API, and got some interest in both creating, as well as investing in some of the resulting products and services tha...
I wrote a story about Twitter allowing users to check or uncheck a box regarding sharing data with select Twitter partners. While I am happy to see this move from Twitter, I feel the concept of in...
I’ve been pushing forward conversations around my Human Services Data API (HSDA) work lately, and hitting some friction with folks around the finer technical details of the API. I feel the frictio...
I wrote about the opportunity around developing an aggregate threat information API, and got some interest in both creating, as well as investing in some of the resulting products and services tha...
I wrote a story about Twitter allowing users to check or uncheck a box regarding sharing data with select Twitter partners. While I am happy to see this move from Twitter, I feel the concept of in...
I’ve been pushing forward conversations around my Human Services Data API (HSDA) work lately, and hitting some friction with folks around the finer technical details of the API. I feel the frictio...
I was responding to Jean-Philippe M. (@jpmonette) tweet regarding whether or not I had moved forward my auto generation of OpenAPIs from traffic captured by Charles Proxy. It is one of many featur...
I had a friend ask me for my thoughts on bots. It is a space I tend to rant about frequently, but isn’t an area I’m moving forward any meaningful research in, but it does seem to keep coming up an...
Github is releasing an update to their platform Terms of Service and Corporate Terms of Service. Guess what platform their are using to manage the evolution, and release of their terms of service?...
I’m always watching out for how existing API providers are shifting up their support strategies in their communities as part of my work. This means staying into tune with their communications, whi...
I’m always watching out for how existing API providers are shifting up their support strategies in their communities as part of my work. This means staying into tune with their communications, whi...
I’m getting some investment from ElasticBeam to turn up the volume on my API security research, so I will be telling more stories on the subject, and publishing an industry guide, as well as a whi...
There are many good things to come out of doing APIs properly. Unfortunately there are also many bad things that can come out of doing APIs badly, or with misaligned expectations. It is easy to fo...
I’m continuing to come across more dedicated integration pages for the API platforms I’m test driving, and keeping an eye on. This time it is out of spreadsheet and database hybrid AirTable, that ...
While I track on what is going on with visualizations generated from data, I haven’t seen much when it comes to API driven visualizations, or specifically visualization about API infrastructure, t...
There are many good things to come out of doing APIs properly. Unfortunately there are also many bad things that can come out of doing APIs badly, or with misaligned expectations. It is easy to fo...
While I track on what is going on with visualizations generated from data, I haven’t seen much when it comes to API driven visualizations, or specifically visualization about API infrastructure, t...
Yet another reason to be making sure Zapier is part of your API operations–issue management. Zapier is now providing an important window into how people are integrating with your API(s)–now any pu...
I was learning more about CODEX, from Algorithmia, their enterprise platform for deploying machine learning API collections on premise or in the cloud. Algorithmia is taking the platform in which ...
I created a diagram of the politics of APIs sometime ago that has really held true for me, and is something I’ve continue to reference as part of my storytelling. I wanted to do a similar thing to ...
It takes a lot of work provide a reliable API that people can depend on. Something your consumers can trust, and will provide them with consistent, stable, meaningful, and expected behavior. There...
I know that some of my friends who follow API Evangelist shake their heads when I talk about API business models, partner programs, and many of the business sides of API operations. Much of my wor...
I lightly keep an eye on the world of bots, as APIs are used to create them. In my work I see a lot of noise about bots usually in two main camps: 1) pro-bot - bots are the future, and 2) anti-bot...
I had recently taken the Human Services Data Specification (HSDS) and exposed it as a set of API paths that provide access to about 95% of the schema, which we are calling the Human Services Data ...
I know that some of my friends who follow API Evangelist shake their heads when I talk about API business models, partner programs, and many of the business sides of API operations. Much of my wor...
I have had Amazon Alexa in my cross hairs for some time now. I regularly digest stories about what Amazon is up to with Alexa, but haven’t had the time to think deeply about voice enablement, and ...
I have had Amazon Alexa in my cross hairs for some time now. I regularly digest stories about what Amazon is up to with Alexa, but haven’t had the time to think deeply about voice enablement, and ...
To help quantify the move from version 1.0 to 1.1 of the Human Services Data API (HSDA) definition I took the existing Ohana API and created an OpenAPI definition to describe what was present in v...
I am preparing for the recurring governance meeting for the Open Referral Human Services Data API standard–which I’m the technical lead for. I need to load up every detail of my Human Services Dat...
To help quantify the move from version 1.0 to 1.1 of the Human Services Data API (HSDA) definition I took the existing Ohana API and created an OpenAPI definition to describe what was present in v...
My partner in crime is working on a large data aggregation project regarding ed-tech funding. She is publishing data to Google Sheets, and I’m helping her develop Jekyll templates she can fork and...
I am moving my Human Services Data API (HSDA) work forward and one of the top items on the list to consider as part of the move from version 1.1 to 1.2 is all around the scope of the API design po...
People often learn through example. Before I’d ever consider myself a software engineer, I’d consider myself a reverse software engineer. 93% of what I know has been extracted from the work of oth...
I am spending time going through some of the most relevant APIs I know of online today, working to create some 101 training materials for average folks to take advantage of. I’m looking through th...
People often learn through example. Before I’d ever consider myself a software engineer, I’d consider myself a reverse software engineer. 93% of what I know has been extracted from the work of oth...
My partner in crime is working on a large data aggregation project regarding ed-tech funding. She is publishing data to Google Sheets, and I’m helping her develop Jekyll templates she can fork and...
I see a lot of tools come across my desk each week, and I have to be honest I don’t alway fully get what they are and what they do. There are many reasons why I overlook interesting applications, ...
When you take any Google Sheet and choose to publish it to the web, you immediately get an API. Well, you get the HTML representation of the spreadsheet (shared with the web), and if you know the ...
I was looking at how many of the top mobile applications in the iTunes story actually had a public API presence, and was finding it very telling what came up in the Google search results for each ...
I have been following stories about, as well as personally experiencing DJI restricting where their drones can fly, going beyond just warning you about restricted areas and actually locking down o...
When you take any Google Sheet and choose to publish it to the web, you immediately get an API. Well, you get the HTML representation of the spreadsheet (shared with the web), and if you know the ...
I run the entire front-end of my online presence using Github. All my API Evangelist research lives as open repositories on Github, with the website running Jekyll, hosted on Github Pages. My fron...
My friend Matthew Reinbold, formerly of Vox Pop, and now the Lead for the Capital One API Center of Excellence, as well as the maintainer of web API events has shifted his blogging platform to use...
I first wrote about Iron.io back in 2012. The are an API-first company, and they were the first serverless platform. I’ve known the team since they first reached out back in 2011, and I consider t...
I came across this valuable list of threat intelligence resources and think that the section on information sources should be aggregated and provided as a single threat intelligence API. When I co...
I came across this valuable list of threat intelligence resources and think that the section on information sources should be aggregated and provided as a single threat intelligence API. When I co...
My friend Matthew Reinbold, formerly of Vox Pop, and now the Lead for the Capital One API Center of Excellence, as well as the maintainer of web API events has shifted his blogging platform to use...
In a 30 year career as a database professional I’ve seen some extraordinary ways in which owning and controlling data is associated with power. Those who have the data leverage it against those wh...
In 2017 there seems to be an API for just about everything. You can make products available via an API, messing, images, videos, and any of the digital bits that make up our lives. I still get exc...
I’ve been looking through the ecosystems of banking API platforms trying to understand the technical, business, and political approach of banks when it comes to the API conversation. While Capital...
I have been going through my API virtualization research, expanding the number of companies I’m paying attention to, and taking a look at industry specific sandboxes, mock APIs, and other approach...
I’ve been playing with Apicurio, the open source API design editor I’ve been waiting for, and saw a potential opportunity for design time collaboration, instruction, and feedback loop. When you ar...
I’ve been looking through the ecosystems of banking API platforms trying to understand the technical, business, and political approach of banks when it comes to the API conversation. While Capital...
One question I’m regularly getting from my readers is regarding how you can increase the search engine optimization (SEO) for your APIs–yes, API SEO (acronyms rule)! While we should be investing i...
I’m not a fan of the unfolding bot universe. I get it, you can do interesting things with them–the key word being interesting. Most of what I’ve seen done via Twitter, Facebook, and Slack Bots rea...
