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Posts tagged
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Who In The API Evangelist Network Has an MCP Server
I just did a fresh pass over every API provider in my network — 6201 repos in the API Evangelist Network — looking for explicit evidence that each provider ships an MCP (Model Context Protocol) ser...
blog-2026-05
The Bullshit Levels Came Down at APIDays NYC
I am just processing what happened the last couple of days at APIDays NYC. I spent Wednesday and Thursday. I love events that I can sleep at home each night, but I’d say that APIDays NYC is my new ...
blog-2026-05
Making the API Evangelist Network Agent-Readable
I spent last night applying my agent-readiness playbook, first written and applied to apis.io, and now across twenty-two subdomains of the API Evangelist network. The result is end-to-end agent-rea...
blog-2026-05
83 of the Fortune 100 Have a Developer or API Portal
I spent some time this week running a complete inventory of public developer, API, and data portals across every Fortune 100 company. Combined apis.yml metadata across the api-evangelist network wi...
Seeing MCP
I am talking to a number of folks about documenting their MCP servers. Others about discovering them. Others about governing them. Generally, we are mostly talking about being able to just see the ...
blog-2026-05
Wrestling With API Complexity
I like wrestling with API complexity. I see endless lessons baked into how APIs have been historically done, and how we are going to keep them working to do what we need to keep moving forward. I l...
blog-2026-05
A Roundup of US Federal Agencies and Their APIs
I’ve spent the better part of two decades inventorying public APIs across the U.S. federal government, and the catalog has grown to a point where it deserves its own roundup. What follows is the cu...
Within the Enterprise Mindset There Are No Solutions, Just Stories
I think a lot about the mindset of executive, but also the middle tiers of leadership at enterprises. This is one of the reasons I went to work at Bloomberg for the year that I did. Not that I want...
blog-2026-05
Publishing Plans, Rate Limits, and FinOps for 3,837 API Providers
I just finished work to publish three new machine-readable artifacts — API Commons Plans & Pricing, API Commons Rate Limits, and a FinOps Foundation FOCUS-aligned framework across as many API p...
blog-2026-05
Artificial Intelligence Choosing My Tools and Services
While building a signup form for my new CentralPark.Guide website I was using Claude to help me deploy a Cloudflare worker to handle the submission of form and the emails that get sent to me and to...
blog-2026-05
We Standardized the API. We Didn't Standardize the Application.
During my Thursday office hours this week I explored adding applications and obtaining keys for six developer portals back to back: Notion, Slack, LinkedIn, GitHub, Cloudflare, and Google. Here was...
blog-2026-05
A Bridge Between Human and AI on Your Documentation
Someone on LinkedIn told me to look at how AssemblyAI approaches their documentation after I shared a link with an API / MCP / Skills documentation prototype I had developed. AssemblyAI is a platfo...
blog-2026-05
With API Knowledge Comes Great Power
I’ve seen this scenario play out over and over during my time as the API Evangelist. When I worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs doing API, Web Service, and data inventory during the Obama ...
blog-2026-04
Guardrails, Not Gates: Supreet Nagi on Taming the API Jungle
Supreet Nagi recently sent me his new handbook, From Chaos to Connectivity: The API Practitioner’s Handbook. I read it when it sent it to me, but it keeps coming up in my work as something I needed...
blog-2026-04
The Business and Politics of Platform Status Page Details
I like GitHub’s recent blog post on transparency around their status page. Status pages are human and machine-readable properties I’ve tracked on for API providers as part of my APIs.json work for ...
Learning About Standards via Cloudflare Radar AI Insights
I am learning from the AI Insights updates on Cloudflare Radar. I have long been a champion of how we’ll be automating the onboarding of clients, bots, agents, and other non-human users of the web....
That List of 1000 APIs Does Not Do Me Much Good When I Just Need To Be Capable of Doing Something
There is something that haunts me every time I am doing the market research I need for Naftiko. Every integration provider always has thousands of icons for the integrations they support on their w...
The Next Wave of API Investments Will Be All About Experience
I was publishing the Naftiko Capabilities I had generated from the 36 Palo Alto Networks OpenAPIs. Before I generated these capabilities I generated a standardized set of Spectral rules based upon ...
An API Consumer Interoperability Mindset
It is difficult to think like an API consumer when you are an API producer. When I talk to anyone about what I am building at Naftiko, which is extremely API consumer centric, almost everyone I kno...
Questioning Our API Governance Reality
Questioning how I see the technology, business, and politics of APIs is the foundation of API Evangelist. I’ve changed my opinions on a lot of things over the years, as my awareness expands on diff...
You See a Spec, I See a Common Language, and a Common Understanding
Many engineers I’ve worked with over the years see OpenAPI and AsyncAPI as a configuration for whatever tooling outcome they desire. I see OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, and JSON Schema that defines them as a ...
My /me API Using Naftiko
For years I’ve been writing on API Evangelist about the idea of a personal API footprint — the idea that every individual should have a single, coherent surface representing themselves across the d...
Not a Single API Evangelist Post in March
I did not write a single post on API Evangelist in March. I have gone months before without writing a story, but this month is primarily due to artificial intelligence. I am all in on using Claude ...
The Promise of a New Specification
Starting a new specification is exciting. You have a vision. You flesh out the vision. You distill it down into some documentation, schema, blog post, and a social media post. You don’t have the ba...
What Is Your Beef With JSON Schema?
I recently purchased the Radiohead record, OK Computer. I’m in a phase where I am investing in my vinyl record collection, and doing the work to get out of my comfort zone. This means challenging a...
Where Is Governance (Guidance) Going?
I had a fascinating conversation Anna Daugherty on Wednesday, which will be published as a podcast shortly. If you don’t know Anna, she is a super smart and down to earth product marketer who works...
February 6, 2026
#Governance
#OpenAPI
#Spectral
#Pipelines
#IDE
#CLI
#Agent Skills
#CLAUDE.md
#SKILL.md
#RULES.md
#GEMINI.md
#AGENTS.md
There is a Lot of Knowledge and Wisdom Packed Into Speakeasy's Agent Skills
I saw Speakeasy publish their agent skills. It caught my attention, not because I care about agents, but because I care deeply about the knowledge expressed in these agent skills. Honestly, I don’t...
How Does a Capability Come to Life?
As I work to define Naftiko, and specifically what a capability is, I wanted to explore how a capability comes to life. But let’s start with my current definition of what a capability is. A capabi...
February 5, 2026
#Capabilities
What is the Diff Between Bruno Collection and OpenCollection
Bruno has been slow rolling their release of their new OpenCollection format to augment the Bruno Collection, and continue grabbing mindshare from Postman Collections, while simultaneously embracin...
Why Do I Need Agents When I Have Requests, CRON Jobs, and Events?
I am genuinely trying to understand the essence of the agentic wave of artificial intelligence. I am always frustrated when I don’t understand something. Unfortunately, much of popular life and cap...
Dispatches From The Frontlines at Moltbook
I am an expert in programmatic interfaces as they are used in a variety of applications. I don’t build desktop, web, mobile, device, network, or AI applications — I enable them. I have to keep sayi...
Organizing Signals Into a Platform Definition with Operations Organized by Role
I have been gathering signals about what enterprises are invested in as part of my Naftiko Signals work. As I do, I am working out in the open to make sense of the services I am profiling as part o...
MCP Server for Microcks Mocking and Testing
The Microcks team is proposing adding an MCP server for the mocking and testing platform, arguing that every tool needs one. I definitely support every API service and tool having an API, so this l...
Weekly API Evangelist Conversations
I had a really energizing webinar with Nordic APIs last week, hosted by Bill Doerrfeld, and with Lorna Jane Mitchell, Kevin Swiber, and myself in attendance. The questions were good, the conversati...
A 3rd-Party Notion API Sandbox to Provide a Safer Agent Sandbox
I am creating a series of 3rd-party Notion API sandbox for my team to develop against, and provide safe spaces for Naftiko customers to develop agents against. The foundation of my Notion API sandb...
Agents. It Is All APIs. Nothing Has Changed
I love people waking up to the importance of APIs. I have to work hard not diminish people’s excitement for each wave of “application” of the value in which APIs deliver. People get very attached t...
Governance Rules as Guardrails in a Strongly Typed Journey
I am always fascinated by how the same people who are TypeScript believers often become advocates against using a schema-driven approach anywhere beyond “the code”. I am a big fan of having a schem...
Baseline OpenAPI Rules For Governance of 3rd-Party APIs
API governance using Spectral or Vacuum rules changes when you go from governing APIs you are producing to governing 3rd-party APIs you are consuming. It is a simple, but pretty radical shift in ho...
Exploring What Schema Tools Are Available
My Naftiko team asked me for more information on what schema tools are available. Well, more specifically they asked schema explorers there were, but I thought it was an opportunity to take a fresh...
January 12, 2026
#Schema
#JSON Schema
#Tools
#Editors
#Viewers
#Validators
#Generators
#IDE
#Govenrance
#Discovery
#Registries
What Are the Application and Interface Specification Priorities?
I am deep diving into the properties of interface and application specifications to understand the overlaps across the standards in use within both of these domains. I pulled the JSON Schema for fi...
January 6, 2026
#Applications
#Interfaces
#Cloud Native Application Bundle
#Open Component Model
#Open Resource Discovery
#Radius
#Score
#Agent 2 Agent
#APIs.json
#Arazzo
#AsyncAPI
#JSON Schema
#MCP
#OPA
#Open Collection
#OpenAPI Overlays
#OpenAPI
#Spectral
#Microcks Examples
#API Commons
#FinOps Focus
My Rabbit Warren of JSON Expressions, References ($ref), Queries, or Pointers
I’ve been down each of these rabbit holes before. I’ve paid really smart people to go down these rabbit holes. But honestly, what I am talking about is actually a “rabbit warren”. I know we all lik...
January 6, 2026
#JSON
#YAML
#Expressions
#References
#Queries
#Pointers
#JSONPath
#JMESPath
#JSON Pointer
#ABNF
My Avalara API Review Provides a Benchmark for Modern API Operations
I enjoy reviewing APIs. I’m good at it. Over 15 years, I’ve developed a rich and proven API discovery and profiling process. Recently, folks at Avalara reached out to me about my API Evangelist Pos...
I Am Proud To Introduce You To Naftiko
I’d like to introduce you to my new startup, called Naftiko. You’ve probably heard me talking about it, but as of 2026, we are a real company with funding and a team. It’s real. Naftiko is focused ...
A New Year for API Evangelist
I have to manually roll the blog for my website over each year. The primary link for my blog goes to whatever the most recent year is, which is a static page. I like it this way. It forces me to ma...
Saying Things Are Broken is Broken
You read a lot of posts about “X” being broken. Especially in the age of AI smoke and mirrors. Everything that came before and in need of disruption is broken. In the API realm I exist within, OAut...
Capabilities Are Everything You Need To Integrate With AI
I am back to my work to precisely define how we integrate with many different APIs. With this round I am doing it for a handful of use cases meant to satisfy customer conversations around their AI ...
Capabilities Are About Having An Honest Conversation About Control
I am deep into capablity thinking. I am having some interesting conversations which I will be publishing as podcasts, blog posts, and white paper shortly, but I need to keep hammering on some thoug...
The Web and APIs Weren’t Built for Autonomous Agents, They Were Built For Humans
You hear this a lot—especially from AI folks. I just read it again in an excellent, but very academic paper, Agentic Web: Weaving the Next Web with AI Agents. I’ll reference their research in my ow...
API Discovery Will Need To Be Contextual and Ephemeral
I’ve learned over my career that there is no single source of truth for APIs. I’ve been looking for it for 15 years. It’s a mirage—“free beer tomorrow.” I’ve spent a long time studying why Programm...
MCP is a Valid Tactical Response
I hear it a lot from people and GPTs about JSON RPC (ie. MCP) being simpler, direct, explicit, and possessing a reduced overhead. All true. It is a remote procedure call using JSON. You just want t...
OpenAPI Extensions to Generate What You Need for AI Integration
I’ve been spending a lot of time bouncing between different perspectives on automation to assess what’s truly needed for AI integration. The enterprise teams I’m talking with are most interested ex...
Schema-Validated, Rules-Guided, and Policy-Driven Experiences
I struggle to share the entirety of my vision for API governance as it requires prior awareness of multiple API specifications and the current state of governance within the industry—with some lean...
As a Startup You Should Not Be Consulting
A common refrain you hear from investors and advisors as you navigate the technology landscape is that it’s a bad idea to do consulting. I also hear that you should be selling as early as possible,...
Why Drift Is Ubiquitous
I have done a lot of thinking about how difficult it is to get people on the same page, but also keep them there after my time standing up an API governance program at Bloomberg last year. I went t...
October 15, 2025
#Code
#Schema
#Words
#Visuals
#Drift
#Communication
#Validation
#Rules
#Linting
#Governance
Applying Domain-Driven Driven Design to Integration and Consumption
At Naftiko, we are reshaping integrations as business capabilities through the alignment of the technical details with business strategy using domain-driven design. Domain-driven design is a fundam...
October 14, 2025
#Domain-Driven Design
#Domains
#Ubiquitous Language
#Boundaries
#Integration
#Consumption
How This Moment Will Shake Out
I don’t usually talk about what is around the corner. I am more about understanding history, and telling stories in the present. However, after several cycles now I am feeling like can develop a “v...
What is a Capability?
I have several folks asking me what I mean when I say capability in the context of what we are building with Naftiko. I have been writing about API capabilities in the context of the journey from A...
Conversations With Enterprise Product and Engineering Teams Has Given Me More Empathy About This Moment In Tech
I have been having conversations with a lot of folks about API integration, consumption, and automation as I work to build Naftiko. I entered into these conversations with folks in the early part o...
Selfish Standardization Using JSON-LD for Job Postings
I have become an API standards realist over the years. Yes I believe we should all strive for a common good through the standardization of APIs, but I’ve become all to aware of the misalignment of ...
Trust is the Secret Ingredient Missing in API Discovery
There is lots of renewed energy around API discovery latetly, but this round is in service of Agentic AI automation. There is a lot of speculation surrounding Anthropic’s release of an MCP Registry...
Minimizing Ambiguity in Business Alignment Using APIs
Business alignment in the world of API integrations is essential—from both a producer and consumer perspective. The challenge is that there are different bubbles of business alignment that leaves p...
The Intersection of API Rate Limits, Plans & Pricing, and Marketplace Working Things Out
Before I understood the business and politics of the API hustle I used to cry fowl here on API Evangelist about the sudden shifts in plans and pricing for APIs, as well as the unfair and restrictiv...
Solutions That Speak To Your Tactical Pain While Expanding and Scaling Your Strategic Pain
One of our trusted advisors for Nafitko sent this tweet over to me about there being a big consultancy opportunity involved with “finishing folks Replit and Loveable apps”. I chuckled because this ...
There Is Only API Consumption
I have hit the wall one more time in the last five years when it comes to my belief that people producing APIs will want to do the right thing. Whether it be API design-first, productization of API...
Can We Have a Conversation About API Discovery, Integration, and Consumption?
As we work to build Naftiko, we are interested in talking with people about what they are facing when it comes to putting APIs to work. Throughout the summer we will be having conversations with pe...
API Evangelist & Fourcast Media Are Partnering To Bring Kin Lane and LeTroy Gardner Together Again For A New API Podcast
While at API Days in NYC a couple weeks ago, I heard from several people that they missed the Breaking Changes podcast when I was the host. And that the show had a certain tone and line of question...
I Will Be Joining Naftiko as the Chief Community Officer
I have been engaged in a number of conversations with folks since I left Bloomberg last August, consulting and exploring different ways that I can work with startups and enterprises to govern APIs....
Ontological vs Epistemological API Governance
I see two distinct types of API governance unfolding within enterprises who view their operational culture and their workforce having different levels of understanding and respect for leadership. I...
Developers Will Listen When API Governance Is Injected Into IDE Via Artificial Intelligence
I have heard it several times now, folks in charge of API governance sharing with me that they are finding success in injecting API governance into developers workflow using artificial intelligence...