I saw a blog post come across my feeds from the analysis and visualizaiton API provider Qlik, about their Qlik Sense API Insights. It is a pretty interesting approach to trying visualize the chang...
I am finally getting the time to invest more into the rest of my API industry guides, which involves deep dives into core areas of my research like API definitions, design, and now deployment. The...
I’m not a fan of the unfolding bot universe. I get it, you can do interesting things with them–the key word being interesting. Most of what I’ve seen done via Twitter, Facebook, and Slack Bots rea...
I have been revisiting my earlier work on an API rating system. One area that keeps coming up as I’m working is around the availability of APIs in a variety of regions, and the cloud platforms tha...
I recently learned that Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has issued guidance regarding the electronic submission of injury and illness records via an API, from an announcement ...
I recently learned that Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has issued guidance regarding the electronic submission of injury and illness records via an API, from an announcement ...
I was reading an informative post about the Twitter Account Activity API, which seems like something that should be the default for ALL platforms. In today’s cyber insecure environment, we should ...
Each one of the 80+ areas of my API Evangelist lifecycle research projects is a single Github repository that I publish JSON or YAML data stores containing the news, organizations, tools, APIs, an...
Each one of the 80+ areas of my API Evangelist lifecycle research projects is a single Github repository that I publish JSON or YAML data stores containing the news, organizations, tools, APIs, an...
I have been revisiting my earlier work on an API rating system. One area that keeps coming up as I’m working is around the availability of APIs in a variety of regions, and the cloud platforms tha...
As I study the world of APIs I am always on the lookout for good examples of APIs in action so that I can tell stories about them, and help influence the way folks do APIs. This is what I do each ...
While working on my feedback to the EFF for the first response to the Oracle v Google API copyright case, one of the stories I published used the restaurant menu as an analogy for API copyright. T...
I was reading about what the Census is doing to prepare for the 2020 census over at GCN. I’ve been invested in what they are doing at Census for some time now, so it makes me happy to see where th...
My friend David Kernohan (@dkernohan) emailed me the other day asking me for some advice on where to get started working with some data APIs he had been introduced to. This is such a common questi...
My friend David Kernohan (@dkernohan) emailed me the other day asking me for some advice on where to get started working with some data APIs he had been introduced to. This is such a common questi...
While working on my feedback to the EFF for the first response to the Oracle v Google API copyright case, one of the stories I published used the restaurant menu as an analogy for API copyright. T...
As I study the world of APIs I am always on the lookout for good examples of APIs in action so that I can tell stories about them, and help influence the way folks do APIs. This is what I do each ...
Jerome Louvel from Restlet introduced me to the Open Service Broker API the other day, a “project allows developers, ISVs, and SaaS vendors a single, simple, and elegant way to deliver services to...
I was reading the post from Runscope on copying environments using their new API. I was looking through the request and response structure for their API, it looks like a pretty good start when it ...
I made my API patent inventory a little more explorable this week, allowing me to more easily discover new and interesting patents that will affect the world of APIs, which I can include in my res...
I’ve been migrating from my own homebrew CMS system over the last couple of weeks, ditching it for a variety of existing services, balancing my operations across a diverse set of platforms I’ve id...
I made my API patent inventory a little more explorable this week, allowing me to more easily discover new and interesting patents that will affect the world of APIs, which I can include in my res...
I was reading the post from Runscope on copying environments using their new API. I was looking through the request and response structure for their API, it looks like a pretty good start when it ...
Along with the growth of industry level API events for machine learning, healthcare, and beyond, I’m starting to see the emergence of more API specific working groups, something I’ve been asking f...
I wrote about a machine learning specific API event a couple weeks back, and today I wanted to highlight the growth of conferences dedicated to FHIR, or the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resour...
As we find ourselves darker times when it comes to transparency within the federal government in the United States, I’m always on the hunt for any positive signs of transparency at the other level...
I was talking to a VC about one of my favorite API upstarts the other day, and one of the closing questions I received was if the API upstart had a secret sauce that made their position defensible...
I was talking to a VC about one of my favorite API upstarts the other day, and one of the closing questions I received was if the API upstart had a secret sauce that made their position defensible...
I am a big fan of Jekyll and Github when it comes to managing data-driven projects. All of my research runs on Github, and I use Jekyll to serve up YAML and JSON representations of my research for...
I’ve already written about how I just don’t like class pricing tiers for API consumption, but I want to keep beating this drum until service providers hear what I’m singing. I think pricing tiers ...
I’ve already written about how I just don’t like class pricing tiers for API consumption, but I want to keep beating this drum until service providers hear what I’m singing. I think pricing tiers ...
Here is another patent in my series of API related patents. I’d file this in the category as the other similar one from IBM–Patent US 8954988: Automated Assessment of Terms of Service in an API Ma...
I am spending more time thinking about the unknown unknowns when it comes to API security. This means thinking beyond the usual suspects when thinking about API security like encryption, API keys,...
My friends over at Algorithmia are up to some good things–making their algorithms available within a spreadsheet. Algorithmia has created a set of open source scripts and walkthrough to help you i...
Security is the number one concern companies, organizations, institutions, and government agencies have when I’m talking with them about doing APIs. Strangely it is also one of the most deficient,...
I am spending more time thinking about the unknown unknowns when it comes to API security. This means thinking beyond the usual suspects when thinking about API security like encryption, API keys,...
Here is another patent in my series of API related patents. I’d file this in the category as the other similar one from IBM–Patent US 8954988: Automated Assessment of Terms of Service in an API Ma...
My friends over at Algorithmia are up to some good things–making their algorithms available within a spreadsheet. Algorithmia has created a set of open source scripts and walkthrough to help you i...
Is this writing? Rural Broadband Mobile Not worth investing Left behind Vote in people who make it worst.
I was taking a look at the Tensorflow Object Detection API, and while I am interested in the object detection, the usage of API is something I find more intriguing. It is yet another example of ho...
I had ditched my phone last year after being with AT&T for just shy of 20 years. Not having a phone made me realize how much you need a phone number to exist online these days. Facebook, Twitt...
I am trying to wrap my head around the next steps in the evolution of API security. I am trying to help separate some of the layers of what we collectively call API security, into some specific bu...
The General Services Administration(GSA) has an API strategy, which describes “GSA’s future direction for agencywide API management including design, development, architecture, operations, and su...
I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what technology does. I read press releases, pitch emails, documentation, and marketing materials trying to get an idea of what is possible. While many ...
I had ditched my phone last year after being with AT&T for just shy of 20 years. Not having a phone made me realize how much you need a phone number to exist online these days. Facebook, Twitt...
I am trying to wrap my head around the next steps in the evolution of API security. I am trying to help separate some of the layers of what we collectively call API security, into some specific bu...
I was taking a look at the Tensorflow Object Detection API, and while I am interested in the object detection, the usage of API is something I find more intriguing. It is yet another example of ho...
Each story I publish about API patents will usually get a comment, Tweet, LinkedIn, or other comments letting me know that the owner of the patent is only doing it in a defensive pattern. I fully ...
Communicating effectively around API operations is the number one illness I see across the API space. Engineers are good at writing code and devopping their way to a usable API, but often fall sho...
The Azure Marketplace has the ability to test drive anything that is deployed in the Azure Marketplace. As someone who has to sign up for an endless number of new accounts to be able to play with ...
I am trying to wrap my head around the next steps in the evolution of API security. I am trying to help separate some of the layers of what we collectively call API security, into some specific bu...
I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what technology does. I read press releases, pitch emails, documentation, and marketing materials trying to get an idea of what is possible. While many o...
I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what technology does. I read press releases, pitch emails, documentation, and marketing materials trying to get an idea of what is possible. While many o...
http://dret.typepad.com/dretblog/2017/06/data-access-and-api-strategy-in-the-european-union.html
I’ve been watching the conversation around how APIs are discovered since 2010 and I ave been working to understand where things might be going beyond ProgrammableWeb, to the Mashape Marketplace, a...
Serverless is spreading across the API sector, and is something that leading API providers are beginning to embrace as part of their operations. I saw an interesting example of this out of AWS and...
Github has released an interesting new feature to help users better manage some of the community elements of the repositories they use to manage code, definitions, data, and content across API ope...
I’ve been watching the conversation around how APIs are discovered since 2010 and I ave been working to understand where things might be going beyond ProgrammableWeb, to the Mashape Marketplace, a...
I’m wrestling with the different levels of conversations I’m having around my human services API work. Some of my audience are more technical and are pushing for discussion at the granular level, ...
One of the projects I’m working on as part my Human Services API work is trying to define the layer that allows developers to add, update, and delete data via the API. We ultimately want to empowe...
I’m refining my approach to moving forward the discussion around the Human Services Data Specification and API in an attempt to include more vendors and implementors in the conversation. Part of t...
I’m wrestling with the different levels of conversations I’m having around my human services API work. Some of my audience are more technical and are pushing for discussion at the granular level, ...
One way to help API developers understand API design is to provide them with a design guide, helping set a standard for how APIs should be designed across an organization or group. Another way to ...
There are never enough hours in the day. I have an ever growing queue of APIs and API related services that I need to play with for the first time, or just make sure and take another look at. I wa...
I am a big fan of companies who share their API journey publicly. The comment I hear from readers, as well as attendees of @APIStrat often, is that they want to hear more honest stories from API p...
I’ve been investing a lot more energy into open data and APIs involved with city government, something I’ve dabbled in as long as I’ve been doing API Evangelist, but is something I’ve ratcheted up...
There are never enough hours in the day. I have an ever growing queue of APIs and API related services that I need to play with for the first time, or just make sure and take another look at. I wa...
One way to help API developers understand API design is to provide them with a design guide, helping set a standard for how APIs should be designed across an organization or group. Another way to ...
I process a lot of stories each week, which I do not think is at all unique. While I tend to read short, medium, and longer form pieces, I notice that people tend to tune into my shorter, more con...
Twitter released some automation rules this spring, laying the ground rules when it comes to building bots using the Twitter API. Some of the rules overlap with their existing terms of service, bu...
I love what the folks over at USAFacts have done with their effort to educate everyone regarding how the US works (or doesn’t). I commend Steve Ballmer for the money he’s put into the project and ...
I was reading what’s behind the hold up of API adoption at credit unions and I’m reminded (again) of the critical need for API evangelists in the space. I am not talking about advocates for a sing...
I was reading what’s behind the hold up of API adoption at credit unions and I’m reminded (again) of the critical need for API evangelists in the space. I am not talking about advocates for a sing...
I love what the folks over at USAFacts have done with their effort to educate everyone regarding how the US works (or doesn’t). I commend Steve Ballmer for the money he’s put into the project and ...
I’ve been reading and curating information on GraphQL as part of my regular research and monitoring of the API space for some time now. As part of this work, I wanted to take a moment and revisit...
I was learning about a new API path for the document platform Box, that was designed specifically for showing recently updated objects. I think that the concept of having API paths dedicated to sh...
It is a lot of work to keep the API evangelism drumbeat going each day on your blog, Twitter, and other social media channels you use for your API operations. Each Tweet, Facebook or LinkedIn Post...
<,/p>Oracle is investing a serious amount resources to become a contender in the API space lately. [They've acquired Apiary](http://apievangelist.com/2017/01/19/oracle-acquiring-apiary/), and...
It is a lot of work to keep the API evangelism drumbeat going each day on your blog, Twitter, and other social media channels you use for your API operations. Each Tweet, Facebook or LinkedIn Post...
Oracle is investing a serious amount resources to become a contender in the API space lately. [They've acquired Apiary](http://apievangelist.com/2017/01/19/oracle-acquiring-apiary/), and are beati...
I have been learning more about Apicurio, which is the open source API design editor I have been waiting for. There are a number of things I’m interested in when it comes to Apicurio, but one side...
There are a growing number of API providers who have published an APIs.json for their API operations, providing a machine-readable index of not just their API, but for their API entire operations....
There are a growing number of API providers who have published an APIs.json for their API operations, providing a machine-readable index of not just their API, but for their API entire operations....
I have been learning more about Apicurio, which is the open source API design editor I have been waiting for. There are a number of things I’m interested in when it comes to Apicurio, but one side...
I spend a lot of time thinking about API rate limits. How they can hurt API providers, or as my friend Tyler Singletary (@harmophone) says incentivize creativity. I think your view on rate limits ...
I am learning about the Kubernetes Deployment Language (KDL) today, trying to understand their approach to defining their notion of Kubernetes API objects. It feels like an interesting evolution i...
I read a lot of patents as part of my work as the API Evangelist, and I tend to stalk and tune into the social media accounts of some of the authors. I have noticed that some of them work at large...
Zendesk gave me some valuable building blocks to add to both my API support and API service level agreement research, with their support SLA. This is why I keep an eye on not just how API provider...
I’m reading a lot of API patents lately trying to understand the variety of approaches these “innovative” patent authors are using to help define the API space. Many of the API patents I have hist...
I’m reading a lot of API patents lately trying to understand the variety of approaches these “innovative” patent authors are using to help define the API space. Many of the API patents I have hist...
I am a big fan of API providers who also have APIs. It may sound silly to say, but you would be surprised how many companies are selling services to API providers and do not actually have an API t...
I try to pay attention to events going on in the API space beyond just APIStrat in Portland this fall (submit your CFP!!), and I saw a notification for PAPIs in São Paulo in two weeks, as well as ...
I believe that APIs can bring some important transparency to the web, mobile, and device applications that seem to be invading our life. I hesitate using the word transparency because it has been ...
I was answering some questions for my partners over at DreamFactory when it comes to APIs in government, and one of the questions they asked was about some examples of the OpenAPI specification be...
I was answering some questions for my partners over at DreamFactory when it comes to APIs in government, and one of the questions they asked was about some examples of the OpenAPI specification be...
I have seen a number of research projects looking at API documentation, but this is the most detailed study into how people are seeing, or not seeing the API documentation and other resources we a...
There are so many API patents out there, I’m going to have to start posting one a day just to keep up. Lucky for you I begin to get really depressed by all the API patents I lose interest in readi...
I really dislike acronyms, so the irony surrounding me being the API Evangelist is always present for me. API isn’t just about RESTful APIs to me. API is much more than just the technical, it is a...
I know this will sound funny to many folks, but when I see APIs, I see language and communication, and humans learning to speak with each other in this new digital world we are creating for ourselv...
I have seen a number of research projects looking at API documentation, but this is the most detailed study into how people are seeing, or not seeing the API documentation and other resources we a...
There are so many API patents out there, I’m going to have to start posting one a day just to keep up. Lucky for you I begin to get really depressed by all the API patents I lose interest in readi...
I really dislike acronyms, so the irony surrounding me being the API Evangelist is always present for me. API isn’t just about RESTful APIs to me. API is much more than just the technical, it is a...
Auth0 has released a pretty interesting way to extend your web applications using what is an embeddable, serverless, webhooks environment–for lack of a better description. It’s a pretty interesti...
I got my regular email from Algorithmia this last week and I like where they are going with some of their machine learning APIs. They have been heavily investing in machine learning applied to vid...
I’m always fascinated by the patents that get filed related to APIs. Most just have an API that is part of the equation, but some of the patents are directly for an API process. It’s no secret tha...
The social bookmarking API Pinboard is my favorite API. I feel like it is a model we should all be considering crafting our API-focused businesses. I’ve used Pinboard to curate what I do as the AP...
I’m always fascinated by the patents that get filed related to APIs. Most just have an API that is part of the equation, but some of the patents are directly for an API process. It’s no secret tha...
The social bookmarking API Pinboard is my favorite API. I feel like it is a model we should all be considering crafting our API-focused businesses. I’ve used Pinboard to curate what I do as the AP...
I got my regular email from Algorithmia this last week and I like where they are going with some of their machine learning APIs. They have been heavily investing in machine learning applied to vid...
When I play with my Hitch service I am always left thinking about the many dimensions of API monitoring. When you talk about API monitoring in the tech sector conversations almost always start wit...
This post is a straight up copy and paste from an email newsletter I get from Peter Gruenbaum of SDK Bridge. I am a big supporter of API service providers like SDK Bridge, who has been doing API do...
I’m beating a drum every time I find a company managing their OpenAPI on Github, like we would the other code elements of our API operations. Today’s drumbeat comes from my friend Nicolas Grenié (@...
I am regularly using APIs to slice and dice large datasets to help make sense of what is contained within the database behind in a way that other folks can then develop visualizations, reporting, ...
I’m beating a drum every time I find a company managing their OpenAPI on Github, like we would the other code elements of our API operations. Today’s drumbeat comes from my friend Nicolas Grenié (@...
I am regularly using APIs to slice and dice large datasets to help make sense of what is contained within the database behind in a way that other folks can then develop visualizations, reporting, ...