The Business and Politics of API Automation
I learned over a decade ago why API discovery isn’t a solvable problem within the world of technology—the people in charge of the narrative don’t see business, they see technological solutions. Pun...
Automobiles Are Also Agentic
I am an equal opportunity hater of automobiles as well as the Internet. I see them both as equal destroyers of the earth and humanity. Of course, one can argue that both of these technologies have ...
Standardizing OpenAPI Extensions to Override Spectral Rules
While continuing to process the Spectral rules in use by API producers as part of their efforts to govern their API operations I am always looking for interesting and useful patterns being applied ...
Feedback Loops in Tech Reveal Who the Customers Are
You hear a lot about feedback loops with customers in technology and the world of APIs. There are entire disciplines dedicated to establishing and managing feedback loops with customers as part of ...
You Have No Choice But To Do Open This Round
I learned about the usage of the word “open” the hard way during the Web 2.0 dayz. I was the frontline of the open data and open API (and OpenAPI) push. Like with APIs, I was the face of various ch...
Automation Does Not Require Agents
The spell of AI is strong today. It is difficult to escape. Most do not have a choice. I am not here to do the work for folks to compare the latest AI moose diarrhea with reality, but I am here to ...
API Integrations Are What Matters to Business
I know many of us have bought into the API management messaging and the APIs as a product vision over the last ten years. It is a logical response to obtaining and maintaining a handle on the API s...
Where Is Developer Advocacy?
I have witnessed a lot of discussion and defense of what developer advocacy is over the years, and as I watch what is happening right now with artificial intelligence and labor, I am left dreaming ...
The Right API Policies, Process, and People Helps Minimize Enterprise Technical Debt
API governance policies are meant to cover a wide range of operational areas, which begin with API design considerations like which HTTP methods we use to communicate around our digital resources a...
Shape Shifting for AI
I heard it repeatedly at API Days in NYC last week-—apologies from people doing AI, and positioning their marketing and storytelling to speak to AI. People know me, know my brand, and know that API...
OpenAPI Aligns Your API Code With The API Gateway Configuration
It takes work to strengthen the awareness engineering teams have surrounding OpenAPI. OpenAPI is often seen as simply a configuration for producing API documentation, or possibly for generating cli...
Embracing Rather Than Overcoming Team Boundaries
Mapping the API landscape across an enterprise should always include the mapping of team boundaries. The outcomes of your API governance will be shaped by these boundaries, resulting in many API go...
Governing API Authentication
Governance spans multiple dimensions of our API operations, but few areas get people thinking and talking about API governance than talking about the security of your APIs. I am working with custom...
Developing Spectral Rules for AWS API Gateway OpenAPI Extensions
You can lint your OpenAPI artifacts in your CI/CD pipelines, but if you aren’t actually using it to configure your API gateway, and then validating the outputs of the configuration are in alignment...
Where Should API Governance Occur?
For teams who have adopted a design-first approach to APIs governance happens during the design time, and if your team is code-first it happens in the IDE during development time. If you are an eng...
API Governance is Social
As I was reading the Study of Man Adjusting Men to Machines I kept thinking about how API governance is actually about people, despite the focus on the technical details of the design of APIs. I th...
We Should Get Some Business Stakeholders Involved With APIs
Isn’t it strange that we are regularly talking about the need to get business stakeholders more involved in doing APIs? Like us engineers producing and consuming APIs operate in some liminal space ...
Healthcare Needs API Storytelling To Enlighten the Space
Having been out on the front line of API storytelling since 2010 I can attest to the reality that you need a lot of stories to be told before people understand the digital resources and capabilitie...
Know Your API Consumers (KY(A)C)
The age of build and they will come API portals with free tiers across your APIs is over. Web, mobile, and even device applications were friendlier versions of API consumers that may (or may not) h...
API Governance Rules from the Netherlands
It helps to have positive examples of how to do API governance. In my experience most people, teams, and enterprises tend to just emulate the vendors and other players that they are already tuned i...
Using the United States as a Lesson of What Not To Do With APIs
The majority of my consulting clients are international in this moment. It is interesting to start every meeting with commentary and discussion on the current administration in the United States, b...
The Top Three Industries In Need of API Regulation
I have been tuned into and contributing towards the regulation of APIs for payments and healthcare space for a number of years. I feel that the work to regulate payment APIs must continue being the...
On-Premise Before Cloud As API Virtue Signal
I am advising a company who operates outside the United States on the development of suite of enterprise-grade API solutions. One question I had while learning about their offering was whether or n...
APIs Role In Understanding Tech Platform Monetization Systems
I am spending more time thinking about where good APIs go bad, and it is something that has helped me understand how things change once a platform moves beyond doing the original thing they are kno...
APIs Pull You Out Into The World
I heard someone at an API security conference here in NYC a couple weeks back mention how most of the API management, security, and governance solutions out there didn’t really meet their needs cau...
API Products are Fantasy
I’ve long been a proponent of treating your APIs as a product. I still believe in all the moving parts of what we collectively believe to be an API product, things like customer centricity, bridgin...
Showcase the Team Behind an API
When implementing API governance a lot of attention gets paid to the technical surrounding the API, while investing in the team behind an API will also help standardize and deliver more consistent ...
HTTP APIs Provide Awareness Around Who Is Using Your Digital Resources
I am fielding more questions about, and participating in discussions around companies, organizations, institutions, and government agencies who are looking to build defenses around their digital re...
No Auth on Initial MCP Was Not A Bug, It Was A Feature
It is fascinating to watch all the pundits jump and respond to the MCP rush on top of the AI hype happening. Everyone was quick to point out that MCP does not have the adequate authentication and a...
Know Your API Consumers and Employ Appropriate API Rate Limits
I have long been an advocate for wide self-service API onboarding with loose rate limits, but in the age of artificial intelligence I’ve gotten much more conservative. APIs have always been about i...
100% of Access to Enterprise Digital Resources Should Be Via APIs
HTTP APIs have evolved over the last quarter century to be the standard for how you make digital resources and capabilities available in web, mobile, device, and artificial intelligence application...
You Are Not Taken Seriously If You Are Not Doing or Talking About Artificial Intelligence
I have heard this on LinkedIn for two years now, and continue to hear it said privately by people who aren’t AI believers, but due to their position in the market are forced to comply and have to p...
April 25, 2025
#AI
#Artificial Intelligence
#Ethics
#Bias
#Environment
#Business
#Funding
#Expertise
API Evangelist Is Just Saying No To Artificial Intelligence
I am taking a firm stance on saying no to artificial intelligence in its current incarnation. I still use machine learning, specifically Tensorflow as my Algorotoscope protest to the bias in the ma...
April 25, 2025
#AI
#Artificial Intelligence
#Ethics
#Bias
#Environment
#Business
#Funding
#Expertise
We Need More APIOps Cycles, Arazzo, Overlays, and We Get MCP and A2A
Technologists are good at seeing and building technology, but aren’t so good at seeing the business things. We’d rather invent entirely new specifications and approaches to things rather than havin...
The Divide Between Business and IT Is Just an Accountability Sink
I have worked to identify, discuss, and narrow the classic line between business and IT for this entire century. Every bit of my work as the API Evangelist has been focused on reducing the barriers...
The API Governance Rule is Just a Representation of What Matters
I find myself in a lot of “rules don’t matter” conversations with folks, telling me that Spectral rules alone won’t govern enterprise API operations. It is a perspective that also plagues OpenAPI a...
Why Would a Normal Person Want To Understand the API Traffic Behind Their Applications
I find the traffic behind our online web and mobile phone activity to interesting. I am exploring how to use Mitmproxy to pull back the curtain on the APIs in use by the applications I depend upon....
Using Common Instead of Centralized
As I have developed my understanding of how folks within enterprises wield certain words I am pulling back from using the word centralized to using the word common. There are some things that could...
When Applications Demand All the Attention
A big part of the API evolutionary story was that web APIs were used to via the web between 2000 and 2010 to power widgets, affiliate programs, and other ways of sharing information via HTTP. Once ...
Reverse Engineering the APIs Behind Everything With Mitmproxy
Pulling back the curtain on the web and mobile applications we use each day is a common way for us to make sense of how things work. I have regularly used Charles Proxy to map out my personal and p...
There Is No Single Approach or Tool For API Governance
It is always interesting to come up against the anti-education and anti-skills sentiment that often exists around the tech sector. It is a world where services and tools are valued and prioritized ...
Listen to Your API Voice Not the API Noise
The entropy is high in the API world right now. I find it near impossible to read any “API news” right now because of the “disruption capture” that occurred across the API conversation. I firmly st...
Business and Politics Diminishing the Potential of APIs as the Next Iteration of the Web
The web from a technological vantage point was intriguing. HTML served up over HTTP using a client-server approach proved to have a number of beneficial use cases across different industries and l...
OpenAPI Intellisense Hints in a Simple API Governance Editor
I wanted to encourage my customers to take advantage of a simple API governance editor that I use in demos and workshops. I have my own more robust version seamlessly woven into API Evangelist and ...
April 16, 2025
#Governance
#OpenAPI
#JSON Schema
#Intellisense
#Autocomplete
#Hints
#Spectral
#Editor
Landscape Mapping Using OpenAPI and Kong
I am working with someone to map their API landscape, run various Spectral rules against, and produce a report and insights into the best approach to light up rules in pipelines based upon teams an...
Inline Guidance for OpenAPI Using a Simple API Governance Editor
One of the reasons I recommend my customers use a simple OpenAPI governance editor created by the Italian government is that it provides an opportunity to customize and make the linting of OpenAPI ...
A Simple API Governance Editor For OpenAPI and Spectral
Spectral rules have been the base of API governance since it evolved from Speccy in 2018, and is the widest adopted ruleset and linter. If you are just getting started with API governance and have ...
There Are So Many Things You Can Improve Around Your APIs Without Measuring
In a very binary world it is easy to just follow everyone’s lead with what seems like proven wisdom, moving forward and executing based upon what you’ve read and already know. It is easy to fall pr...
What Has Changed Since That First Blog Post on the API Economy in 2010
I have had the first blog post for API Evangelist from September of 2010 up for the last week pondering what my headspace was like in that moment, as well as what has changed. I would say the techn...
There Are Business Reasons APIs Were The Menu
The lack of business details in all the MCP vs API and MCP vs A2A discussions reveal the true intent of this artificial intelligence moment. One of the tells for me is how API, database, and file s...
Questioning APIs
I have spent a lot of time questioning APIs. It is what I do. Questioning and interrogating APIs is my way of pushing back on the machine. I have made a living doing this from inside the machine fo...
What API Documentation Comes With A Rating Mechanism for APIs?
I had someone from a large enterprise ask me about the opportunity around updating their documentation and including a rating for each API as part of the documentation. There are couple of streams ...
Why Would Meta Remove OEmbed Author Fields?
I regularly monitor the developer feeds of platforms to understand the technology, business, and politics of their work. One thing that caught my eye yesterday was the removal of oEmbed author_name...
API Simplicity Matters in this Moment
Arguing for the simplicity of HTTP APIs seems quaint in the face of so many different protocols in use for APIs as well as the artificial intelligence onslaught, however I would argue that it is ev...
Adopting MCP is a Bad Idea
I refuse to get on the hype train, and I regularly archive my rants on artificial intelligence before ever publishing them because I feel like I am screaming into the void. However, I am neck deep ...
A Baseline of Spectral Rules with Guidance Using Monaco Editor
I am a fan of Monaco Editor when it comes to editing OpenAPI and other artifacts used across the API lifecycle. While I natively use VSCode locally to do most of my editing, when it comes to guidan...
Using OpenAPI Overlays to Express Specialization Within Domains
I was learning about the role of service domain specialization in adopting the Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN), and felt there is a significant opportunity to take the OpenAPI for BIAN...
Increasingly People’s Experience with APIs Are Only Using Internal APIs
For a number of years between 2010 and 2020 when people told stories about APIs, they almost always were talking about public APIs. Even when you talked about internal APIs, people assumed you were...
Adding Exceptions to API Governance Rules
One important aspect of successfully using API governance rules as part of the automated delivery of APIs using CI/CD pipelines is the ability to ask for an exception to the rule. Every rule, espec...
Why Generate OpenAPI When We Have Our Code Framework?
Code-first is still the dominant approach to producing an API in the etnerprise, in which more teams are coming up against the need to generate an OpenAPI artifact from their code, and asking, “why...
SDK Generation Pitfalls
I cannot go into the details of the work required to produce usable high quality software development kits (SDKs) for APIs, you’ll have to talk to APIMATIC, or any of the latest numerous other SDK ...
Response to the API Repository Proposal
Pavel Bodiachevskii posted a draft of his proposal for the API repository proposal, with accompanying blog post. I wanted to properly respond but it is of the length and quality that I’d prefer to ...
Where Good APIs Go Bad
I have done a lot of soul searching over the years to try and understand the line between a good API and a bad API. It can be hard to tell between the two, but somewhere along the way APIs we found...
What is it You Are Governing When You Say API Governance?
Like many aspects of our API operations when you say API governance it will mean different things to different people. So, it is always helpful to ensure that people are on the same page when it co...
The APIOps Cycles Canvas Creator
I was talking with Marjukka and Claire as part of regular discussions around governing API operations, and Marjukka shared their APIOps Cycles Canvas Creator–I have had it open and playing with it ...
Adding Governance Rules For APIOps Cycles Canvases
I was playing with the APIOps Cycles Canvas Creator, and published the ten possible canvases to the APIs.json for a demo product API. Next I want to lay the groundwork for governing the APIOPs Cycl...
Adding APIOps Cycles Canvases to the APIs.json Index for an API
I was playing with the APIOps Cycles Canvas Creator and wanted to prepare one of my demo APIs for a working session with Marjukka Niinioja and Claire Barrett next week. This is all part of my work ...
HTTP APIs and GraphQL, Event-Driven, and Model Control Protocol
It is easy to get caught up in any given moment of the API space, and much more difficult to keep yourself elevated above the space. It is lonely up in the tops of the peaks above the API space, an...
Editing JSON Schema in YAML
There are many little areas of friction I encounter while doing APIs that fascinate me as visible areas of separation between that classic line and often canyon between business and IT. But there a...
No More API Producers Only API Consumers
Like most APIs, Twitter, Facebook, Google Maps, and other APIs begin as pro-consumer and community, until they reach a critical mass, then the APIs themselves became the consumer, extracting as muc...
Consent APIs
In today’s extractive world of APIs being shifted into higher gear and looking like a Studio Ghibli scene all powered by artificial intelligence I wanted to spend some time learning from the world ...
API Specification Fragmentation and Rot
I’ve been resisting as much as I can to the recent waves of obsequious posts on Model Control Protocol (MCP) in recent weeks, inviting anyone to come talk about how the specification or any other s...
API Governance Rule Awareness Amongst Teams Matters
There is an automate and forget it mentality that exists around API governance rules today. It is another one of those confounded technical details that enterprise engineering and increasingly prod...
Happy To Talk About The Merits of Your New API Specification Anytime
I am nobody, but I have been around the block or two when it comes to API specifications. You are unlikely to agree with most of my views on API specifications, and there are folks out there who st...
API Evangelist Weekly Knowledge Builders Are Now Free and Available Via Email Newsletters
I have developed what I consider to be a base of knowledge organized into nine separate categories that I am pretty confident are what can improve enterprise API operations in useful ways. Taking w...
March 24, 2025
#Schema
#Governance
#HTTP
#Proxies
#Service Composition
#Operations
#Chagnes
#Evangelism
What Is A Valid OpenAPI?
Continuing to parse the great discussion from the weekly API Evangelist API Governance conversation yesterday, and building on the presentation from Sohaib Tariq of APIMATIC on validating OpenAPIs,...
The Venn diagram of API Governance and API Observability
Continuing to parse the great discussion from the weekly API Evangelist API Governance conversation yesterday, and building on the presentation from Paul Bruce on observability, I want to further p...