They do good. When you tell them they suck. They suck. http://papyri.info/
I spend my days looking for interesting API stories to tell. Many days I work REAL hard to find anything truly interesting, as there is a lot of repetition and reuse in the API space, both for goo...
</a> I was learning about the virtual classes that Github are offering, as I was working on some basic API curriculum for some of my clients, and I was reminded of how important training and ...
I have been encouraging API providers to publish and manage their API definitions using Github similar to how you’d manage any code. Companies like Box and NY Times are publishing their OpenAPI de...
I’ve added three OpenAPI extensions from APIMATIC to my OpenAPI Toolbox, adding to the number of extensions I’m tracking on that service providers and tooling developers are using as part of their...
I was doing some research into what was going on with the API landscape at universities and I came across the Trait Prediction API from the University of Cambridge. I’m still studying what they ha...
I just read an interesting piece by Dennis Crouch over at on Patentlyo asking, “Are Copyright and Patent Overlapping or Mutually Exclusive in Protecting Software Innovations?” The article is chall...
Twilio launched their Twilio Function this last week, localizing serverless infrastructure for Twilio API consumers, when it comes to powering key functionality that Twilio brings to the table. Th...
I enjoy playing with what is possible when it comes to APIs, without all the overhead of actually operating the APIs. I’ve been exploring the world of drones over the last year and it is something...
I’ve been wanting someone to create an open source API editor for some time, and now the folks over at Red Hat / 3Scale have delivered one called Apicurio. It is a web-based Angular2 app, for visu...
I’ve been wanting someone to create an open source API editor for some time, and now the folks over at Red Hat / 3Scale have delivered one called Apicurio. It is a web-based Angular2 app, for visu...
I’m working on my API definition and design strategy for my human services API work, and as I was doing this Box went all in on Opening, adding to the number of API providers I track on who not ju...
I am working on an API definition and design guide for my human services API work, helping establish a framework for approaching API design as part of the human services data and API specification...
I am working on an API definition and design guide for my human services API work, helping establish a framework for approaching API design as part of the human services data and API specification...
I’m needing data for use in human service API implementations. I need sample organizations, locations, and services to round off implementations, making it easier to understand what is possible wi...
I was looking into some of the common approaches by API providers for sorting of data in API responses. I’m not in the business of finding the right answer, I am in the business of finding success...
I am working my way through a variety of API design considerations for the Human Services Data API (HSDA)that I’m working on with Open Referral. I was working through my thoughts on how I wanted t...
I am going through my API design checklist for the Human Services Data API work I am doing. I’m trying to make sure I’m not forgetting anything before I propose a v1.1 OpenAPI draft, so I pulled t...
I am working my way through a variety of API design considerations for the Human Services Data API (HSDA)that I’m working on with Open Referral. I was working through my thoughts on how I wanted t...
When I suggest modern approaches to API management be applied to public data I always get a few open data folks who push back saying that public data shouldn’t be locked up, and needs to always be...
I get regular waves of folks who chime in anytime I push on one of the hot-button topics on my site like hypermedia and OpenAPI. I have a couple of messages in my inbox regarding some recent stori...
When I suggest modern approaches to API management be applied to public data I always get a few open data folks who push back saying that public data shouldn’t be locked up, and needs to always be...
I get regular waves of folks who chime in anytime I push on one of the hot-button topics on my site like hypermedia and OpenAPI. I have a couple of messages in my inbox regarding some recent stori...
I wrote earlier this year that I would like us all to focus more on our schema and definitions of our data we use across API operations. Since then I’ve been keeping an eye out for any other inter...
Box has gone all in on OpenAPI. They have published an OpenAPI for their document and storage API on Github, where it can be used in a variety of tools and services, as well as be maintained as pa...
I wrote earlier this year that I would like us all to focus more on our schema and definitions of our data we use across API operations. Since then I’ve been keeping an eye out for any other inter...
One layer of my API research is dedicated to keeping track on what is going on with API software development kits (SDK). I have been looking at trends in SDK evolution as part of continuous integra...
I was just messing around with a friend online about monitoring of our monitoring tools, where I said that I have a monitor setup to monitor whether or not I care about monitoring. I was half joki...
I was reading about Google’s TensorFlowLite in Techcrunch, and their mention of Facebook’s Caffe2Go, and I was reminded of a conversation I was having with the Oxford Dictionaries API team a coupl...
I was just messing around with a friend online about monitoring of our monitoring tools, where I said that I have a monitor setup to monitor whether or not I care about monitoring. I was half joki...
I am in the process of eliminating the MySQL backend behind much of my research, eliminating a business expense, as well as an unnecessary complexity in my architecture. There really is no reason f...
One of my clients asked me for fifteen bullet points of what I’d say to help convince folks at his company that APIs are the future, and have potentially viable business models. While helping convi...
I’m profiling a number of drone APIs lately and I came across some interesting APIs out of Parrot. Not all of the APIs are for drones, but I thought they were clean and simple examples of what IoT...
One of my clients asked me for fifteen bullet points of what I’d say to help convince folks at his company that APIs are the future, and have potentially viable business models. While helping conv...
There are some pretty proven API solutions out there these days. I had to explain to someone a call the other day that in 2017 you shouldn’t ever roll your own API signup, registration, rate limiti...
A recent addition to my API research is the concept of making batch API requests. I was reminded of this during a webinar I did with Cloud Elements when they cited batch API requests as an area nee...
We are inching closer to a final release of version 3.0 for the OpenAPI specification, with the official version currently set at 3.0.0-rc1. We are beginning to see tooling emerge, and services lik...
We are inching closer to a final release of version 3.0 for the OpenAPI specification, with the official version currently set at 3.0.0-rc1. We are beginning to see tooling emerge, and services li...
I was having a discussion with an investor today about the potential of algorithmic-centered API marketplaces. I’m not talking about API marketplaces like Mashape, I’m more talking about ML API mar...
I’m comparing five separate vendor API implementations with the Human Services API standard I’m working on at the moment. I’m looking to push version 1.0 of the API towards a 1.1 with some incremen...
The folks behind the OpenAPI Spec driven, interactive API documentation ReDoc, have also developed an OpenAPI generator that helps you manage your OpenAPI Spec deployment using Yeoman. If you aren’...
I’m comparing five separate vendor API implementations with the Human Services API standard I’m working on at the moment. I’m looking to push version 1.0 of the API towards a 1.1 with some increme...
I saw the news that Google’s Spanner Database is ready for prime time, and I wanted to connect it with a note I took at the Google Analyst Summit a few months back–that gRPC is the heart of the dat...
I am going through my entire infrastructure lately, quantifying the products and services that API Evangelist offers, and the partnerships that make everything go round. As I do in my work as the ...
I saw that WhoAPI launched a Domain Score API recently, helping put a value on whether or not you can trust a domain. The example they have in their blog post applies a domain score to the email ad...
I saw that WhoAPI launched a Domain Score API recently, helping put a value on whether or not you can trust a domain. The example they have in their blog post applies a domain score to the email a...
All of my websites have run 100% on Github for the last three years. The core of my API industry research is always in JSON or YAML, stored in individual project-based Github repositories. I lever...
All of my websites have run 100% on Github for the last three years. The core of my API industry research is always in JSON or YAML, stored in individual project-based Github repositories. I lever...
Showcasing the integrations that are possible with your API via your API developer portal is an increasingly important way to demonstrate the usefulness of your API resources. Companies like Amazon...
I spend a lot of time talking about API providers, companies who have a public APIs. Occasionally, you will also hear me talk integration platform as a service (iPaaS) providers, companies like Zap...
I was trying to fit some new content into my website, and I couldn’t make it fit within the layout. Then I remembered I had also taken off a section of my work because it looked like crap on my iPa...
I have used the analogy of public lands when talking about access to, and monetization around public data resources, for a number of years. While not a perfect analogy, it provides me with a very t...
It is a hustle to do API Evangelist. I’ve been lucky to have the support of 3Scale since 2013, without them API Evangelist would not have survived. I’m also thankful for the community stepping up l...
I used to keep track of Swagger vendor extensions are part of my previous research around what was formerly known as Swagger. It is something I’m reviving as part of my OpenAPI Toolbox work, profil...
I’m always looking for simpler, and cheaper ways of doing APIs that can help anyone easily manage data while making it available in both a human and machine readable way–preferably something develo...
I am wanting to profile the world of machine learning APIs, similar to what I’ve done with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and the rest of my API Stack research, but I’m in need of some invest...
I added another type of tool to my OpenAPI Toolbox, this time it is extensions. They used to be called Swagger vendor extensions, and now they are simply called OpenAPI extensions, which allow any ...
I keep an eye on several thousand companies as part of my research into the API space and publish over a thousand of these profiles in my API Stack project. Across the over 1,100 companies, organiz...
I have seen a number of incarnations when it comes to making public data available on the Internet, from startup implementations like earlier InfoChimps, U.S. Federal Government efforts like Dataa....
I get why SaaS, and API providers offer a handful of pricing plans and tiers for their platforms, but it isn’t something I personally care for as an API consumer. I’ve studied thousands of plans an...
I have been profiling the Microsoft Azure platform over the last couple of weeks, and I found their approach to talking about the regions that were available was worth taking note of. I haven’t act...
When you are an individual in a sea of tech giants, and startups who are moving technical conversations forward, it can be easy to just sit back, stay quiet, and go with the flow. As a single perso...
ReDoc is the responsive, three-panel, OpenAPI specification driven documentation for your API that you were looking for. Swagger UI is still reigning king when it comes to API documentation generat...
When thinking about generating revenue generated from APIs it is easy to focus on directly charging for any digital resource being made available via the API. If it’s an image, we charge per API ca...
I’m involved in some very interesting conversations with public data folks who are trying to push forward the conversation around sensible revenue generation by cities, counties, state, and the fed...
Profiling APIs always provides me with a nice bulleted list of what a company does or doesn’t do. In my work as the API Evangelist, I can read marketing and communications to find out what a compan...
It has been over a year since I’ve pushed any API definitions to my API Stack research, but I finally was able to prioritize time this week to make sure it was updated with the latest profiles I ha...
It made me happy to read the Rise of Non “VC compatible” SaaS Companies, and see that there are more sensible discussions going on around how to develop SaaS business, something that I hope spreads...
I am helping a customer think through their decision-making process around the adoption of a new API service, and while I am doing this I am spending the time to think through my own API adoption p...
I learn a lot by studying APIs. One of the ways I get to know what an API does is by creating an OpenAPI for the API, which helps define all of the paths available for an API–helping me understand ...
I work to develop OpenAPI definitions for 3rd party APIs because it helps me understand what is being offered by a company. Even when I’m able to autogenerate an OpenAPI for an API, or come across ...
I am working to update my OpenAPI definitions for AWS, Google, and Microsoft using some other OpenAPIs I’ve discovered on Github. When a new OpenAPI has entirely new paths available, I just insert ...
Many of the problems that APIs are often associated with API adoption can often be mitigated via more communication. I track on a number of ways the successful API providers are communicating aroun...
I was firing up my low hanging fruit engine for a customer today, pulling down their entire website, giving them suggestions on where they should start with their API efforts, so I felt it was a go...
When I get asked by folks about where they should start with APIs, I always start with the low hanging fruit on their websites--if it is publicly available as HTML on your website, it should be ava...
Us API Evangelists have a super secret Slack group where we talk about super interesting API Evangelist things, and one of the folks I regularly learn from in this group is James Higginbotham (@lau...
This is a multipart story on monetizing public data using APIs. I have spent the last seven years studying over 75+ aspects of the API delivery lifecycle across companies, organizations, institutio...
Continuing a growing number of command line interfaces (CLI) being deployed side by side with APIs, SDK generation provider APIMATIC just released a CLI for their platform, continuing their march t...
I talk to a lot of API service and tooling providers about API definitions. I’ve long been an advocate for API service providers supporting OpenAPI, as well as a variety of API definition formats–i...
One of the areas of the API sector I’ve been pretty critical of service providers is in the area of integration platform as a service, or iPaaS. If This Then That emerged on the scene, and began en...
I am on a quest to help improve and standardize the available API design tooling out there, and one aspect of doing this is spending time highlighting the API service providers who have interesting...
This is a multipart story on monetizing public data using APIs. I have spent the last seven years studying over 75+ aspects of the API delivery lifecycle across companies, organizations, institutio...
I have been talking about selling wholesale APIs for some time now, allowing your potential customers to pick and choose exactly the API infrastructure they need, and develop their own virtualized ...
I’m always learning from the API pioneers, and trying to understand how they are pushing forward the API conversation. I’m neck deep in profiling AWS APIs, as well as Google APIs. One common patter...
I just got an email from my DNS provider CloudFlare about rate limiting and protecting my APIs. I am a big fan of CloudFlare, partly because I am a customer, and I use to manage my own infrastructu...
There is some rumors circling about more government open data going way, this round is at the EPA. The EPA says the data isn’t going anywhere, but understandably there are some serious concerns abo...
Data is power. If you have valuable data, people want it. While this is the current way of doing things on the Internet, it really isn’t a new concept. The data in databases has always been wielded...
I talked about Google’s shift towards providing an SLA across their cloud services last week, and this week I’d like to highlight APIMetric’s Cloud API Service Consistency (CASC) score, and how it ...
I’ve been working my way through all of the Google APIs, making sure I have an OpenAPI for each API, as well as an APIs.json for the entire API operations. One of the things I index as part of each...
As one of my clients is preparing to move their API from deployment to management, I’m helping them think through what is necessary to make sure their API is ready for use by a wider, more public g...
I am working with an enterprise group to develop a curriculum that will be used across internal training workshops executed around the globe. They are looking to push their entire company towards a...
I recently wrote about how Zapier’s new command line interface has a continuous integration feel to it, and while I was writing the piece, I kept thinking about how these integration apps could be ...
The world is built on stories. People enjoy telling and hearing stories. Stories are the lifeblood of what I do as the API Evangelist and are the number one way I stay in touch with people across m...
I have several volunteers available to do work on Open Referral’s Human Services Data Specification (API). I have three developers who are ready to work on some projects, as well as an ongoing stre...
Integration platform as a service (iPaaS) provider Zapier recently launched a command line tool for managing your integrations, adding an interesting dimension to the platform–leaning in what feels...
In my travels over the last couple of weeks I have found myself in two separate cities, listening to two separate stories about using APIs to help protect some valuable data, that someone was tryin...
I’ve been tracking on how API providers operate their partner programs for a while now, in hopes of pulling together some sort of blueprint that other API providers can follow. I’m always happy to ...
I have been ranting about an icon set for the API community for over a year now. I want there to be more than just a set of SDK programming language icons. Something that would give us a visual API...
I am seeing a significant number of infrastructure orchestration solutions in the cloud start using YAML templates as the core setting of settings and instructions for workflows. Amazon recently in...
I’m always amazed at the number of companies I work with that do not consider log files a first class data system. Log files for servers, web servers, and other systems or applications are only for...
IBM has a pretty cool explorer format for their API catalog, allowing you to search and browse the IBM API catalog by category, and even broken down preview, beta, and live APIs. It looks like ther...
I’m in the middle of evolving a data schema to be a living breathing API. I just finished generating 130 paths, all with the same names as the schema tables and their fields. It’s a natural beginni...
Everyone once in a while I get a comment from someone regarding competition in the API storytelling space, alluding to someone getting the page views, or audience when it comes to APIs. I rarely wo...
I am working to push forward my embeddable API research today, so I’m on the hunt for new tools and standards that can be included in my research and put to work by API providers. One of the top re...
In the summer of 2012, Steve Willmott approached me with the idea of doing an API conference. We had both been discussing the need for a vendor-neutral API conference throughout the year, and now h...
I am working through the AWS APIs and the Google APIs, and profiling the building blocks across both of these API operations. My objective in doing this work is to learn as much as I possibly can a...
I am working to take an existing API, built on top of an evolving data schema, and move forward a common API definition that 211 providers in cities across the country can put to use in their opera...
I wrote a post asking what it would take to migrate OpenAPI tooling from version 2.0 to 3.0 of the API specification, and Mike Ralphson (@PermittedSoc) commented about some of the projects he’s bee...
I wrote a post asking what it would take to migrate OpenAPI tooling from version 2.0 to 3.0 of the API specification, and Mike Ralphson (@PermittedSoc) commented about some of the projects he’s bee...
I am working on version 1.1 of the API definition for the human services data specification (HSDS), and I needed some help articulating the differences between version 1.0 and 1.1, which are both d...
I have been profiling all of the Google APIs lately, a process that always yields a significant amount of stories for my notebook. One element of Google’s approach to delivering APIs that I found r...