Applying Inference Models to Some of the Biggest API Challenges
My friends over at Corewood are cooking up interesting solutions to some of the biggest API challenges we face. But, I am going to need your help to verify not only what they are onto with their ap...
API Versioning Is Just An Engineering Coping Mechanism Amidst Unrealistic Business Deadlines
It is interesting to have studied API versioning all of these years. Every conference I produced and supported, the discussions around API versioning are always the most attended, heated, and engag...
API Governance Rules Provide a Secure Baseline to Start From
The weekly API governance conversation yesterday provided a wealth of insight that I will be looking to amplify as part of my storytelling on API Evangelist. I had ten people come by to discuss top...
An OpenAPI-Driven Pipeline Workflow From Yesterday’s API Governance Weekly
Continuing to parse the great discussion from the weekly API Evangelist API Governance conversation yesterday, and building on the presentation from Yarra Letz of Tyk on where to store our OpenAPIs...
OpenAPI Is Not the Thing
A lot of attention gets placed on OpenAPI as a final output, without much understanding of the importance of OpenAPI being more about everything that goes into its creation. A complete OpenAPI does...
Me Controlling the Protocol (MCP)
Time for an obsequious post on current trends to send signals that I still matter in the current conversation. MCP, or Model Context Protocol is the topic du jour for people wanting AI to replace a...
Evaluating the Default Redocly Rules
Last up in my series of evaluating the leading API governance rules formats is Redocly. Like APIMATIC, Redocly has organized their rules, making my post an easy copy / paste, but the work of still ...
API Governance Rules Are Not the Thing
Like OpenAPI not being the thing, API governance rules like Spectral, Vacuum, and APIMATIC, and Redocly tend to get all the attention when it comes to API governance. The rules matter as they can h...
This Thursday's Weekly API Governance Conversation
The agenda for this Thursday’s Weekly API Governance conversation has been set. Each week I am conducting an hour long discussion about API governance and inviting guests to come and drive discussi...
Theneo's Capabilities Image Speaks to the State of API Docs
I am always looking for the interesting bits being offered by the partners who fund API Evangelist. You know, the interesting things I can talk about and showcase while remaining faithful to the AP...
The Silence and Noise of APIs.json, OpenAPI, JSON Schema, Arazzo, and Spectral or Vacuum Rules
My friend Jason (JSON) Harmon said something very profound about the API governance rules space](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7306387751614988288/?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomm...
Evaluating the Default APIMATIC API Governance Rules
I am continuing to document the API governance rule landscape, beginning with Spectral, but then adding on Vacuum. Next I wanted to inventory what APIMATIC makes available–they have the most comple...
The Backwards OpenAPI World We Live In
I spent a lot of time trying to convince companies to create OpenAPIs for their APIs. I spent a lot of time discovering, harvesting, and evaluating the OpenAPIs for companies who create them. I als...
Rules, Pipelines, Observability and ??? For This Thursday Weekly API Governance Conversation
The first weekly API Evangelist API Governance Conversation was a success–you can tune into the discussion on Youtube, but for this week I wanted to introduce a little more structure, while keeping...
Roll Out API Governance Rules By Domain or Team in CI/CD Pipelines
As I continue to evaluate the potential standardization around the governance of HTTP APIs within CI/CD pipelines I am incorporating in several conversation around the phased rollout of API governa...
March 18, 2025
#Rules
#Pipelines
#Governance
#CI/CD
#Domains
#Maturity
#Severity
#Security
#Versioning
Expertise in Three Separate API Lanes
I have been collaborating with Claire Barret of APIsFirst and Marjukka Niinioja of Osaango on API consulting, partnership, and storytelling projects lately and I am really enjoying the balance they...
Don't Do Anything New — Just Map the APIs You Have
I am regularly caught off guard by the dissonance between the speed and velocity at all cost mode of some enterprises and the lack of discovery and observability of their HTTP API infrastructure. I...
Your OpenAPI is Your API Business Requirements
I spend a lot of time translating Word and PDF documents into machine-readable rules that can be used to validate an API during design, development, and build time. I’ve kind of given up on convinc...
When You Won’t Publish API Publicly But Freely Give Up API Intellectual Property Over To Cloud Services
Pushing back on making APIs available via a public portal is the top things I hear from enterprise leadership. Why would they want to just give away their road map and their digital resources to th...
The Spectrum of API Governance Rules
When you say the phrase “API governance rule” it will mean different things to different people. An API governance rule may or may not be precise and executable, and even when it is, that can mean ...
The Basic Building Blocks API Governance
The API Evangelist vision of API governance is a much more bottom tactical approach which can be aligned with enterprise business or engineering strategy, as well as centralized or federated approa...
Evaluating the Default Spectral API Governance Ruleset
To help me better understand the API governance rules I have developed over the last six months I wanted to walk through what API governance rules come default with Spectral. This is a critical hel...
Evaluating the Default Doctor and Vacuum API Governance Ruleset
Alongside evaluating the default ruleset that comes with Spectral I wanted to evaluate the default ruleset that comes with Vacuum. I am looking to do a diff between the rulesets, but also diff agai...
Establishing a Naming Convention for API Governance Rules
The first thing that comes to mind after evaluating the default rulesets for both Spectral as well as Vacuum, is that a naming convention for rules is needed. There is no consistency within each pr...
Reducing the API Governance Cognitive Load By Categorizing Vacuum Rules
It is a common mistake made by API governance teams once they learn the power of linting the OpenAPI contracts at design, develop, and build time within pipelines-—turning on all rules for all APIs...
Getting the Attention of Enterprise People to Help Them with Their APIs
Getting the attention of people who are doing APIs within enterprises is not easy. I would say that I do pretty well getting people to tune in for brief moments, but it is something that is more ar...
You’ve Been Put in Charge of Your Public API Presence and Experience
In an effort to capture another recent conversation I had with someone being tasked with API change at scale within their enterprise, I wanted to capture as much of what I shared in a story that ot...
Lack of Investment in API Discovery Drives API Redundancy and Inefficiencies
Responding to another excellent comment on the importance of having an API source of truth, as well as [providing a direct URL for how visibility and control is at odds with power and control])http...
API Visibility and Control Is at Odds With Enterprise Power and Control
I regularly leverage social media for engaging with my audience and customers, but I am also a big fan of keeping as much back within my domain as possible, while still engaging in conversation via...
AN API Evangelist Conversation With Derek Thompson of Ambassador About API Code Generation Using AI
Derek Thompson of Ambassador came by for a discussion about code generation and artificial intelligence. I had began engaging with Derek’s team about the importance of maintaining OpenAPI specs whi...
What API Tools Should I Be Running in My Pipelines for API Governance?
I am needing to answer a question for a customer regarding what they should be running in their CI/CD pipelines. It is a question I have to answer regularly, and I am always needing to refresh my m...
The Trailing Slash on API Paths and Why an API Governance Rule Matters to Business
I am working rule by rule to try and bridge the technical details of what we are governing with the business reasons why we want to invest in API governance. On deck is a common rule you come acros...
The Semantics of API Pipelines
After taking a fresh look at some of the tooling areas that I’d recommend running in API CI/CD pipelines, I wanted to draft an initial list of the different areas of consideration at the pipeline l...
The Importance of an API Source of Truth
Having a single place API producers can go to find everything for an API, as well as a single place API consumers can go to find everything for an API is important. Oftentimes this source of truth ...
The API Evangelist API Pipeline Builder
To help me better see the pipeline layer we use to deliver our APIs I retrofitted the API Evangelist API Platform Builder to only have specs and open-source tooling, and organized using some semant...
An API Evangelist Conversation With Marc Laventure of Scalar About Clients, Documentation, and OpenAPI
I sat down today with Marc Laventure of Scalar to talk about their API client and documentation offerings, and how they see OpenAPI as a specification. Marc’s taken a slightly different approach th...
When It Comes to APIs Our Enterprise Is Different
I hear this quite regularly from folks I talk to about API governance. That their enterprise organization is different. I get that, and it probably is in many ways, but when it comes to interfacing...
SDKs Are Hard — Look at APIMATIC to See the Journey
The SDK market is hot right now. If you look at the number of new services emerging and open-source tooling out there, one can conclude that the need for SDKs is blowing up. Clearly the API landsca...
Our API Governance is Staffed By 3 Fractional Employees Who Are Already Overworked
Rarely do you come across an API governance program that has the resources they need. Most of the teams we talk to are staffed by maybe 1 full time person, but usually are just a handful of individ...
Grounding Your API Governance With the Who, What, When, Where, Why of Rules
One of the most difficult things about producing APIs is getting everyone doing the work on the same page. This is why you have seen API guidelines emerge that provide a checklist of the things tha...
Do you have any blueprints for API design style guide?
I’ve been down the API style guide rabbit hole several times. A couple times drunk and a couple times sober. I ended up with a whole bunch of assumptions that I wanted to validate on the ground wit...
Writing the Code to Mock a FHIR Compliant Mental Health Record
The Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) provides a standardized way to make healthcare records more interoperable across different healthcare providers. Healthcare interoperability is...
Welcoming Theneo as the API Evangelist Documentation Partner
I wanted to give a great big shout out to our newest partner Theneo. I only recently met the leadership of Theneo, but have been spending time over the last couple of weeks getting to know what the...
The Need for Collaboration, Discussion, and Yes, Even Disagreement in the API Space
One of the things that has made the API space so rich over the last fifteen years has been the discussion, collaboration, and even disagreement that has occurred between people. There used to be mo...
API Governance is About People Conducting Business
What is API governance? It is a topic I’ve explored from a technical, business, policy, and people perspective over and over for many years now, and my hope was renewed last week to hear that other...
Weekly Public API Governance Office Hours Each Thursday at 12:00 PM EST
I have been planning on adding weekly public office hours to help drive a discussion around the API governance needs of the community since the beginning of the year. I was struggling getting some ...
Tyk is Leading the API Governance Conversation
I opened up the Tyk LEAP 2.0 API Governance conference yesterday. It was a virtual conference but had the staying energy of a real conference. I opened up things at 9:30 AM my time, but then found ...
Hal and JSON-LD Hypermedia in the Wild With the CarAPI
Hypermedia is an API design pattern born out of the web and had its heyday between 2008 and 2014-ish, but received significant push back from API producers in the face of some very smart and well-m...
Capital G Governance and Lowercase g governance
The Tyk LEAP 2.0 API Governance conference yesterday brought together an interesting mix of people to talk about the heart of what API governance is—people and business, with a little tech sprawl m...
AI Makes Data More Accessible
One way people try to appeal to me in regards to artificial intelligence (AI) is by telling me it will make data more accessible. As the API Evangelist I am regularly advocating for companies, orga...
Prepping for a Discussion Around What Can Be Lost With AI-Generated API Code
I was having a lively debate on social media with the folks over at Ambassador about AI-Driven Boilerplate Code Automation, but in the context of API operations. We have a podcast recording schedul...
February 27, 2025
#Artificial Intelligence
#AI
#OpenAPI
#JSON Schema
#Code Generation
#Boilerplate
#SDKs
curl and APIs
I think a lot about a conversation I had with Daniel Sterberg, the creator and maintainer of curl a couple years back while at working at Postman. During our acquisition of all desirable talent pos...
API Evangelist Conversation With Juan Cruz Viotti of Sourcemeta About Schema Registries and More
Juan Cruz Viotti of Sourcemeta came by for a conversation about the schema registry solution he had recently built. Juan has gone deep into the JSON Schema rabbit hole, deeper than anyone else I’ve...
The Distribution of APIs, the Development, the Gateway, and the Governance (Guidance)
There are many ways teams producing APIs talk past each other. Is this an internal, 1st-party, or 3rd-party API, because what needs to be discussed will vary widely. Is this an existing API or a ne...
Learning From How Eleven Automobile Manufacturers Handle their Public API Presence
The previous example of how the credit card companies handled their public API presence provides a very strong industry for showcasing APIs in a heavily regulated space. Grownup APIs. Another inter...
Charging for API Access to Corporate Branding Images Like Mercedes-Benz
Many enterprises struggle with what digital resources and capabilities to make available via APIs. It always makes sense to start with digital resources that offer value, but don’t have high securi...
Allowing Developers to Bring Your APIs Home with Workspaces
HTTP APIs that operate in the cloud, but also APIs that are on-premise or are sandboxed all provide opportunities for developers to bring the value generated by APIs home to where they already work...
The Stories Not Told Through Your API Portal That Does Not Exist
Having conversations with business and engineering leadership regarding the availability of a public develop portal, API catalog, SDKs, and feedback loops is in the top five of the conversations th...
Schema Work is the Most Stabilizing API Work
Stop what you are doing for a moment. Close your eyes and think about how much schema is around you in your API work. Every API you produce and consume has a schema for the API, but also consumes s...
Making Your API Stories More Hands-On
Developers love to reverse engineer functional aspects of API operations, and they see code and artifacts as just puzzles. The best way to get technically minded folks engaged with your stories is ...
Consistently Putting Your Brand in the Names of Your APIs
Naming your APIs is hard. Having governance and guidance available for teams when producing APIs helps a lot. It can be difficult for teams, especially the engineering teams producing APIs to choos...
What Stands Out Across the APIs for the Seven Major Credit Card Companies
All of the major credit card companies provide a fairly strong set of case studies for how large enterprises should be doing HTTP APIs. All of the credit card companies have dedicated domains for t...
SourceMeta Schemas - A Simple JSON Schema Registry
Getting your schema house in order is one of the most important things you can do when it comes to API governance. Schema defines and validates our APIs, but also defines and validates our API oper...
Join API Evangelist for an API Governance Conversation This Thursday at Tyk’s Leap 2.0
I will be speaking at Tyk’s upcoming Leap 2.0 API Governance virtual conference this Thursday. API governance is top of mind for most enterprise organizations and quickly becoming a priority for th...
Corewood Fixes $7 Haircuts — aka Fixes Your Bad Code Generated by Artificial Intelligence
Kyle “Mickey” Mickey, DevOps & Platform Engineering Consultant over at Corewood DevOps, Platform, and Identity Services had a great common on one of his posts about AI. Stating that in the 1980...
Visualizing Your OpenAPI, API Requests, and Responses
A question came in yesterday about being able to visualize a rather large OpenAPI that was an industry standard. Visualizing API requests and responses, but also the surface area of an API and API ...
Make Sure You Upgrade That JSON Schema to the Latest Draft
Every enterprise organization in the world uses JSON Schema, and most have multiple versions of the specification in use, with teams largely unaware of the implications. JSON Schema is a specificat...
You See AI Agents but API Evangelist Just Sees API Discovery, Semantics, Hypermedia, Workflows, Automation, and Events
The official stance of API Evangelist on the AI hype is the same as it has been for fifteen years, and to never ever go too far down any single API application rabbit hole. Mobile application devel...
Welcoming APIMATIC as the API Evangelist SDK Partner
I wanted to give a big welcome to APIMATIC as a sponsor of API Evangelist. APIMATIC and API Evangelist began working together in 2014, and after a decade of working and storytelling together I am h...
Taking the API Pulse Across Industries
The API Pulse Schema All of the existing API industry reports available today collectively fall short in providing the balance needed to understand the state, health, and wellness of the API sp...
Having a Programmatic Enterprise API Resource and Capabilities Rolodex
Learning OpenAPI takes time and work. Producing robust and complete OpenAPI for an API takes time and work. Doing this across teams unlocks the power of having an enterprise rolodex of all your API...
Backfilling Everything API Management Did For HTTP APIs But For Event-Driven APIs
The next frontier of API investment will not be focused on artificial intelligence, but filling in everything enterprises take for granted (and often do not even use) with API gateways when it come...
API Evangelist Conversation With Frank Kilcommins About the OpenAPI Arazzo Specification
Frank Kilcommins of SmartBear came by to talk about the OpenAPI Arazzo specification. He shared the history how it came to be and how it is changing the conversation inside and outside the OpenAPI ...
A Quick API Governance Health Check With the Doctor After Changes to an OpenAPI
After making changes to any OpenAPI it helps to check in with the Doctor to make sure you haven’t broken anything. After some work the other day the good Doctor gave this OpenAPI an A+ grade. The d...
Vacuum API Governance Rules — All Spectral Properties Plus Id, category, and howToFix
When looking at the diff between the JSON Schema for Spectral rules and the JSON Schema for Vacuum rules, you learn that you have all of the same capabilities available in a Spectral rule, but with...
Siemens Has an API Sandpit
Words are everything. Most of the words we use in the API space are crafted and given to use by companies looking to sell us something. API Evangelist has made a career out of playing with and shif...
Graceful OpenAPI Property Degradation
As the 3.2 version of the OpenAPI specification picks up momentum (get your feedback in), it is a good time to evaluate one of the industrial-grade API capabilities that the libopenapi specificatio...
Each Appliance We Use Needs a Custom Electrical Plug
We like to compare APIs with electricity here at API Evangelist. It really is the best analogy to help business stakeholders understand the importance of API governance, and to show them how we are...
The OpenAPI Doctor’s Diagnosis is Tough But Worth It
We were working on a new API last night and before we got too far along in our work we wanted to run our design by the OpenAPI Doctor. The first diagnosis hurt a bit, and felt like the first visit ...
The Alibaba Cloud vs. The OpenAPI Doctor
We were working through the Alibaba Cloud APIs, profiling them as part of our wider work. After first glance the portal seems pretty busy, but once you begin working through it you realize how well...
libopenapi is the Most Important API Story You Can Read Today
Most technical folks do not understand API Evangelist rants about the technology, business, and politics of APIs. Most technologists live in the comfortable silo of technosolutionism and choose to ...
February 14, 2025
#OpenAPI
#Libraries
#Bundlers
#Parsing
#Validation
#Extensions
#References
#Resolvers
#Rolodex
Make Sure You Protect Those API Resources In A Time of Artificial Intelligence
We are seeing an uptick in conversations around API service composition, monetization, and value exchange. This business side of API operations has been part of the narrative here on API Evangelist...
Cloudflare Uses OpenAPI to Standardize the Redaction of Audit Log Data at the API Gateway Layer
Cloudflare has a great story about how they handle API audit logging at the API gateway layer. It is a good read even if you aren’t a Cloudflare customer. What caught our attention was specifically...
The API Manifest Specification for Managing API Dependencies
We regularly try to do the work to stay in tune with the good work coming out of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). As part of this work we learned about the API manifest standards proposa...
How to Avoid Making API Governance a Bottleneck
It is easy for API governance to become the bottleneck in API operations, especially when an API review is a face-to-face gate that is required before someone can move their API beyond any developm...
Build Your Own API Client Around OpenAPI
There are more API clients out there now than you can shake a stick at. A recent article had 20 separate API clients dueling for your attention. API clients begin with allowing you to authenticate ...
OpenAI API on Azure is an Exclusive API License
The topic of API copyright was top of mind for most of the time between 2010 and 2020 due to the Oracle vs Google API copyright case. That was settled in early 2021 with APIs being copyrightable no...
Not Speaking JSON Schema Leads to API Drift
There are many aspects of API operations that API product managers probably shouldn’t be poking their head into. However, there are many aspects of API operations that would lead to better business...
API Governance: 10% Care, 60% Don’t Have Time, 30% Do Not Care
When you crunch the number of visits, engagement, and contribution across the self-service aspects of your API governance, and then you do the diff with the conversations and feedback at API govern...
API Scale, a Cautionary Tale
We are working with Visual Thinkery to produce some more images for API Evangelist. Visual Thinkery is behind the original API Evangelist logo that means everything to us, and is something that ref...
The OpenAPI Is Not What Matters the Most
A lot of attention is given to a finished and complete OpenAPI for any HTTP API. This is a good thing, but it is also equally important to focus attention on the importance of everything that goes ...
APIs Are a Door For Your Enterprise
If you’ve worked in a large enterprise you are very familiar with the physical security that exists, and that there are primary entrances you can take into a building. There may be a handful of eme...
The Nascar API Available As Swagger UI
API Evangelist has an automated crawler that searches for evidence of Swagger UI across the web. Most of these APIs wouldn’t rise to the level of needing a story and clearly are just a side hustle ...
API Evangelist Conversation About Trains, AI, Rich Fat Cats, Big Money, and Politics with Adron Hall
Adron Hall came by for a conversation about trains. Adron and I share a love of transit and trains, but also both make their living slinging APIs. Adron had recommended I read Nothing Like It in th...
Real-Time Vacuum Sealed API Governance Reports Over Time
There is a lot to explore under the hood of Vacuum as one works to understand how the open-source API governance linting library shifts API governance from 1st gear into 2nd gear, and appears at fi...
The Opportunity at the Intersection of API Rate Limits and Plans
One of the knowledge builders we are working on right now is focused on API service composition. We recently talked with Zuplo about their view of API rate limits and planning from the gateway pers...
Real-Time In-Motion Domain-Driven Design
We’ve encountered a lot of domain-driven design (DDD) sessions over the last fifteen years of our work. It is something few organizations have the time and resources to do, with even fewer who exec...
API Evangelist Conversation About Nothing Changing in the World of APIs With Jennifer Riggins
Tech storyteller and journalist Jennifer Riggins came by for a conversation after her post in The New Stack about why nothing has changed in the world of APIs for the last fifteen years. Jennifer a...
What are the Core Spectral API Governance Rule Functions
When it comes to governing the technical details of APIs as part of the design, development, and pipeline build processes, the open-source client and rules format Spectral has led the conversation ...
Take a Look at the Proposed OpenAPI 3.2 Tag Object
The OpenAPI tagging object is one of the most under utilized objects of the API specification, and one that when used, is something that can have a profoundly positive effect on API experiences ran...
Fifteen Years of API Specifications
The OpenAPI specification is the most important standard we have in the API space, because of what the specification describes, but more importantly it’s wide adoption and ability to get us API pro...
API Evangelist Tells Stories To Understand and Not Always To Support
We get some folks asking why we would share a post about an AI API from a company that is negatively impacting their world or sharing a link to the latest announcement from Facebook or Twitter API....
Will You or a Vendor Complete The Map of Your API Resources and Capabilities?
Mapping out the landscape of existing HTTP APIs across the enterprise is the number one challenge engineering leadership faces right now. In the race for the web, then for mobile, and now for API, ...
February 3, 2025
#Surveying
#Assessment
#Mapping
#Landscapes
#Gateways
#Pipelines
#SDKs
#Clients
#Security
API Evangelist Conversation with Quobix from from Princess Beef Heavy Industries
Quobix from from Princess Beef Heavy Industries came by again, this time to talk about OpenAPI Doctor and libopenapi at it’s core. I knew “The Doctor” was a modular OpenAPI editor w/ governance bui...
API Evangelist Weekly API Governance Knowledge Builder Sessions
We spent the last part of 2024 breaking down what we’ve learned about API governance over the last five years (15 really), and the month of January workshopping the different ways in which we could...
The Verb in Noun API Button
The Run in Postman has had a profound effect on the API space, and is something we have long felt was in need of iteration and evolution. The concept is something that is wider and more universal t...
Please Put Spectral Into the OpenAPI Initiative SmartBear
I find myself reliving the anxiety from March of 2015 to October 2015 to November of 2015 regarding the behind the scenes negotiations to get Swagger put into the Linux Foundation on API Evangelist...
Grouping and Applying Spectral API Governance Rules Using Tags
One of the most important properties that Spectral does not possess is tagging. OpenAPI tags applied at the operational level allow for a simple yet powerful way to organize and group your API reso...
A Conversation With Daniel Kocot of codecentric AG About The Lines We Draw Around Our APIs Being Primarily About People
Daniel Kocot came by again to talk about the lines between our private and public APIs. We had been talking about internal, first-party, and third-party APIs back and forth on LinkedIn, and I recom...
You Don’t Have Enough Power to Aggregate That API Platform
The desire to centralize API gateways and platforms is a powerful one. Like mono vs micro, federated vs. centralized comes with its technical, business, but also peopel and political tradeoffs. The...
What Would An API Governance (Guidance) Rule Marketplace Look Like?
API Evangelist is really interested in elevating the API governance rule conversation, bringing more visibility and discussion to specific rules, and why you would want to apply and enforce a rule ...
January 30, 2025
#Governance
#Rules
#Marketplaces
#Discovery
#Guidance
#Discussion
#Provenance
#Standards
The Great Unbundling of the API Client
We are doing a lot of stress testing on the technology, business, and politics of APIs, OpenAPI, collections, documentation, explorers, playgrounds, clients, SDKs, plugins, applications, and integr...
A Conversation with Adrian Machado From Zuplo About Technical and Business of API Rate Limits
Adrian Machado from Zuplo came by for a talk on API rate limiting, but not just the technical bits. Zuplo is doing a good job at bridging the business and technical aspects of rate limiting at the ...
Using OpenAPI to Configure Infrastructure Is API Governance
It is a tough sell to convince teams producing an API, as well as leadership for those teams, that API governance is an answer the chaos of noise that exists across API operations today. Applying S...
Talking OpenAPI, Parsers, SDKs, and AI with Vincent Biret, Microsoft Graph SDKs Principal Software Developer at Microsoft
We sat down with Vincent Biret, Microsoft Graph SDKs Principal Software Developer at Microsoft to talk about all things integration. We are very interested in the intersection of APIs, specificatio...
We Are Entering The Third API Documentation Renaissance
We recall vividly here at API Evangelist the response to Swagger and SwaggerUI when it came out. It was ground-breaking, game-changing, revolutionary, and all the other hollowed out phrases we use ...
APIs.json and OpenAPI for the DeepSeek AI API
What better way to spend the day than playing with the DeepSeek AI API. At first search there isn’t an OpenAPI or other artifacts for the API available so we got to work creating a single OpenAPI f...
API Evangelist Conversation with Dave Shanley About Why Vacuum Improves Upon Spectral
We have been wanting to sit down with Dave Shanley for a while now, but we needed to spend more time with Vaccuum to understand where it would fit into our world view of API governance. We finally ...
What is API Service Composition?
The concept of API service composition has been around for some time, but is one that hasn’t remained part of the dominant API narrative. API service composition is a concept that aligns well with ...
The API Evangelist API Engineering Platform Builder
The concept of a platform means many different things to many different people. API Evangelist has a pretty specific meaning when we say API platform, intentionally invoking a machine-readable arti...
Maximizing the Infrastructure You Already Are Using With APIs
If you are sitting there thinking that you could modernize and evolve legacy systems and processes used as part of API operations by introducing a new service or tool, API Evangelist always encoura...
How do I prepare my APIs for AI Agents?
A common question we hear from folks trying to make an impact with APIs within their enterprise is how do I prepare my APIs for use by AI agents. While there are some nuances to accommodating AI ag...
How do I prepare my API Operations for AI Agents?
A common question we hear from folks trying to make an impact at scale across their API operations is how to I prepare my API operations for use by AI agents. Our recommendations for making your AP...
How do I prepare my API Governance for AI Agents?
A common question we hear from folks trying to scale, mature, and make their API governance be more effective is about how to prepare API governance to be used by AI agents. Our recommendations for...
What is an API Product?
Words and phrases get tossed around in the API spaces regularly without much clarification, negotiation, and alignment on what they mean. As we engage with teams producing and consuming APIs we reg...
Snackable API Stories in the Moment But Also Providing Fuel For The Long Haul
API Evangelist is perpetually stuck in between the strategic and tactical while crafting stories for the API space. We have heeded warnings of wise architects like Gregor Hohpe and getting too comf...
Adyen Makes Good Use of OpenAPI Webhooks
Webhooks was introduced into the OpenAPI specification with the 3.1 release, and is something that isn’t always showcased as part of the core specification. Webhooks itself often gets overlooked as...
The Missing API Fundamentals
You can find endless information gathered profiling public APIs and the nuts and bolts of API governance via the API Evangelist website, but after much surveying and assessment of what API producer...
Making Things Smaller Does Not Always Mean Better
It is healthy to regularly explore and challenge our belief system in making things smaller and more modular and that doing so will make things easier and simpler. If you reduce something big to so...
Calculating the Governance Rules Coverage for an OpenAPI
There are a number of ways to evaluate the effectiveness of API governance. You see a lot of API scores, ratings, and grades. But, this approach places a heavy weight on the rules being applied hav...
Making Schema More Accessible to API Product Stakeholders
With the introduction of HTTP APIs into the enterprise, the concept of a schema has escaped from the world of databases, requiring more awareness and engagement across business stakeholders. Schema...
API Drift Occurs Because You Are Not Precise With Requirements
There is a lot of talk about API drift in the tech blogosphere and from API service providers. API drift is what occurs between the moment you craft the business requirements for an API to the mome...
The Properties of Spectral API Governance Rules
Spectral is a command line tool for linting OpenAPI and other schema for common patterns and anti-patterns. Spectral is configured using what are called Spectral rules organized into Spectral rules...
The Politics of the API Specification
The importance of open-source API specifications isn’t always easy to see as teams work to complete their sprints, and ensuring their Jira tickets meet the definition of done. The value of the nami...
Making Announcements About Individual API Property Changes
There are many things you can learn about producing APIs by studying the practices of other API producers. Understanding when you should write a blog post or make some other announcements will vary...
Valuable API Cycles Are Spent Other Tooling
When you work within the enterprise reaching out to other teams for alignment around API governance policies and rules, you tend to encounter a lot of pushback and redirection from teams who see yo...
Building Outside-In API Product Feedback Loops Through API Consumer Solidarity
A lot of attention gets spent talking about API producers doing “the right thing” when it comes to treating their APIs as products and cultivating feedback loops with their consumers. It is one of ...
You Have All The Power If You Know Where All The APIs Are
It can be difficult to convince people how important seeing and knowing where all the APIs within the enterprise are. When you talk about API discovery it often gets labeled as about developers loo...
What API Producers Want and What API Consumers Want
You can see the tussle between what API producers want and what API consumers want present in the API portals and experiences of leading public API producers, but this is a theater production that ...
Every API Should Have an OpenAPI, JSON Schema, and Interactive Documentation
We’ve done a lot of sifting through the details of how and why API producers provide documentation, OpenAPI, SDKs, and other resources this week. We’ve thought through the what API producers want a...
What To Do With That Last API Governance Effort Few Ever Used?
After spending time in the API space—-whether navigating the challenges of enterprises or startups—-you develop strategies for acknowledging failures and leveraging past efforts. Successful API pra...
Do We Invest In SDKs or Just an OpenAPI and API Documentation
We dedicated time recently to map out a high-level overview of what API producers offer to make onboarding and integration easier for API consumers. We analyzed the distribution and adoption of thi...
Api Evangelist Conversation With Reza Shafii Product Executive At Kong About Api Integrations Being Dead
My friend Emmanuel Paraskakis had tagged me in one of Reza’s posts on LinkedIn about API integrations being dead, so I invitied Reza to come over and explain more about what he meant. I knew the ti...
What is OpenAPI?
OpenAPI (formerly Swagger) is a specification for designing, documenting, and consuming RESTful APIs. It provides a standard, language-agnostic format that describes APIs, enabling both humans and ...
OpenAPI Powered API Sharing and Support
Postman, Bruno, and Insomnia collections are commonly used for both formal and ad hoc support of API consumers. In contrast, OpenAPI is often regarded as the source of truth for an API, serving as ...
An OpenAPI Powered API Explorer
API service provider Bump recently introduced an API explorer, and we’ve been evaluating its role within the broader ecosystem of API platform services, tooling, and the API specification landscape...
No More I, Just You, and We Are Here to Help
With the recent reboot of API Evangelist, and the release of 4.0 of the website, we are going back to using some of what we feel helped us successfully build the brand in the first place. Version 2...
API, OpenAPI, Collections, Docs, Explorer, Playground, SDKs, and Integrations
There was a healthy dose of déjà vu this last week at the intersection of static API documentation, interactive API documentation, clients as well as SDKs. We were already neck deep thinking and ...