I’m always on the hunt for new ways to define, design, deploy, and manage API infrastructure, and thought the AWS Cloud Formation Designer provides a nice look at where things might be headed. AWS ...
Github has long been my number one source for discovering people doing interesting things with APIs. As I was trying to articulate how API providers can put Github to work as part of their API oper...
Mike Ralphson (@PermittedSoc) asked me the other day, “if you could run SQL / #GraphQL queries over nearly 50K #API definitions, what would you ask?”. I told him I would respond via blog post, whi...
I’ve been an advocate for OpenAPI since it’s release, writing hundreds of stories about what is possible. I do not support OpenAPI because I think it is the perfect solution, I support it because I...
Establishing a feedback loop with your API community is one of the most valuable aspects of doing APIs, opening up your organization to ideas from outside your firewall. When you are designing new ...
I recently gave a talk to the API group over at Oxford University Press. During the discussion, one of their team members asked me about the paradox of what I was advising as the API Evangelist. He...
This is from a conversation I had with the Oxford Dictionaries API team last week while in Oxford. I led a conversation with 30-40 folks across several teams at the Oxford University Press offices....
I have had a number of requests from folks lately to write more about Github, and how they can use the social coding platform as part of their API operations. As I work with more companies outside ...
I’m keeping an eye on the different approaches by API service providers when it comes to providing API editors within their services and tooling. While I wish there was an open source GUI API edito...
I’m endlessly fascinated by APIs and enjoy studying their evolution. One of the challenges in helping evangelize APIs that I come across regularly is the many different views of what is or isn’t an...
The Runscope team recently published a post on a pretty cool approach to using Google Sheets for running API tests with multiple variable sets, which I thought is valuable at a couple of levels. Th...
Many API providers I meet have the “build it and they will come” mentality, thinking that if they build an API, developers will come and use it. It does happen, but many APIs only have so many dire...
Slack released their Slack Buttons last year, to help as they state “reduce the number of small yet high-frequency tasks that quietly devour a user’s time.” I know folks are obsessed with voice, bo...
I am playing around with the Open API for the Oxford Dictionaries API, and I’m struck by the importance of not just dictionaries like the Oxford Dictionaries, but also the importance of OpenAPI, an...
When I started API Evangelist back in 2010 the only stop along the API life cycle that service providers were talking about was API management. In 2017, there are numerous stops along the API life ...
I was playing around with, and better understanding the new collaborative developer community that is Glitch, and I saw they had published a blog post about how they won’t screw up Glitch. The topi...
Building a business is hard. Building a business that depends on other business is hard. We would like it if all of our vendors stuck around forever, but this is not the reality of doing business i...
There are a number of things at work making this whole web API thing actually work. One of them that came up while I was at Google discussing APIs a couple weeks ago, while we were listening to Dan...
This is an article from the current edition of the API Evangelist industry guide to API definitions. The guide is designed to be a summary of the world of API definitions, providing the reader with...
I was roaming through Google’s Prediction API, and I thought their prediction gallery provides us a look at a shift occurring right now in how we deliver APIs. I predict that machine learning galle...
This is an article from the current edition of the API Evangelist industry guide to API definitions. The guide is designed to be a summary of the world of API definitions, providing the reader with...
This is an article from the current edition of the API Evangelist industry guide to API definitions. The guide is designed to be a summary of the world of API definitions, providing the reader with...
I wrote about how gRPC API implements deliver a tighter API contract, but I wanted to also explore more thought from that same conversation, about how hypermedia APIs can help deliver a more evolva...
I was taking a look at the new Uber Driver API and trying to understand the possibilities with the API, and some of the the motivations behind Uber’s launch of the API. According to Uber, “o__ur Dr...
It is common for API providers to be really private with their APIs, and we often hear about providers restricting access as time goes by. So, when API providers loosen up restrictions on their API...
This is an article from the current edition of the API Evangelist industry guide to API definitions. The guide is designed to be a summary of the world of API definitions, providing the reader with...
This is an article from the current edition of the API Evangelist industry guide to API definitions. The guide is designed to be a summary of the world of API definitions, providing the reader with...
I was studying examples of how I can validate the data returned from a human services APIs demo, and develop a set of API tests, as well as API service providers who can implement the tests, for ci...
Building on earlier stories about how my API partners are making API deployment more modular and composable, and pushing forward my understanding of what is possible with API deployment, I’m lookin...
This is an article from the current edition of the API Evangelist industry guide to API definitions. The guide is designed to be a summary of the world of API definitions, providing the reader with...
This is an article from the current edition of the API Evangelist industry guide to API definitions. The guide is designed to be a summary of the world of API definitions, providing the reader with...
I’m keeping an eye on the different approaches to deploying infrastructure coming out of AWS, Google, Microsoft and other providers. In my version of the near future, we should be able to deploy an...
I am working on profiling 75 of the Google APIs, and one thing I struggle with at this scale is standardizing the images I use, or more specifically, icons that represent each service as well as th...
This is an article from the current edition of the API Evangelist industry guide to API definitions. The guide is designed to be a summary of the world of API definitions, providing the reader with...
It is easy for me to get excited about a new API. I’m an engineer. I’m a dude. I am the API Evangelist. It easy to think about the potential for good when it comes to APIs. It is much harder to sus...
This is my regular public service reminder of why I do API Evangelist. I do not evangelize APIs because I think everybody should be doing them, that they are the solution to all of our problems, or...
Most of the APIs I look at are special snowflakes. The definition and designs employed are usually custom-crafted without thinking other existing APIs, or standards that already in place. There are...
I have the latest edition of my API definition research published, complete with a community-driven participation model, but before I moved on to my design, deployment, and management guides, I wan...
I keep an eye on over 70 areas of the API sector, trying to better understand how API providers are getting things done, and what services and tooling they are using, while also keeping my perspect...
I talked about the gap between developer relations and support at Google, something that Sam Ramji (@sramji) has acknowledged is being worked on. Support for a single API can be a lot of work and i...
I keep an eye on over 70 areas of the API sector, trying to better understand how API providers are getting things done, and what services and tooling they are using, while also keeping my perspect...
I have tpublished the latest edition of my API definition guide. I’ve rebooted my industry guides to be a more polished, summary version of my research instead of the rougher, more comprehensive ve...
I am spending some time adding more tools to my OpenAPI Toolbox, and I’m looking to start evaluating what it will take for tooling providers to evolve their solution from version 2.0 of the OpenAPI...
I am spending some time adding more tools to my OpenAPI Toolbox, and I’m looking to start evaluating what it will take for tooling providers to evolve their solution from version 2.0 of the OpenAPI...
I spent a day last week at the Google Community Summit, learning more about the Google Cloud road map, and one thing I kept hearing them focus on was the notion of being able to operate on any clou...
The Postman team has been hard at work lately, releasing their API data editor, as well as introducing variable highlighting and tooltips. The new autocomplete menu contains a list of all the varia...
I wanted to provide an easy way to publish and share some of the tools that I’m tracking on in the OpenAPI ecosystem, so I launched my API toolbox. In addition to tracking on the name, description,...
I was following the discussion around adding a WebAPI class to Schema.org’s core vocabulary, and it got me to think more about the role Schema.org has to play with not just our API definitions, but...
I was following the discussion around adding a WebAPI class to Schema.org’s core vocabulary, and it got me to think more about the role Schema.org has to play with not just our API definitions, but...
I saw an interesting chasm emerge while at a Google Community Summit this last week, while I heard their support team talk, as well as their developer relations team discuss what they were up to. D...
In 2017 I think that getting our act together when it comes to our data schema will prove to be just as important as getting it together when it comes to our API definitions and design. This is one...
I was reviewing the latest changes with Visual Studio 2017 and came across the section introducing connected services, providing a glimpse of Microsoft APIs baked into the integrated development en...
I was learning more about gRPC from the Google team last week, while at the Google Community Summit, as well as the API Craft SF Meetup. I’m still learning about gRPC, and how it contributes to the...
I was following the discussion around adding a WebAPI class to Schema.org’s core vocabulary, and it got me to think more about the role Schema.org has to play with not just our API definitions, but...
In 2017 I think that getting our act together when it comes to our data schema will prove to be just as important as getting it together when it comes to our API definitions and design. This is one...
In 2017 I think that getting our act together when it comes to our data schema will prove to be just as important as getting it together when it comes to our API definitions and design. This is one...