January 12, 2025
#OpenAPI
#Collections
#Documentation
#Explorers
#Playgrounds
#Clients
#SDKs
#Integrations
Who API Evangelist Talks to About Enterprise API Change
There are many people involved with API change within the enterprise, but there is a classic persona of who knocks on the API Evangelist door or is recommended by someone who is familiar with what ...
Very Little Has Changed With APIs In The Last 15 years
API Evangelist has been talking with enterprise API leadership since 2010, and in the last fifteen years, very little has changed, aside from a focus on APIs as a product evolving, API governance b...
The Intersection of Static Docs, Interactive Docs, Explorer, and API Clients
The intersection of static API documentation, interactive API documentation, API explorers, and API clients is a fascinating neighborhood that we see ebb and flow with excitement, investment, and a...
The Desired State of Enterprise API People
People are the most costly, messy, and valuable asset an enterprise possesses, and enterprise leadership is extremely focused on keeping the talent they have and empowering them to do more work ove...
The Current State of the Business of Enterprise APIs
Almost everyone involved with APIs in the enterprise is focused exclusively on the direct monetization of API resources, with very few actually doing anything to standardize this work across all in...
The Current State of Enterprise Digital Resources
Your average enterprise organization has a sprawling and chaotic mix of application programming interfaces being produced and consumed, making business operations difficult to see, understand, and ...
The Current State of API Technology in the Enterprise
The current state of technology within these enterprises is almost always the same, with well-meaning and smart people working hard over the years to deliver what is needed within any given moment,...
The Current State of API People Across the Enterprise
The state of teams producing and consuming APIs across the enterprise is almost always fragmented, competitive, and political, and when this is the foundation for producing external APIs that power...
The Current State of API Operations and Applications
Despite the prevailing narrative of API reuse that exists across different types of applications, many organizations opted to choose new protocols and patterns to deliver what they need, and are st...
The Current Shared State of Enterprise API Collaboration
Despite the promise of connectivity and interoperability, technology and APIs have tended to separate us into ideological camps of business and engineering, by programming language, and any other t...
Striving for a Desired State of API Experience
Few in the enterprise care about APIs, but everyone cares about the experience of running the enterprise and its applications and integrations via a sub-optimal API experience, and enterprise leade...
Reaching for a More Desired Business State of API Operations
Enterprise API operations have to be sustainable and pay its way, and API Evangelist has always heard questions around how APIs can pay for themselves, but the bar is getting higher when it comes t...
A More Desired Technical State of API Operations
The enterprise leadership API Evangelist has been talking to is not asking a lot, they are just looking for some quick ways they can achieve, or at least get closer to a more desired technical stat...
Why Business Leadership Will Want You To Use The Latest Draft of JSON Schema
Explaining the nuts and bolts of API operations to business leadership takes some serious workshopping. Very few engineers, let alone business folks across the enterprise, will care about JSON Sche...
The API Evangelist 1505 Story Format
Back in the early days of API Evangelist we employed a simple rapid fire approach to storytelling that seemed to fit with the appetite of people who were seeking more information about the API life...
Questions to Ask When Looking At API Gateways - Can We See Your API?
One recurring paid service API Evangelist provides is helping enterprises decide which API gateway to choose from out of the multiple waves of solutions available today. Most API gateways have comm...
OpenAPI Doctor is What API Innovation Looks Like Today
It can be hard to find API innovation across the API space. There is a lot of reinventing the wheel and positioning about a future that doesn’t exist, with very little investment in rounding off th...
Where Do I Begin With API Governance - Mapping the Operational API Landscape
API governance begins with mapping the API landscape for the enterprise, but then should also occur for the operational landscape surrounding those existing APIs. A map of the operations surroundin...
Where Do I Begin With API Governance - Mapping the API Landscape
To answer the question of where to begin with API governance you have to start with mapping your API landscape. You simply cannot govern what you cannot see and talk to people about. The entire lan...
Where Do I Begin With API Governance - Mapping the API Experience Landscape
To close this series, you should have a solid understanding of what API experiences actually matter most. Every enterprise API program is struggling with having too few resources, and needing to do...
Where Do I Begin With API Governance - Mapping the API Policy Landscape
Now that we have the API, operational, people, landscape we can properly inform what API governance should be. The engineering and business platform should define what resources are available for t...
Where Do I Begin With API Governance - Mapping the API People Landscape
With an understanding of the API and operational landscape you must always map out the teams who are using any API being produced. Understanding the people and the tribes they belong to, as well ru...
Where Do I Begin With API Governance - Mapping the API Engineering Platform Landscape
This is where we move from the current state of where to start with API governance to beginning to shape what the future state will look like. This is about mapping out the engineering platform, re...
Where Do I Begin With API Governance - Mapping the API Business Platform Landscape
With an engineering platform helping teams producing APIs successfully being defined, let’s move on to the mapping of the API business platform landscape, and what the business properties of API op...
What is JSON Schema?
JSON Schema enables the confident and reliable use of the JSON data format, bringing consistency, validity, and interoperability to enterprise operations. JSON Schema defines the digital objects th...
Not Providing an OpenAPI for Your API Consumers
One of the steps of profiling any API for API Evangelist and inclusion in APIs.io involves searching for the name of the company plus Swagger, OpenAPI, and Postman. While profiling we are always lo...
API Success Requires Working Out in the Open
People assume API Evangelist is so prolific and performative out in the open on the web due to some sort of ego or narcissism, when in reality it is meant to demonstrate how you can achieve success...
The Internet Standards Work APIs Rely Upon That Does Not Always Get the Spotlight
After posting a sarcastic comment on people’s ability to be distracted by new technology instead of being aware of and doing the hard work to improve the ubiquitous and dominant HTTP API work on th...
The API Trainings to Help You Learn More About APIs
A common question we get at API Evangelist about APIs is where one can find training materials on APIs that are high quality. There are a wealth of programming language and technology specific aprp...
The API Reports to Help You Understand the World of APIs
There are a handful of very insightful reports on the API industry available today. While the cadence will vary, most of these API reports publish annually, tapping into their customers and communi...
The API Podcasts to Help You Learn More About APIs
Podcasts are a great way to learn about APIs from people who are producing and consuming APIs withn enterprises and startup organization. There are a number of podcasts available that augment exist...
The API Newsletters to Help You Learn More About APIs
Augmenting the list of blogs that can help you learn more about APIs, a few of those blogs have newsletters, but there are also a couple of stand alone newsletters that you can tune into on a regul...
The API Blogs to Help You Learn More About APIs
There are just a handful of blogs out there that we recommend for people to learn about the world of APIs from. There are a number of generic sources of information, but the stack of experienced, o...
High Entropy API Landing Pages
According to Claude Shannon’s Mathematical Theory of Communication for a message to be properly received the entropy needs to be low. Think of high entropy as when the board on the game show Wheel ...
API Evangelist Conversation with Ben Hutton of The Guild Software
Ben Hutton of the Guild came by to talk about his recent LinkedIn thread about APIs vs SDKs. The topic is an evergreen one that brings out all of the opinions and is something that I enjoy talking ...
3/4 of the Traffic on the Web Is API Traffic, Prioritize Accordingly
Version 4.0 API Evangelist is centered around a single narrative-—the governance of our HTTP APIs. According to Akamai, 83% of the web traffic are APIs, something Cloudflare puts at greater than 50...
Talking About Human Experiences Instead of the API Lifecycle
After talking with Lorna Mitchell about OpenAPI overlays the other day, and continuing work on my API Evangelist platform, I found myself thinking a lot about API experiences. Human experiences lik...
A New Spec Just For Your API Examples
As the API universe continues to expand out of the business of APIs constraints that were applied to full lifecycle management, what some call unbundling, services, tooling, and specifications are ...
How to Govern APIs
It is really difficult to distill down how to approach enterprise API operations, let alone the governance of API operations into a single bullied list. There are a lot of moving parts already in m...
December 12, 2024
#Governance
API Evangelist Conversation with Lorna Mitchell, OpenAPI Specification Maintainer with the OpenAPI Initiative
Lorna Mitchell, OpenAPI Specification Maintainer with the OpenAPI Initiative, and overall API experience expert came by again, this time to talk about the intersection of OpenAPI extensions and exp...
The Overlap Of GitHub Repository Properties, Policies, and Rules with APIs.json Powered API Operational Governance
After learning more about GitHub repository properties, policies, and rules, the overlap of the operational push of API governance occurring with APIs.json becomes more tangible. In coming years, i...
API Evangelist Conversation with Claire Barrett, Digital Strategist at APIsFirst
Claire Barrett, Digital strategist at APIsFirst came by to talk with me about the realities on the ground with APIs in large enterprises and the increasing chatter regarding the return on investmen...
Where I Am Going (My API Evangelist Journey)
To augment my how I got here post, I want to explore where I am going with the next fifteen years of API Evangelist. I have all the building blocks for the next portion of my API journey, I just ne...
The 2025 API Evangelist Vision
I was just exploring how I got here as well as where I am going, and I have only a few more process based posts left to publish here in 2024 before I move into demonstration mode during 2025. I am ...
How I Got Here (My API Evangelist Journey)
To help me understand where I am going I wanted to take a quick walk through how I got here, and spend some time geo locating myself as I enter into some conversations this week about what is next ...
What Is The Deal With All The Photos On API Evangelist?
The photos published alongside all of my blog posts look nothing like the other photos you see out there. They are distorted, noisy, and often fairly shocking in color and other visuals. This is by...
Standardizing Mobile Networks with GSMA Open Gateway APIs
I recently sat down with Henry Calvert, Global Head of Future Networks at the GSMA about their Open Gateway suite of API for the telecommunications and mobile networking industry. They reached out ...
No Confusion With API Secrets in Bruno Environments
I am enjoying working with the Bruno API client. It was a nice reset in my toolbox. I recently have downgraded multiple areas of technological toolbox including ditching Lambda and serverless for a...
API Evangelist Conversation with Lorna Mitchell About OpenAPI Overlays
Lorna Mitchell, OpenAPI Specification Maintainer with the OpenAPI Initiative, and overall API experience expert came by again to educate me (us) on OpenAPI Overlays, helping contrast with the core ...
Generate a Bearer Token Using Bruno and Bluesky Create Session API Operation
Authentication is always your first impression of an API, and for me where the storytelling about an API always should begin. I am a big believer that API stories should be hands-on and something a...
API Evangelist Conversation with Asanka Abeysinghe, CTO at WSO2
Asanka Abeysinghe, CTO at WSO2 came by for a conversation about the realities on the ground within enterprises when it comes to the platformication of all things, from Internet Developer Portals (I...
Looking Back to Understand the Future of the Bluesky Community
I have spent a lot of time thinking about the Twitter community over the years. I built my identity as the API Evangelist on Twitter, agitated through the formative years around how Twitter was lim...
I Am Just an API Surveyor and Assessor
I am struggling with how I communicate about what I do, and the value I bring to the table. My perspective of the API universe and what I offer aligns sometimes with the popular vendor narrative an...
Getting Your Enterprise Schema House in Order
The most destabilizing aspect of enterprise operations, and the greatest contributor to API governance efforts stumbling in my experience is an enterprise not having their schema house in order. Wi...
How Much Does It Cost To Develop An API?
Augmenting my research yesterday into how many APIs does the average company have, I am working to answer how much does it cost to build an API. It is a very different but related question, with a ...
How Many APIs Does the Average Enterprise Have?
I am trying to put together a simple API calculator to try and articulate the real-world business cost of doing or not doing APIs. It is a difficult target to try and pin down because APIs are so h...
A Haunted House API
I want to add a new type of API to our lexicon. There is a lot of talk about zombie APIs that were stood up a long time ago to support a single application or integration but are no longer in use, ...
Opportunities with Government APIs
I am diving back into my work to profile government APIs, and had a friend inquire about the opportunities that exist in the cracks of government APIs, so I figure I’d try to load as much of it bac...
API Governance Rules for APIs Used in Infrastructure As Code
It is interesting to think of the different ways in which APIs are put to use and how some of those applications have a loud venture-backed bullhorn, while others do not. Mobile definitely possesse...
Challenges with Automating API Profiling
There are so many differences between the APIs out there. Even when they are HTTP, Web, or RESTful APIs. I know that people feel like APIs can just be automated and AI will take care of connecting ...
Aligning API Governance To the Enterprise Is Always the Most Difficult Part
It is always one of the unrealistic lesser bullets in a job description for API governance roles, and will continue to be the greatest challenge for any of the service providers selling services to...
Your Developer Portal or Lack of One Tells So Much About Your Enterprise
Having a dedicated developer portal for your company is a drum I have been beating for 15 years now. Some listen, most don’t, despite the huge amounts of evidence supporting the need. Amazon has Am...
Fundamental Spectral Rules For Governing Your JSON Schema
I can’t articulate the importance of enterprise organizations getting their schema house in order as a starting point for API governance. There is an exponential amount of instability and friction ...
Where Is The API Evidence?
I am talking with folks about the different faces of API discovery, which for me, at the intersection of governance, lifecycle, and the platform from a producer and consumer perspective across inte...
Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads APIs
I am profiling all three of the Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads API. This work involves producing an APIs.json that defines how they operate the business side of things, an OpenAPI that describes th...
We Need Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) API Arazzo Workflows to Deliver the Real World Healthcare Experiences
It has been a decade since I first began playing around with the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) API. I first got a look at it while at Health and Human Services (HHS) while worki...
Nobody Cares About APIs or SDKs
Getting people to care about APIs is hard work. It is something I will keep working on until the end of my career, pushing people to see and care about what is happening, but I will always admit it...
How Do You Articulate That An API Is Open Source in a Machine-Readable Way?
I hit a lot of “How to Draw An Owl” issues while profiling API operations for interesting APIs. These are often things that developers take for granted and just assume people will know about how to...
APIs.json, OpenAPI, and Collections for the Open Policy Agent (OPA) API
I just finished profiling the Open Policy Agent (OPA) API for APIs.io. I am working to profile as many different policy engines as I can to better understand how enterprises are standardizing aroun...
Repo, APIs.json, OpenAPI, and Bruno Collection & Environment for Generating HTTP Status Codes Using HTTPStat
I am finding my stride profiling new APIs for APIs.io and I am settling in on the minimum viable repository structure for any API. To demonstrate what I am talking about I took HTTPStat, a simple A...
Help You Manage Your JSON Schema via a GitHub Repository
I am assembling a toolbox of API governance services for my customers based upon what I’ve been doing for the last year, but also based upon the needs of folks I am talking to right now. One of the...
Git Is How You Run in Bruno
I have many different business and engineering platform APIs I use to manage and automate my one man circus. As I continue the work to elevate the Bruno API client as a cornerstone of my API operat...
Making Money With Your API Hustle
I have strong opinions about how we all make money in this space. Opinions that clash pretty regularly with the status quo, but when you sit down to better understand them, they are much more sane,...
Innovation At Intersection of the IDE, OpenAPI Editor, and Governance Rule
As I continue my exploration of where and how we should be editing our OpenAPIs while also applying governance rules, I would be neglectful not to showcase the innovation coming out of APIMATIC at ...
Elevating the Bruno API Client as a Cornerstone of API Operations
I am working on my engineering platform definition this morning and working my way through all the commercial services and open-source tooling that I use to operate API Evangelist and APIs.io. I am...
Snackable, Shareable, Forkable, Embeddable Visual and Source OpenAPI Editor
I wanted to add one more point on top of my thinking about what is needed with an OpenAPI editor, as well as specifically what OpenAPI Doctor was doing with API governance rules, and talk about whe...
Investing In the Future of the Visual OpenAPI Editor
I have long been encouraging folks to rethink a visual editor for OpenAPI. I am NOT a front-end person, and I am very thankful for people who are. With that said I have very strong opinions and bel...
Innovation at the Intersection of OpenAPI Editor and Governance Rules with OpenAPI Doctor
I am gathering my thoughts on what I’d like to see in an OpenAPI editor, and one of the interesting tools out there pushing the envelope is the OpenAPI Doctor. I mentioned them in the previous post...
The Bundling and Unbundling Your OpenAPI and JSON Schema
After prescribing that my clients fire up a GitHub repository and begin centrally managing schema used across their OpenAPI definitions, I want to work on my guidance for helping them bundle and un...
What Does API Governance Mean The Next Four Years
There were stories told and work done on API Evangelist this week—I needed the distraction. However, this newsletter is about summarizing where my head is at each week, and this was a week dominate...
Help You Manage OpenAPI via GitHub Repository
I am assembling a toolbox of API governance services for my customers based upon what I’ve been doing for the last year, but also based upon the needs of folks I am talking to right now. One of the...
Building a Basic Foundation — Using https://github.com/your-org/schema for Your OpenAPI $ref
It is fascinating how complex we can make things through us technologists overthinking things. One example of this is around the usage of $ref in OpenAPI, JSON Schema, and AsyncAPI. It is one are o...
We Are Loading Too Much Into Our OpenAPIs
I am finding more OpenAPIs being managed on GitHub than I ever have before. I learn so much studying different companies’ approaches to managing their API artifacts out in the open, and I think col...
Searching GitHub (Git) Repos for Evidence of the API Truth Out There
I just wired up the GitHub search for my new API Evangelist platform, alongside Google and Bing—-all designed for helping me find evidence of any public APIs, but also across my private and partner...
The API Source of Truth As Well As The Echoes and Overlays of That Truth
I use the phrase “source of truth” a lot to describe the authoritative, centralized, up-to-date artifact and discussion surrounding APIs. I tend to consider APIs.json, OpenAPI, and JSON Schema arti...
The JSON Schema Help We Need
I know enough about JSON Schema to know how much I do not know. I’ve hung out with people using JSON Schema on a daily basis who are completely unaware they are using a standardized schema, and I’v...
Governing API Products vs Governing APIs
The number one thing I learned over the last year of getting hands-on with API governance is that it won’t be enough to govern APIs, because APIs are just the symptom of what flourishes inside the ...
YAML in Design & Develop Time and JSON in Build and Run Time
It is a stance I have taken a lot of shit for working on the ground within enterprises, but one I feel is an important stance to take—using YAML in design/development time and JSON in the build/run...
The Work To Get Your API House in Order Using JSON Schema
I am a big fan of JSON Schema. I have a strong belief that JSON Schema is the most important specification for any enterprise, no matter which industry they operate in. I was talking with my friend...
The API You Produced Is Not An API Until It Is Consumed
I love the confidence that exists within the enterprise when it comes to knowing everything you need to produce an API, but also the simultaneous anxiety and lack of awareness regarding the externa...
Bridging API Rules, Guidance, Experiences, and the Lifecycle Using Policies
I realize that it is hard to follow all of my work. That is fine. It is primarily for me to make sense of where I am going with this work, while also priming the pump for API governance conversatio...
API Sprawl is Good, Embrace It
API sprawl is the latest truth of the enterprise that API vendors are selling to, and us analysts and storytellers are spinning yarns around. APIs are everywhere!!! Littered across the web, the ent...
API Evangelist Conversation with Greg Dennis, Senior Software Engineer at Zeil
Greg Dennis who was on my team at Postman, and part of my master plan to spend as much VC money as I could on open source API technology, came by to share his expert view on the diff between HTTP A...
The Social Fabric of HTTP APIs We Take for Granted
Us technologists excel at not seeing the human aspects of why things work—-we assume it is just the good technology driving everything. There is a reason we are good at coding in isolation. It is b...
My API Evangelism Toolbox
I am revisiting the fundamentals of my API evangelism toolbox. My personal definition of what evangelism is, as well as algorithm shifts and evolves over time, and writing about it always helps me...
5 of the 7 Top API Providers Do API Versioning Wrong — Maybe Wrong is Right?
I crafted my own API versioning policies, rules, and guidance yesterday. As part of any API policy I craft I conduct research to understand what others are doing inside and outside the industry I o...
XML, JSON, YAML, and CSV
I am working with my kiddo on some API work while they are looking for a job after graduating from university, taking advantage of the free labor to help me search for and profile APIs. I enjoy thi...
API Governance Policies, Rules, and Guidance For Managing the Versioning Of OpenAPI and APIs
I am working my way through each of the moving parts of my API governance for HTTP APIs, showcasing the policy, rules, and guidance I employ for each dimension. This work has two purposes, 1) it he...
API Evangelist Conversation with Ian Mai, Executive ADHD & Impulse Control Coach
My friend from Postman days Ian Mai came by to talk about addiction and impulse control with me. This isn’t your average API conversation, but neither is my podcast, and I am all about sharing my o...
Using Monaco Editor To Govern (Guide) API Artifact Changes
The Monaco Editor from Microsoft is a great base for building any custom editor for managing API artifacts like OpenAPI, JSON Schema, Spectral Rules, and APIs.json. Monaco is the same editor used i...
CFPB's Choice To Use Developer Interfaces Instead of APIs in the 1033 Rule
While I applaud the CFPB’s recent finalizing of the 1033 rule requiring banks to use the FDX standard to make banking more interoperable and competitive, I think their choice of wording to talk abo...
The JSON Schema for the Arazzo Workflows Specification
When I am learning any new specification, I always look for the JSON Schema behind it. This essential artifact is your map to any schema or specification. It is the truth. It is what will validate ...
Making Mastercard the Default FDX API Blueprint to Showcase
I’ve read rule 1033, and played around with the Financial Data Exchange (FDX) API, and I am working to expand my knowledge of what is happening around the financial API regulation coming out of the...
API Governance Policy, Rules, and Guidance to Ensure Usage of Latest Versions of Specifications
I am working my way through each of the moving parts of my API governance for HTTP APIs, showcasing the policy, rules, and guidance I employ for each dimension. This work has two purposes, 1) it he...
API Evangelist Conversation with Luke Seelenbinder, Founder & CEO of Stadia Maps
I recently sat down for a conversation with Luke Seelenbinder, Founder & CEO of Stadia Maps to talk about taking on Google Maps with a more sensible and affordable mapping solution. As I learne...
Mapping API Experiences to API Rules Using API Policies
I am developing the experience filter for my Just-in-Time API Guidance kiosk, allowing teams who are producing or consuming APIs to filter API governance (guidance) rules by experience. To define m...
FDX, 1033, and API Nutrients
I read all of the 1033 when first released, something I will do again. I have requested access to FDX while running Open Technologies at Postman and reviewed the OpenAPI. However, as I work my way ...
API Evangelist Conversation with Raymond Camden, Developer Advocate at Adobe
I was happy to have Raymond Camden, Developer Advocate at Adobe come by for another conversation. Raymond was on Breaking Changes back in the day, and I’ve been a follower of his work for well over...
My API Governance Narrative For APIdays Insider NYC This Evening
My name is Kin Lane — I am the guy who has been paying attention to the technology, business, policies, and people of APIs since 2010. I am best known for my API research, consulting, and storytell...
My Just-in-Time API Guidance Kiosk
I have a new set of APIs and dashboard for editing APIs.json contracts, as well as individual APIs defined by OpenAPI. It will be a couple more months before it’s ready to share, but now that I can...
How Do You Communicate an API Is Free To Use in a Machine-Readable Way?
I am working on how to better communicate in a machine-readable way that an API is free to use. There is a lot taken for granted at this layer when technologists are looking to automate with APIs, ...
API Evangelist Conversation with Lorna Mitchell, VP of Developer Experience at Redocly
The opinionated and deeply knowledgeable driver of API specifications and VP of Developer Experience at Redocly, Lorna Mitchell came by to share some knowledge on Redocly CLI with me. I have made a...
(Almost) Nobody Will Care About the Entire API Landscape
Getting people to see APIs is hard. Even with the reality that each one of us individually makes thousands of API calls a day, and millions collectively as a business, almost nobody sees or really ...
API Governance Policy, Rules, and Guidance for Naming APIs
I am working my way through each of the moving parts of my API governance for HTTP APIs, showcasing the policy, rules, and guidance I employ for each dimension. This work has two purposes, 1) it he...
Celebrating the Mundanity of the API Deprecation Notice from the U.S. Department of Labor
I am a big fan of the mundane aspects of API operations. I love the day to day things it takes to make APIs work over the hype, big announcements, and over promising that tends to come with venture...
API Evangelist Conversation with Subramanian Krishnan, Architect and API Integration at Cloud Software Group within Citrix
Subramanian Krishnan, or simply “Subu”, Architect and API Integration at Cloud Software Group within Citrix joined came by for an API Evangelist Conversation. Subu was one of the accumulated drivin...
What is an API Review?
Join Our Weekly API Governance Knowledge Bulding Sessions I am immersed in all the business and technical details of API reviews, and I want to continue working through my thoughts about what a...
API Evangelist Governance Services
Kin Lane, who is also known as the API Evangelist augments your API platform with Git-based API governance services that employ common open-source API specifications that help map and standardize t...
A OpenAPI and JSON Schema for JSON:API
I love getting sucked down into standards rabbit holes. As long as I don’t get lost for many days it usually results in fruitful outcomes. I am working on my base structure that I will use across a...
API Evangelist Conversation with Sue Smith, Senior Learning Experience Manager at Fastly
Sue Smith, Senior Learning Experience Manager at Fastly came by to chat with me about the state of education in the tech sector. Sue has a genuine passion for education and can take just about any ...
I Just Want My Data, Content, and Algorithms in the Services My Customers Already Use
As I talk to more mainstream customers privately, and engage with producers of APIs as part of my API Evangelist conversations, I am realizing just how tech focused my storytelling has been over th...
Developing Your API Integration Strategy
Your company produces valuable digital resources, data, content, and algorithms that other companies find useful, adds value to their business, and are willing to pay for. You can develop web, mobi...
Taking Inventory: APIs Are Defined As API Contracts
An API contract represents a shared machine-readable understanding of the business and technical requirements established between the producer and consumers of programmatic interfaces used across d...
I Am Only One Sustaining This API and I Do Not Have a Lot of Time and Resources
I am profiling hundreds of APIs each month as part of my APIs.io research, and I always learn a lot by reaching out to the API producers I am profiling. When you are in the business of selling your...
API Snacks for AI
I have been trying to prioritize something AI related as part of my regular API work, but the closest I’ve come is using ChatGPT API for writing descriptions and summaries of APIs I am profiling fo...
An API Commons Base for Problem Details for HTTP APIs
I created a new API Commons base for Problem Details for HTTP APIs. The work is evolved from the Train Travel API template created by Bump.sh, but I wanted to isolate just the Problem Details for H...
Should I Use a Single or Multiple Repositories for API Governance?
I was asked the other day about whether to go with a multiple repository approach or a single repository approach for their API governance effort. This is a question with no right answers, and peop...
Separating Your API Bugs, Experience, Features, and Security in GitHub Support Issues Like InfluxDB Does
I am a fan of using GitHub issues to manage the feedback loop for APIs. Mostly because it keeps the provenance of what is happening alongside the API contracts. As I am profiling APIs for inclusion...
API Evangelist Conversation with Bruno Vaz da Costa, API Architect (digital plumber) at RHI Magnesita
Bruno Vaz da Costa, API Architect (digital plumber) at RHI Magnesita came by to share what APIs means to his enterprise operating in the refractory industry, what their biggest challenges are, and ...
Bring In That Outside Perspective To Review Your HTTP APIs
When it comes to reviewing your HTTP API, it can really help to bring in an outside perspective. While I feel that enterprise organizations should always be investing in their own API governance ca...
The API Review for the APIs.io Search API
I have been working for the last couple of weeks on an API review service that I would like to offer to enterprises. The API review service is based upon the API profiling work I have been doing on...
API Strategy
I recently assembled a strategy from the 400+ Spectral rules I have developed. I wanted to abstract away these rules I am using to automate API governance using two separate layers. 1) Policies, wh...
API Governance Rules Are Just a Start—You Need So Much More Context for Your API Governance To Succeed
I am endlessly fascinated with the belief that enterprise leadership has in Spectral rules, and the number of companies I’ve seen just turn on Spectral rules in their CI/CD pipelines and other auto...
Where Do You Begin Mapping the Existing API Landscape?
I had a customer this morning asking another question I hear a lot-—where do you begin when mapping the existing API landscape within an enterprise. API sprawl is common, and it is rare for an orga...
Good API Governance Is Just Guidance
This is one of my oldest API governance phrases, and my wife just reminded me after listening to API blah blah blah during a couple back to back calls, that I need to write a blog post titled—-Good...
Where Do You Start With API Governance?
I have two customers at mainstream companies asking the same question right now–where do you start with API governance? It is an important question, as well as a very difficult one to answer simply...
Managing An Engineering API Platform Definition
I use APIs.json to define the engineering API platform for APIs.io. The machine-readable definition of the engineering platform for APIs.io provides a definition of all of the services and tooling ...
It Is Monday Morning, Do You Know Where All Of Your APIs Are?
It is Monday morning, and you are ready to get to work–do you know where all the digital resources and capabilities you need are from across the enterprise, as well as the ones outside the enterpri...
The API Evangelist Newsletter
I am firing up the API Evangelist newsletter again. I switched services and decided to completely reboot my subscriber list from scratch with this new era. I had quite a list from before, but like ...
Positive and Negative Spectral Rules for API Governance
One of the biggest challenges I encounter using Spectral rules (and linting) is that it focuses primarily on what is wrong. I’ve seen enterprise after enterprise turn on many Spectral rules for tea...
Managing, Applying, and Enforcing Spectral Rules in More Relevant Groupings
Spectral has the ability to extend API governance rulesets by layering on the core default set that comes with additional layers. If you have a strategy for how you craft your rulesets, and a laye...
A Spectrum of API Governance Rules Work
Creating Spectral rules to lint OpenAPI definitions is equal parts art and science. When you take any of the default rules or copy and paste some rules from the style guides of popular API producer...
Using API Policies To Align Product and Engineering as Part of API Governance
One of the greatest challenges with API governance is aligning the product and engineering interests across every stage of the API lifecycle. API governance is heavily invested in from a engineerin...
API Evangelist Conversation with Jamie Tanna, Engineering Productivity at Elastic
I connected with Jamie Tanna on the API’s You Won’t Hate Slack channel, where I started subscribing to his blog. After reading his post on versioning, and more specifically why you should start the...
Why That Spectral Rule Is Not As Effective in Governing Your APIs As You Would Like
Bryan over at Postman asked me about the “rubric for comparing the different options” when it comes to linting OpenAPI artifacts in service of enterprise scale API governance. I have posted a list ...
To Influence a Shift in Your Business Leadership API Strategy I Am Happy To Write About Your Competition
One of the oldest tricks in my API storytelling playbook has been writing about competitors within an industry or sector of business and government. It is a tactic I used to obtain the attention th...
API Evangelist Conversation with Robert Buchanan, API Evangelist Driving API Integrations and API First practices at Procter & Gamble
My friend Robert Buchanan came by to talk with me about the top mistakes people are making with APIs, and why people see APIs as just a technical thing. Robert gets the world of enterprise APis, th...
API Evangelist Conversation with Dale McCrory, Software and Product Management Leader at Breeze Strategy
Dale McCrory, Software and Product Management Leader at Breeze Strategy came back to share his knowledge of API operations through the product manager lens. I am very interested in having product m...
We Let Each Team of Electricians Wire Things up In Their Own Way Without a Plan or Standards — No Wait, We Only Do This With APIs
When you are down in the weeds of API operations reading up on the latest technology trends and utilizing the latest API services and tooling, it is easy to feel like modern API operations are matu...
Do We Build Tooling for API Product Managers or Project API Operations Into Tools They Already Use?
I keep coming across discussions around how we get more API product managers involved in the API lifecycle, and one thing that keeps coming up involves the creation of tooling that is accessible to...
What Are Breaking Changes When It Comes to the Business of APIs?
A lot of attention is spent on breaking changes when it comes to the technical details involved with releasing new versions of our APIs, but recent conversations I’ve been having with folks have le...
API Evangelist Conversation with Daniel Kocot, Head of API Consulting at codecentric AG
I have been wanting to chat with Daniel Kocot for a while now, and finally found an opportunity to have him by for a conversation on API specifications. He has a very nuanced view of OpenAPI as wel...