I was learning more about gRPC from the Google team last week, while at the Google Community Summit, as well as the API Craft SF Meetup. I’m still learning about gRPC, and how it contributes to the...
I spent last week in San Francisco listening to Google’s very machine learning focused view of the future. In addition to their Google Next conference, I spent Tuesday at the Google Community Summi...
I’ve been simmering on thoughts around Uber’s greyballing for some time now, where they target regulators and police in different cities, and craft a special Uber experience just for them. Targetin...
I’ve been simmering on thoughts around Uber’s greyballing for some time now, where they target regulators and police in different cities, and craft a special Uber experience just for them. Targetin...
I am spending time learning more about what Airmap is doing with their digital notice and awareness system. I first learned about what Airmap was up to when I learned they were behind the notificat...
I am spending time learning more about what Airmap is doing with their digital notice and awareness system. I first learned about what Airmap was up to when I learned they were behind the notificat...
I spend a lot of time connecting the dots with APIs, trying to understand what resources are available via an API, and then how I can actually put them to use. I can usually land the documentation ...
I’m learning a lot about HTTP/2 and gRPC this week, so I have been thinking about how we isolate ourselves by focusing in on individual toolsets, where we should really be expanding our horizons, h...
I have been learning more about the way Google designs and defines their APIs after their release of their API design guide. When I research a company’s APIs I always spend time looking through the...
I read a lot of content about APIs. I read a lot of redundant and fluffy marketing and technical jargon, trying to understand exactly what an API does, or doesn’t do. Before I criticize, I have to ...
I always enjoy learning about how companies are versioning their APIs. The topic is always one of the most discussed areas when we do APIStrat workshops, and is an aspect of the API space that I th...
This is the third post in my effort to try and define the three sides of my API monitoring. I’m trying to quantify what is needed as a sort of API industry monitoring dashboard – if there is such a...
I just wanted to take a moment and highlight some folks who are doing interesting things with APIs. I spend a lot of time focusing on the companies, products, and services from the sector, but I do...
This is an outline I pulled together for a potential project I am working on this week. It’s derived from my research, and previous workshops I’ve done with companies, organizations, institutions, ...
There is a reason why I encourage API providers to look at not just the technology of APIs but also invest heavily into the business and politics of API operations. There is a reason I evangelize a...
I am finally seeing more solutions available for API providers when it comes to publishing an portal for their API operations. I’ve long had my minimum viable API portal definition, which I recentl...
I have been processing Google’s API design guide, and an unexpected part of the work has been learning more about gRPC, which Google is ”converging designs of socket-based RPC APIs with HTTP-based ...
I am building on the great work by the APIs.guru team, assembling a collection of Google definitions. I will be forking their Google Open definitions and wrap them in APIs.json indexes, so I can an...
This is a repeat story of one I wrote two years ago, but things haven’t changed so I’m going to rant about again, 2017 style. We need someone to develop an open source, visual API design editor. Th...
Everyone developing APIs struggles with API design. Ok, maybe a few of the gurus out there don’t, but the rest of us need education, practice, and ideally someone or something to help guide us thro...
I was dreaming of a more modular, event-driven approach to API monetization the other day, and I found myself thinking more about the motivations behind each API call made, from the perspective of ...
Google released an API design guide recently. I’ll be adding the design guide to the list of examples I have in my API design research. The Google API design guide is pretty straight forward in its...
There have been many advances in the way that we deploy APIs in the last couple of years, but I still want more of an embeddable, push botton way to deploy generic or even more specialized APIs. Th...
I was handed the URL for a human services API implementation for Miami. It was my job to now deploy a portal, documentation, and other supporting resources for the API implementation. This project ...
I used to have a Github repository dedicated to Swagger tooling and implementations, but I took it down after Swagger was donated to the Linux Foundation. I’ve rebooted it as my OpenAPI Toolbox, pr...
I was learning about the approach Amazon has taken with their serverless API developer portal, and highlighting their approach to API plans, and couldn’t help but think there was more to it all tha...
I come across more companies managing their OpenAPI definition as a single Github repository. One example of this is from the New York Times, who as the API definitions for their platform available...
I was playing around with the new Github topics, and found that it provides an interesting look at the API space, one that I’m hoping will continue to evolve, and maybe I can influence. I typed ‘a...
I was learning about the AWS Serverless Developer Portal, and found their API plan layer to be an interesting evolution in how we define the access tiers of our APIs. There were a couple different ...
I was reading about Experian the credit score company “ventures nimbly into the API economy” this week. I’m happy to see any company begin their API journey, especially companies whose important al...
I was looking through the Github accounts for Amazon Web Services and came across their Serverless API Portal--a pretty functional example of a forkable developer portal for your API, running on a ...
I have had the Wikipedia page for Observability open in a browser tab for weeks now. I learned about the concept from Stripe a while back and is something that I am looking to help define APIs from...
If you are selling a service you should have an API. It is something you hear me talk about a lot here on the blog. I push on this subject because it is important, and there are numerous API servic...
I am approaching seven years doing API Evangelist. I have over 70 areas of my core API lifecycle research available on the website and have four of those areas (definitions, design, deployment, &am...
There is a growing number of hypermedia APIs available in the wild these days. However there aren’t a lot of examples of hypermedia API service providers making the API lifecycle more dynamic and l...
I was playing with one of the API deployment solutions that I track on, appropriately called API Platform. It is an open source PHP solution for defining, designing, and deploying your linked data ...
I was having a conversation about whether I should be putting my API definition or my API design work first–which comes earlier in the lifecycle of an API? The conclusion was to put definition firs...
I have a regular call with a really smart API person who is trying to move forward a really cool project for the API space. It is some thought provoking voodoo and I need to be able to write about ...
It is a common tactic of older software companies to offer open source, services, and tools in a way that all roads just lead into their walled garden. There are many ways to push vendor lock-in an...
The document platform Box updated their developer efforts recently, helping push forward the definition of what API documentation can be. I’ve long been advocating moving APIs out from the shadow o...
The document platform Box updated their developer efforts recently, helping push forward the definition of what API documentation can be. I’ve long been advocating moving APIs out from the shadow o...
I have had a series of calls with an analyst group lately, discussing the overall API landscape in 2017. They have a lot of interesting questions about the space, and I enjoyed their level of curio...
.gist {width:100% !important;} .gist-file .gist-data {max-height: 500px;} I was working on publishing an index of the General Service Administration (GSA) APIs I currently have in my API monitor...
I am spending a lot of time studying how companies are using Github as part of their software and API development life cycle, and how the social coding platform is used. More companies like Netflix...
Photo by Shelah I was trying to explain to a business analyst this week the difference between SDK and API, which he said was often used interchangeably by people he worked with. In my opinion SDK...
I have been kvetching about the quality of embeddable tooling out there, so I’m working on discovering anything interesting. I started with bookmarklets, which I think is one of the most underutili...
I spend a lot of time looking for logos of the companies that I write about. A lack of consistency around how companies manage (or don’t) their logos, and make them available (or don’t) regularly f...
I spend a lot of time looking for logos of the companies that I write about. A lack of consistency around how companies manage (or don’t) their logos, and make them available (or don’t) regularly f...
I wrote about the need for service level agreements dedicated to researchers who are depending on APIs a couple weeks ago, and while I was doing my work profiling of AWS, I came across their approa...
I’ve been keeping an eye on the API management space for about seven years now, and I actually have to say, even with all the acquisitions, IPOs, commoditization, etc, I am actually pretty happy wi...
It was an interesting journey getting the API specification formerly known as Swagger into the Linux foundation last year. After SmartBear donated the spec to the newly formed Open API Initiative, ...
I was a regular check-in with one of my favorite API service providers this week, talking about some of the new features they are rolling out in coming weeks, and they demonstrated for me why API d...
I recently wrote about how Algorithmia offloads the compute costs around machine learning using AWS, structuring their image style transfer modeling so that the consumer pays the cost for deploy an...
I would say that embeddable tooling is one of saddest areas of the API space for me in recent years. When it comes to buttons, badges, widgets, and other embeddable goodies that put APIs work, the ...
The “cloud” has done some very interesting things for individuals, companies, organizations, institutions, and government agencies, and is something that shouldn’t be ignored. However, I watch orga...
I am finally getting back to my Knight Foundation funded grant work on Adopta Agency, I’m investing some research cycles into finding some tools that civic, science, journalism and other public dat...