API Evangelist Conversation with Adam DuVander, Technical Content Strategist at EveryDeveloper
I had my old partner in crime, Adam DuVander over for an API Evangelist Conversation. We immediately went back to the old ProgrammableWeb days and lamented that the blog and API directory is gone. ...
Why We Can’t Have Nice API Things
With his latest post API Complexity Is a Lie, How some businesses live off API complexity while others sell simplicity, Bruno Pedro nails a reality that perpetually weighs on me daily as part of my...
Where Do I Go To Learn About APIs?
It is the top question I get–where do I go to learn about APIs? I’ve long had a list of the blogs, directories, podcasts, and other resources for learning about APIs–the trick is to keep it up to d...
API Evangelist Conversation with Sebastian Loch, Business Development at FatSecret
I was joined by Sebastian Loch, Business Development at FatSecret for a conversation about how they have managed their nutrition data API since 2007. I connected with Sebastian as part of my profil...
September 6, 2024
#Sebastian Loch
#Conversations
#FatSecret
#Nutrition
#Global
#Artificial Intelligence
API Evangelist Conversation with Stanislav Zmiev, Tech Lead of Platform Engineering at Monite
I came across a post on LinkedIn from Alex Akimov, the CTO of Monite, sharing their strategy for versioning their API. I knew that I wanted to get Stanislav Zmiev, the Tech Lead of Platform Enginee...
API Evangelist Conversation with Pat Patterson, Chief Technical Evangelist at Backblaze
I sat down and had a conversation with Pat Patterson, Chief Technical Evangelist at Backblaze. It was the first edition of my new podcast with someone other than me. ;-) Pat is an industry veteran,...
An API Governance Job Posting Template
Join Our Weekly API Governance Knowledge Bulding Sessions I have been mulling over everything I found included in the five API governance job posts I came across the previous week. As I said, t...
What Actually Matters to API Teams
Getting teams producing APIs to care about APIs is an equally daunting task of getting business leadership to care about and invest in APIs. This post overlaps heavily with my thoughts on what actu...
September 2, 2024
#Teams
What Actually Matters to API Leadership
Getting enterprise leadership to care about APIs is the top challenge in the API universe. Everybody benefits with executive leadership mandates the prioritization of APIs, and invests in all stage...
September 2, 2024
#Leadership
Role of Provenance in Dealing with API Change
Change is the great enemy of a successful API. There are many ways that change can erode the quality, performance, velocity, and trust with the APIs we have powering desktop, web, mobile, and artif...
Specs-Only to Reduce API Politics & Friction
I have cared about API specs over code for some time now. I have long invested in OpenAPI for defining the surface area of HTTP APIs, APIs.json for defining the surface area of API operations, JSON...
Properly Defining Your API Platform
There is a lot of talk today about platforms. A topic that has evolved over the years, beginning with waves of startup technology platforms, and now followed by everyone thinking they are a platfor...
September 2, 2024
#Platform
Just-in-Time API Guidance for Teams
People don’t read documentation. People don’t have time to read books. But, I find people pretty receptive to absorbing API guidance in bite-size snackable chunks. My last book The API-First Transf...
JSON Schema Defining and Validating API Operations
JSON Schema is the most important API specification today. I’ll fight anyone on this. It is more important than OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, GraphQL, Protocol Buffers, and even my own APIs.json. Why? Because...
Having a Clear API Vendor Strategy
Adopting 3rd-party infrastructure, tooling, and services is an inevitable reality of API operations today. You will depend on 3rd-party infrastructure and services like GitHub, Postman, or Jira, an...
September 2, 2024
#Vendors
Hands-On Self-Service API Governance
I’ve been researching, talking to people, and writing stories about API governance for a while. I’ve been working with OpenAPI for many years, and have been immersed in the creation of governance r...
Governing APIs At Scale Across Different Groups Within The Enterprise
Enterprises are interesting entities. I am very keen on understanding more about the how and why they operate, but I am also very keen at avoiding getting ground down by the churn of enterprise gea...
GitOps-Driven API Source of Truth
Augmenting a specs-only approach to API governance, I am continuing to invest in a GitOps-Driven API source of truth. I don’t care if it is GitHub, GitLab, or BitBucket, but Git is the core of your...
Evolving API Discovery and Visibility
The gateway for moving towards an API contract focus with API Evangelist was the discovery of APIs and trying to figure out how to make APIs more visible to business stakeholders. API discovery is ...
Establishing a Common API Lifecycle
There are fewer topics I’ve discussed more than the concept of the API lifecycle. I’ve worked for years to try and standardize how I tell stories about the API lifecycle, and have worked with numbe...
September 2, 2024
#Lifecycle
Doing Multi-Protocol API Governance
I have been working to understand REST, WebHooks, GraphQL, WebSockets, MQTT, Kafka, and gRPC side by side as protocols and patterns, but also as the specification that define them like OpenAPI, Asy...
Business and Technical API Alignment
The lack of business and technical alignment across API operations was the number one concern I heard across my 125+ guests doing my Breaking Changes podcast. In my experience, the lack of alignmen...
API Contracts Defining the Next Phase of API Evangelist
The next phase of API Evangelist will be defined by API contracts. The phrase API contracts has been thrown around loosely over the years to describe an OpenAPI definition, and used as part of a sp...
The Digital API Supply Chain
I have been looking to develop analogies for APIs that will make more sense to business folks. I’ve settled in on using what people already understand, the supply chain. But, instead of the raw phy...
The Digital API Factory Floor
I have used a lot of different analogies over my fifteen years as the API Evangelist, but moving forward you will hear me stick with the API factory floor to describe what we do with source control...
The Digital API Distribution Channels
Completing our digital supply chain and factory floor API analogy, the last legs are the wholesale and retail distribution channels. Your API developer portal(s) are your wholesale distribution cha...
It Is Easy To Mix Up API Policy Scope and Talk Past Each Other
API conversations are hard. Not because APIs are hard, but because they are virtual and difficult to see, and there are multiple perspectives and scopes existing across individual APIs, and the API...
OpenAPI Was Successful Because...
I wanted to take a moment to once again develop my understanding of why OpenAPI was successful. Some would argue that its success is unevenly distributed because of Swagger-—which is true. I would ...
API Governance Job Posting Requirements
One way I keep my finger on the pulse of API governance is studying the job postings out there in any given moment. I learn a lot from what companies are asking for via their job posts, while also ...
Just Negotiate the Interface — I Do Not Care About Your Backend, nor Should You Care About Mine
I am always fascinated by how us technologists can’t leave our backends out of API discussions. Keeping an API design conversation just about the interface between a producer and consumers proves t...
REST is Messy Just Like Us Humans
HTTP Web APIs are the dominant form of private and public APIs. It has been this way for over a decade, and will continue for some time to come. I know that GraphQL, gRPC, Kafka, and other API beli...
Join Me For An API Evangelist Conversation
I have really, really, really missed the public conversations I was having on my Breaking Changes podcast, as well as the private conversations I’ve been having with enterprise folks across differe...
What Steps Do API Producers Have in Their GitHub Actions Pipelines
I have been studying the GitHub repositories of API producers who choose to manage their OpenAPIs via a public repository. I have broken down all the properties of these repositories to help me bet...
The API Pain We Cause Ourselves
My friend Emmanuel Paraskakis recently published a list the top 7 Ways To Screw Up Your API Product-—which I agree with, but told him I’d ponder and add some of my to the list. From Emmanuel’s exp...
OpenAPI As Executable
I was stuck in a cycle of thinking yesterday about the executability of an OpenAPI vs. Postman Collection. I am closely watching the Arrazzo spec for defining workflows, but I am very interested in...
YAML is a Concession We Make for Business Stakeholders — Please Get Involved
I hear a lot of complaints from developers about the usage of YAML when it comes to defining APIs. I have a pretty strong design and develop time YAML, and build and run time JSON philosophy in my ...
Using Your API Voice To Make Sense of Things
It is loud down here amongst the APIs. It is hard to hear your own voice over the noise, and after you have many folks tell you that you can’t speak, or heavily edit you when you do speak, you begi...
Leaving Bloomberg and Going Back to API Evangelist
Friday was my last day at Bloomberg. I learned what I had come there to learn and now it is time for me to get back to my API Evangelist work. Moving forward, I will be taking my previous API Evang...
Getting on the Same API Page
I am perpetually fascinated by how people “see” APIs based upon their role, experience, and how they are incentivized to work on APIs. For the last decade plus, my strongest way of assessing where ...
An APIs.json API Contract
I have been exploring the addition of a new property type to APIs.json called “Contract”. I wrote about recently how we need to expand our definition of the API contract beyond a technical contract...
More Examples of using GitHub to Manage Your OpenAPI
I have found thirteen more solid examples of API providers using GitHub to manage their OpenAPI and related artifacts. I am regularly finding these as I am profiling APIs, and rather than just writ...
It Needs to Scale
I hear this frequently about my APIs.json work-—it needs to scale. People struggle with understanding why I would hand-craft an APIs.json search index for other peoples APIs. Trust me, I sure wish ...
An APIs.json for the Train Travel API
I am working on producing an APIs.json for the Train Travel API produced by Bump.sh. I am adding the API to the API Commons as a base API, and publishing an APIs.json is where it all starts. I will...
What is API Search and Discovery
It was interesting to approach API search and discovery with a blank slate. When we got APis.io back, both APIs.json and API Commons were fairly dormant, and adoption has been minimal. Partly due t...
Expanding the Definition of Our API Contracts
In recent years we’ve begun collectively using the phrase “API contract” to often describe the OpenAPI or AsyncAPI for our APIs. While I have been complicit in the adoption of this phrase, and supp...
Replacing the PetStore OpenAPI With the Train Travel OpenAPI
While writing the story on Bump.sh’s adoption of APIs.json I stumbled across their story on replacing the ubiquitous PetStore OpenAPI that comes default with the Swagger and OpenAPI tooling of the ...
The Deficient Areas of API Alignment
There are many ways your public API can be deficient. It is these areas I am mapping with APIs.json and looking to standardize with API Commons. The common building blocks of public API operations ...
Not Everyone Cares About Their Public API
Many of us pundits, analysts, and even practitioners in the API space believe in doing APIs the right way, or at least giving them the attention they deserve. This is commendable, but also the mino...
Bump.sh Supports APIs.json With Their API Documentation Hubs
I was pleased to see the good folks over at Bump.sh have adopted APIs.json as the discovery format for their API documentation hubs. They have a nice write-up on how to Make your APIs Discoverable ...
Developing My API Industry Taste
I’ve learned a lot performing as the API Evangelist over the years. The landscape never fails me when it comes to revealing new lessons, and last year switching from Postman, an API service provide...
I Found a Use for The AIs
I have a custom built set of admin tools for APIs.io that help me quickly build APIs.json and OpenAPI indexes for search. While I am a believer in using AI, I am a skeptic of all the hype going on ...
I Am Very Proud of the Breaking Changes Podcast
My time at Postman came to such an abrupt end I haven’t had time to properly assess all the work I did during my time there. I just had brunch with my partner in crime LeTroy Gardner and his partne...
An APIs.json for Amazon Web Services
It takes time to properly craft an APIs.json for an API provider. It is something I wish API providers would do on their own, but in an effort to help jump start this I am profiling many of the top...
The Diff Between What JSON Schema and Spectral Provide When Mapping the API Landscape
I am working to better define and shape when and how I apply both JSON Schema and Spectral rules. Both specifications are invaluable when it comes to API governance, and have significant overlap, b...
Streamlining My Profiling of APIs
I have a lot of work to do profiling APIs using APIs.json. I am interested in producing as complete an accurate APIs.json for an API provider as I possibly can. When it comes to profiling providers...
Enterprise, Community, and Government API Commons
As I begin to work on renewing one of my existing API projects, I wanted to sit back for an afternoon and assess where things are. I see APIs everywhere. I see them on my work to work powering my c...
Business and Technical API Alignment
While interviewing over a hundred people on my Breaking Changes podcast, the lack of alignment between business and technical groups while delivering and iterating upon APIs was the number one sour...
How Many APIs Are Too Many?
I hit a ceiling with my Artisanal APIs.json API profiling, in that I am pushing over a thousand individual APIs. It reminds me of running conferences, and once you get over 500 people, everything b...
APIs.json APIs, Includes, and Network Properties
Since the beginning of the specification, APIs.json has had an “apis” property as well as an “includes” properties, providing a way to immediately index your APIs, or “include” a reference to other...
The Technology, Business, Policy, and People of APIs
I have long stated that I am focused on in the intersection of the technology, business, and politics of APIs with my storytelling. When I started API Evangelist I was fairly well versed in the tec...
I See You As Just a Bunch of Daily API Calls
I am like that kid in the Sixth Sense movies. But instead of dead people I just see APIs. When I see you, I don’t see a person. I see a bunch of API calls. To me, you are just the sum of all of the...
What API Common Schema Are Needed for APIs.json Properties and Overlays
I am beginning to do work on what Steve and I have negotiated as the next generation of API Commons. As I do with most of my work, I’ll be doing it out in the open, working through my thoughts here...
A GitOps Bundled Approach to Managing Your OpenAPI
As I profile more APIs for my APIs.json work, I keep coming across GitHub repositories that are dedicated to managing API providers OpenAPIs. I am gathering these along the way so that I can publis...
Using GitHub To Manage Your OpenAPIs
While profiling some of the top APIs for my APIs.json Artisanal work, which I am using to power APis.io, I have come across some interesting approaches to using GitHub for managing and publishing O...
Localizing the APIs.io Search Engine
I have been playing around with several iterations of what is next for the APIs.io search engine. I have a v2.0 of the search engine and supporting APIs.json index almost reading to replace the cur...
Allowing Your API Portal To Meet Consumers Where They Are
I am thinking a lot about the API producer and consumer experience. I am thinking a lot about the push and pull of our local development environments and cloud services and platforms. It isn’t just...
Moving API Docs From Human-Readable to Machine-Readable
One of the super powers of APIs.json is the ability to evolve the human-readable aspects of API operations into machine-readable ones–as this is how we are going to scale to deliver the API economy...
An Operational Fingerprint for a Public API
I am pretty happy with manually searching Google and Bing for APIs across different spaces. The more APIs I add to my APIs.json index of APIs, the more words that appear as tags. So I regularly scr...
APIs.io APIs, Tags, and Rules
I am having fun pushing forward the APIs.json specification, while also building the next iteration of APis.io. The v1.0 of APIs.io is still powering the website right now, but I am exploring what ...
Profiling the FactSet APIs Using APIs.json
I like to take little side trips in my API profiling work for APIs.json and APIs.io. I am in the middle of profiling AWS, which is 300+ APIs, and taking some time to make way through all the moving...
It Will Take a Village of Vendors To Raise an API to Maturity
I continued to automate the way I profile APIs while profiling the FactSet API this last week. I have been manually creating APIs.json overlays for the APIs.json, as well as OpenAPI so that I can c...
Adding Search Metadata, Ratings, and More With APIs.json Overlays
I am working my way through profiling many of the top APIs from Twilio and Stripe to AWS and Azure. If you’ve spent any time in these developer ecosystems you know there are a lot of APIs, and a lo...
What We Will Need To Automate API Consumption
I know a lot of folks think we are going to automate API consumption using AI. I am sure there are some layers of business and some APIs that will fit this profile. However, I know the API landscap...
Twilio Uses A PII OpenAPI Extension on Their API
I have been immersed in the profiling of the Twilio API, and as with most of my work, there are stories in the cracks of this profiling. Twilio maintains their own OpenAPI for their APIs, which I p...
What is API Governance?
Join Our Weekly API Governance Knowledge Bulding Sessions One thing I like about this blog format is that I can use the title, “What is API Governance”, over and over. Each blog post has the d...
OpenAI Injects Code Samples Into Their OpenAPI Using An Extension
As I was profiling the OpenAI API I noticed they had vendor extensions. This is a common thing I come across while profiling APIs, so I always make sure I spend some time evaluating the approach so...