Telling the story of what your API accomplishes may seem like a pretty simple, straightforward thing, but you’d be surprised how many API providers DO NOT do this on a regular basis, or do not hav...
I’m putting some thought into the what a public analytics layer might look like for federal, state, county, and city governments. Something that looks like analytics.usa.gov, but for APIs. This is ...
I hate how technology dehumanizes things and went you bundle that with the current model for how things get funded, it tends to do this at scale, and with troubling efficiency. I’m the API Evangeli...
I wrote about what is at stake with API definitions currently and someone made a thoughtful comment on the importance of continuing to discuss hypermedia amidst all of this--I agree. I’ve long been...
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the Amazon Web Services ecosystem lately. I’ve gone through and generated OpenAPI Specs for the majority of their APIs, as well as an APIs.json index for the...
I am focusing heavily on schema, definitions, and scopes in 2017, because it is the most important layer in the tech sector, the API space, and is something that touches almost every industry, whil...
Fitbit recenttly announced a program to pay their wearable users up to $1500 for integrating their Charge 2 into the UnitedHealthcare Motion program powered by Qualcomm Life’s 2net Platform. The “U...
The AWS IoT Button, based on the Amazon Dash Button hardware, was kind of sorta an interesting model, allowing you to trigger virtual things with a physical click of a button, but now they’ve virtu...
The AWS IoT Button, based on the Amazon Dash Button hardware, was kind of sorta an interesting model, allowing you to trigger virtual things with a physical click of a button, but now they’ve virtu...
One of the deciding factors of whether or not I put a new online service to use in my business depends on whether or not they have an API. Sometimes I have no choice in the matter, but if I have an...
APIs are playing an increasing role in all aspects of our public life. Our current president has set the precedent that he will be using Twitter as a primary communication channel, cutting off trad...
I wish I could write about everything interesting that is going on in the API space, but as a one man show, I struggle to keep up with discovering, reading and understanding what is going on, let a...
I am pushing forward my security research, and profiling what threat information APIs and platforms are up to. I rarely ever dive into any API without actually signing up for an API, getting some k...
I have written before about how we are going to create the Standard and Poors or Moodys for the API industry, and how an API ratings could be used as an economic engine. This is a topic I have folk...
I wrote angrily about Oracle’s acquisition of Apiary last week, and this week I find myself deeply considering the API definition landscape, so I wanted to take another look at this event from the ...
I am impressed with the work that the Open API Initiative (OAI) working group has accomplished with the version 3.0 release of the OpenAPI Specification. I have had zero involvement in moving the s...
I am impressed with the work that the Open API Initiative (OAI) working group has accomplished with the version 3.0 release of the OpenAPI Specification. I have had zero involvement in moving the s...
Over the holidays I pulled the data.gov index of federal government data, and the next item on my list was to cache the results of the US Digital Registry API , providing me with a list of agencies...
I have the first draft of a developer portal ready for an API project I am working on, and before I move forward polishing it too much I wanted to step back and think about the goals behind the lau...
I am keeping a version of an OpenAPI Spec in sync with a Data Package. It’s not a perfect sync because the Data Package doesn’t describe the surface area of the API, just the underlying data schema...
I track on the different approaches used by API providers so that I know where to find examples of leading approaches to API design and deployment. Then I write about them so that I have something ...
It is common for an API to just be a facade for a database. Meaning the data, and content served up via the API is read from and written to a database backend. This is probably the most common way ...
I am going through the Amazon Alexa platform, profiling it as part of my voice API research, and also thinking deeply about the impact voice-enablement, and conversational interfaces will or will n...
I have been looking for a decent search engine API to help me uncover new sources of information across the API space. I’ve always been frustrated with the APIs in this category since all of the go...
I’m thinking about cloud pricing after my profiling of over 60 of the AWS API resources, as I play with building tools on Algorithmia, and evaluate a variety of serverless options. As someone who i...
One of the side projects I work on regularly is focused on moving forward the conversation around water data. My next wave of work is targeting the State of California Drinking Water Program Reposi...
Oracle has purchased API design provider Apiary. I’m a big fan of what Apiary does, and what the team has accomplished. I don’t trade in Silicon Valley currency, so I’m not going to congratulate th...
The API universe is rapidly expanding as more companies, organizations, institutions, and government agencies are sharing data, content, and algorithms using web APIs. It has expanded so much in th...
What happens when we can’t trust the numbers our service providers report to us? I personally do not stress over my analytics and traffic, views, and other numbers we are engineering our worlds to ...
I like to pick worrisome patents from my API patent research and share them on my blog regularly. Last week I talk about Patent #US9300759 B1: API Calls With Dependencies and today I want to talk a...
I was getting ready to do some work on a developer portal for a project I’m working on and I wanted to stop, step back and try to define what the goals in launching this portal are. As the technolo...
I’m spending some cycles on discovering what “cybersecurity” or “security” API solutions are out there, but specifically looking at threat information related to operating on the web. First up on t...
Silicon Valley startups and entrepreneurs love to point out that they are trying to make the world a better place. Over a 25+ year career, I have fallen for the belief that I was improving a situat...
This is one of those regular public service announcements that if at all possible, you should be requiring SSL for all your API calls. I recently got an email from the IBM Watson team telling me th...
Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) solutions are something I’ve been tracking on for a while, and an area I haven’t seen too much innovation in, except by Zapier for most of that time. I’m a...
In addition to using the news of Medium’s downsizing as a moment to stop and think about who owns our bits, I wanted to point out what a missed opportunity the Medium API is. Having an API is no gu...
As I approach my seventh year as the API Evangelist and find myself squarely in 2017, I wanted to take a moment to better understand, and articulate why I still believe in APIs. To be the API Evang...
I am working with Open Referral to evolve the schema for the delivery of human services, as well as helping craft a first draft of the OpenAPI Spec for the API definition. The governing organizatio...
I have a minimum definition for what I consider to be a good portal for an API, and was spending some time thinking about a baseline definition for the API developer account portion of that portal,...
I am evaluating Shutterstock as a new destination for some of my photos and videos. I’ve been a Shutterstock user for their stock images, but I’m just getting going being a publisher. I thought it ...
I regularly talk about the evolving world of API SDKs, showcasing what API service providers like APIMATIC are up to when it comes to orchestration, integration, other dimensions of providing clien...
A couple of weeks back, the online note-taking platform Evernote made a significant blunder of releasing a privacy policy update that revealed they would be reading our notes to improve their machi...
I’m working on the next evolution in my API research, and I’m investing more time and energy into the design of the guides I produce as a result of each area of my research. I’ve long produced a 20...
I understand that companies file for patents to build their portfolios, and assert their stance in their industry, and when necessary use patents as leverage in negotiations, and in a court of law....
The importance of a machine readable API definition has grown significantly over the last couple of years, with a lot of attention being spent (rightfully so) on helping educate API providers of th...
I spend a lot of time studying and thinking about the “digital bits” that we move around the Internet. Personally, and professionally I am dedicated to quantifying, and understanding those bits tha...
I came across a pretty interesting post on using APIs for research, and the benefits, and challenges that researchers face when depending on APIs. It was another side of API stability and availabil...
I have used Shutterstock for some time now when it comes stock images but I’ve only recently started playing around with their publishing program, hoping to make some money from some of my photos a...
I’ve been working with Algorithmia to manage a large number of images as part of my algorithmic rotoscope side project, and they have a really nice omni-platform approach to allowing me to manage m...
I’ve been working with Algorithmia to manage a large number of images as part of my algorithmic rotoscope side project, and they have a really nice omni-platform approach to allowing me to manage m...
I just finished crafting API definitions for 66 of the Amazon Web Services. You can find it all on Github, indexed with an APIs.json. While I wish all API providers would do this hard work on their...
I enjoy having conversations with “normals” about APIs, especially when they approach me after doing a great deal of research, and are pretty knowledgeable about the landscape, even if they may lac...
I was doing some planning around a potential business model for commercial implementations of OpenReferral, which provides Open211 open data and API services for cities, allowing citizens to find l...
I look at a lot of API portals and developer areas , and experience a number of innovative approaches from startups, as well as a handful of leading API providers, but the Lufthansa Airlines API po...
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...
I was playing around with Algorithmia for a story about their business model back in December, when I got sucked into playing with their DeepFilter service, resulting in a 4-week long distraction w...
I got sucked into a month long project applying machine learning filters to video over the holidays. The project began with me doing the research on the economics behind Algorithmia’s machine learn...