Making the API Realm Visible and Tangible
I think I am settling in on what I want to be doing for the next 30+ years. I want to make APIs visible and tangible. I enjoy doing API reviews at Bloomberg and feel defining rules that help standa...
API Resource, Capabilities, and Experiences
I am profiling APIs for APIs.io. I started with Twilio and Stripe, and working my way through many more. I am profiling their API operations using APIs.json, outlining their business approach to do...
Titles, Summaries, Descriptions, and Tags For APIs.json and OpenAPI
I can’t stress enough the importance of providing well thought out and useful titles, summaries, descriptions, and tags for your APIs, taking full advantage of APIs.json and OpenAPI capabilities. I...
Stripes Monolithic OpenAPI vs. Twilio Modular OpenAPIs
I profiled Stripe and Twilio using APIs.json recently. My API profiling process requires that I get to know an API, and while Stripe and Twilio do not maintain their own APIs.json index, they both ...
Breaking OpenAI OpenAPI Into 10 Separate OpenAPIs
As I profile APIs for APIs.io using APIs.json, I break up OpenAPIs for providers along base path lines. I prefer distributed sprawl for my Artisanal APIs.json profiling work. I prefer my API repres...
Twilio and Stripe Do Not Use PUT For HTTP Resource Updates
The shouts of the RESTafarians in 2010 still ring loud in my head. REST wasn’t just a philosophy, it was a religion. You needed to have read Roy Fielding’s dissertation and posses a strong handle o...
This Post Is Not About Artificial Intelligence
I love that when I post something as mundane as my coffee drinking on LinkedIn I can muster upwards of 50 reactions to it, but when I post something critical of artificial intelligence I get one or...
Adding OpenAI Plugin Manifest to the APIs.json Properties
I love the meta dimensions of my API work. I am profiling the OpenAPI for inclusion into the APIs.io search engine. To do this I create an APIs.json and add all of the properties of the OpenAI API ...
What I Mean When I Say That APIs Reduce Everything to a Transaction
My friend Allen Helton asked what I meant when I said, “APIs reduce everything to a transaction” on LinkedIn recently. He was curious whether I meant this conceptually or technically. To be honest,...
New API to Profile Bookmarklet
I regularly come across APIs that I want to profile as part of my APIs.json “Artisanal” work, but I don’t always have time to actually profile the API with APIs.json and OpenAPI. So I created a boo...
Operational API Rules Using APIs.json
I have been immersed in the creation of APIs.json for many of the top APIs out there, including Twilio and Stripe. These APIs are held up as an example for how we should be doing APIs. I wanted to ...
What Makes Charismatic APIs?
I recently finished reading “How Infrastructure Works”, by Deb Chandra. It is a must read if you are doing APIs at scale today. She opens the book by talking about charismatic infrastructure like t...
I Am Not Sure You Want Me Reviewing Your AI API Startup
I am not sure I am the right person to be asking for feedback on your startup. But, here we go. Your startup will be successful. Not because you do the thing you sell to your customers, but becaus...
API Ecosystem Building Blocks – SMTP, POP, HTTP, CSV, and Stripe
My wife recently moved off of Substack. She was run off by their support of fascism on their platform, and was in real need of supporting her 1,300+ subscribers. I was impressed with her way of han...
API Governance is About Limiting Speed
I am all about API governance these days. In my day job, and evening thoughts. I am no longer a cheerleader for all things APIs, unless they serve API governance. As I take all my observations of t...
API Discovery is Hard
Providing useful API discovery solutions is hard. I have dedicated 15 years to understanding and trying to provide solutions to this problem. I regularly gather my thoughts on this subject and inve...
Using Spectral As An API Ratings System
When Steve asked me what we could do with APIs.io, I knew I wanted to improve upon what APIs.io v1 was as an API search, but I also lay the groundwork for what we need to help alleviate our API dis...
APIs.io APIs.json Goodness is Back
Steve Willmott came to me asking what we should do with the APIs.io search engine. I don’t have much interest in developing tooling these days, but I am interested in hardening and moving forward o...
The Right Way To Do the API Is Always Negotiated in the Moment
I used to believe there was a right way to do APIs. I don’t anymore. I know better. I’ve seen too many APIs. I’ve seen too many people get frustrated that we didn’t do the API in the right way. Any...
Seeing Code Execution Differently At The API Gateway
When I published my recent story about where API gateways might be going, I received pushback the most about my inclusion of code execution as a core platform capability. Which I would agree with i...
Where Is This API Gateway Thing Going?
According to Gartner, the full lifecycle API management quadrant is going away, but acknowledges in 2023 the API gateway continues to enjoy an outsized amount of focus when it comes to internal and...
Twilio Makes for a Nice and Clean Example of APIs.json
You really can’t find a better example of APIs.json, then the one for Twilio. Twilio doesn’t have their own official APIs.json (yet), but I created one that I think really shows the strength of the...
A Starter APIs.json for Amazon Web Services
I need a master APIs.json for Amazon Web Services. I need an index of all the AWS APIs I depend on, and would like to have an index of the rest when I am ready to put to work. It is a daunting chal...
Why API Design-Time Matters in a API Gateway Run-Time Dominated Reality
The API gateway is the center of our universe when it comes to APIs. This is a reality operationally because when shit works or does not work, this is where the joy and pain is found. This is a rea...
Do Not Do That API — It Will Not End Well
One of the best things about writing on API Evangelist is I get to explore territory you don’t when working at an API service provider. There is no venture backed startup that will let me write a b...
APIs Dictating Reality In Our Physical World
I am thinking a lot about all the ways in which APIs don’t just define our online world, but also our physical world. On Saturday mornings I normally go for a walk in Central Park to chase squirrel...
A Schema-Driven Address API Negotiation
I recently finished Democracy’s Data, The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and How to Read Them, and the book was the closest thing to capturing how I see the Application Programming Interface, or...
Exploring an Idea for an APIs.json Defined Workflow
I have been thinking deeply about API workflows lately. Meaning, how do you chain API requests together in a certain order. There are many valuable API resources available out there that become eve...
Open Source Educational Resources on Modern APIs
Everywhere I work I find myself reinventing the wheel when it comes to educational resources about APIs. There are many new topics to come along since I started in this game, but there are so many ...
Strongly Typed API Operations
I was fascinated with the rise of JavaScript as a ubiquitous but loose client-side programming language in our browser, but then also the introduction of it on the server-side with Node.js. I see a...
The Great API Unbundling
I have been talking about the expansion of needs when it comes to API operations, the lifecycle, and governance for a number of years now. I have been hearing it called the great unbundling of API ...
My API Platform or Yours?
You hear the phrase API platform a lot from vendors across the API space. It is just one of many phrases in the world of APIs that is more a funhouse of mirrors than actually a meaningful set of wo...
Positive API Behavioral Reinforcement
I started API Evangelist because people were telling me I was doing the REST API thing wrong, and being pretty shitty about it along the way. I don’t mind being corrected, but when the RESTafarians...
Governing the Title of Your APIs With Spectral Rules
I enjoy how developing Spectral rules to govern an API slows us down to think about what matters. Really this is the biggest problem I see with people building APIs—-they are just moving too fast, ...
An Emphasis on the Politics of APIs
While making my way around the API landscape for the last thirteen years I have seen that many of the words we use describe APIs are the same, but the meaning of these words will vary depending on ...
Twitter and Reddit APIs Are the Canaries in the Public API Coal Mine
I have long considered Twitter to be one of the most important APIs to there. With its former status as the town square for the world, the Twitter API provided an unprecedented view into how our wo...
What is Next for API Evangelist
After flipping the page on yet another chapter in my career and beginning a new chapter focused on the application programming interface (APIs), I am left once again with the burning question — wha...
AI has a metadata problem…
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a captivating and transformative field, capturing the imagination of individuals and industries alike. As I immerse myself in the world of AI, I feel, as man...
Elevating My Awareness of Artificial Intelligence
I am not excited about recent evolutions in artificial intelligence (AI) as many others are, but as with APIs, I am looking to find and follow the story. This is something that takes regular studyi...
The People’s Network - The Political Economy of the Telephone in the Gilded Age
I just finished reading The People’s Network: The Political Economy of the Telephone in the Gilded Age by Robert MacDougal. It was fresh look at the early years of the telephone network, and how th...
My Personal Evangelism Algorithm
I was sharing my personal algorithm for how I approach evangelism. It isn’t very complex but is something I have evolved over the last decade plus and kept interesting through switching up the topi...
Contrasting API Contract Testing and Functional Testing
I am neck deep in very philosophical debates around API specifications and testing right now, which I am working with my team get more precise in how we discuss API testing and avoid drowning in th...
Live By APIs Die By APIs
One of the things I love and hate about the API universe is that if you live by APIs, you will often times die by APIs, unless you can perpetually dial in just the right balance across how much val...
We Are Just Swiping Credit Cards, Doing Our Accounting Using Multiple Sets of Books, and Do Not Allow Time for Budget Planning in the API Space
I heard a phrase this past week that when it comes to APIs—that we are all just swiping the credit card and then working to do accounting after the fact. So much truth. I would augment that state w...
The Most Important API Layers To Focus on in the Enterprise
As folks turn their attention to artificial intelligence, productivity, and other distractions emerging across our technology dominated worlds, I am taking a moment to assess the areas that I feel ...
Y’all See API Contract Testing Like You Do Terms of Service
I keep working through my API contract testing discussions with folks. I wrote about getting pedantic when it comes to API contract testing last night to help me get a grasp on things, and I am wor...
Getting Pedantic About API Contract Testing
I am immersed in very detailed and pedantic discussions lately about API contract testing lately. Like many phrases in the world of APIs, the phrase contract testing gets thrown around a lot, witho...
Learning About Railroad Regulation in the Empire Express
I just finished reading the Empire Express by David Haward Bain. It took me a couple months as I read on the side and contrasted with other more nourishing reads from widely different universes. Ho...
How I Use Postman for Algorotoscope — API-First, No UI Needed
One of the things I really like about Postman as a platform is that I really can go cheap on the user interface. I have several APIs in which I do not have any UI. I only need the data managed via ...
The Source of Truth for an API
I was talking with Laurent Broudoux (@lbroudoux) and Yacine Kheddache (@YadaYac) over at Microcks this week. As I listened to them discuss the intersection of multiple API protocols like HTTP, gRPC...
Using ChatGTP to convert human knowledge into machine actionable formats
Human knowledge has naturally for centuries been captured in human friendly formats such as books, intended to be consumed by, you guessed it, humans. But our world has changed dramatically and we ...
Twitter Should Be Able Charge for Their API Because It Costs Money to Operate
I’ve heard this phrase seven times now from people on Twitter and LinkedIn-—that Elon Musk is just making a business decision to charge money for the Twitter API because it costs Twitter money. In ...
Twitter Is the Most Important API
I am pissed about Twitter shutting down free access to their API. It genuinely breaks my heart. I’ve seen many people who do not quite grok how I feel, so as I do with any topic, I am looking to do...
A Loose Federation of API Standards
I am corresponding back and forth with what I will call an open source and API standards therapist for now, helping me make sense of the ocean of API standards I am drowning in and assisting me in ...
My Mastodon #FollowFriday Postman Collection
I have been making a number of Postman collections to help automate and scale my new Mastodon universe, and when I share them I get one of two responses: 1) these are awesome and I’ll be putting th...
One Possible Vision for API Commons
Everything in this world seems to occur in cycles, with many patterns I’ve wrestled with years ago coming around again. In 2014, in the heart of the Oracle vs. Google, me and my partner in crime St...
What Comes After Microservices?
Good API trends can linger on for some time, but as with the decline of monolith, many love to anticipate the death of microservices through strangulation by its own distributed weight. While event...
Remembering How I Built API Evangelist As I Rebuild My Social Presence
As I work to rebuild my social presence via Mastodon, I am reminded of how I built API Evangelist using Twitter and my blogs between 2010 and 2020. I am very invested in API platforms these days, a...
Can you read or write? A metadata story.
This is a short story about metadata (I have to assume at this point you can read). About why a data file or dataset on its own is inadequate for analysis or research, and therefore insufficient to...
Will I become a Rustacean?
I was recently reading this article about “Why Python is not the programming language of the future”. I’m not sure whether this will happen, but the author makes some very interesting points. One t...
How to Draw an Owl, the API Edition - Part One
I am down in the quantum realm when it comes to API operations. Working at the atomic level when it comes to how we do APIs. One of my favorite ways to make fun of APIs is to use the How to Draw an...
Mastodon #HashTags as an API Search Engine
I am fascinated with cultivating the hashtags that come through my Mastodon instances. I have two domains setup. Kin Lane and API Evangelist. My personal one is more photos, libraries, travel, outd...
Postman Interceptor But for Product Managers
I was talking to someone yesterday about the growing need to reverse engineer what is happening across this sprawling API landscape. While there is a lot of focus on having an API strategy, standar...
January 10, 2023
#Products
#Product Management
#Gateway
#Observability
#Logs
#Usage
#Teams
#Consumers
Need synthetic data? Mockaroo to the rescue
Data intelligence and Metadata Inference I recently spent some time exploring one of my favorite data intelligence related topics: metadata inference. How do we take an undocumented dataset, like a...
Make Legacy APIs Visible To Highlight Technical Debt
If you tune into my storytelling, you’ll hear me say this a lot—-APIs are hard to see. Any API, but more importantly, legacy APIs are just really hard to see. As a result, it is very difficult to q...
Make Incidents Visible and Informing the Shift Left
I am always looking for ways to help teams fight the good fight when it comes to cultural change across API operations. The technology of APIs takes a lot of work, but it never requires as much wor...
Federated Mastodon API Automation Building Blocks
I am making more progress on automating my Mastodon world. Throughout the holidays I spent time getting to know the Mastodon API, forking and iterating upon an OpenAPI for the API, and generating a...
Looking Through a Federated Lens Across Mastodon, FHIR, and PSD2/3
I am immersed in the federated Mastodon universe the last month, and I’ve been immersed in the federated universes of FHIR, PSD2/PSD3, and UK Open Banking for a number of years. It is unlikely that...
Federated Convergence With Mastodon, Enterprise API Governance, and Government Regulation
I’ve mentioned lately on social media that there was a federated convergence occurring right now. Not just across the Mastodon explosion that has happened recently, but also enterprise customers I ...
API Platform vs Full Lifecycle API Management
I was just on a call where I heard one of the more succinct definitions of the difference between Postman and the waves of “Full Lifecycle API Management” solutions that have come before us. API Ma...
Mastodon Opening the Age of Federated APIs
I have been immersed in the Mastodon universe since Thanksgiving. I have been growing my network for both my personal and professional domains, and have been playing with the Mastodon API daily. I ...
Time, Markets, and APIs
I frustratingly see APIs everywhere in a world where most do not even know what an API is while also simultaneously using them thousands of times each day. I see and hear the gears of this new digi...
When My API Evangelism Is Seen as Being Commercial
I’ve had many, many, many people over the years accuse me of being a shill for technology because my brand centers around API Evangelist. It is common for people to look at what I do at face value,...
Making People Feel Dumb Before Convincing Them To Do Your API Thing
A common narrative that plays out in my household is my wife asking me if I know some authors name, me saying no I do not, and her spending about 3-5 minutes letting me know how I should know this ...
A Full API Picture and a Heavy Cognitive Load
I learn so much telling stories in the API space. I’ve been iterating upon a lifecycle diagram with my team over the last six months, and with each wave of changes I tend to share on social media j...
Testing the Size of My API Payload During Design, Development, Build, and Post Production
I am working on some new approaches to telling consistent visual stories around the API Lifecycle, and I have a list of small little common API testing scenarios I will be working through as storie...
How Can I Test That My API Requires an API Key
I am working on some new approaches to telling more consistent visual stories across the API lifecycle. I have a list of common API testing scenarios I will be working ny through as stories here on...
Benefits of Good API Design at the Gateway Layer
You can see the benefits of good API design practices all across the API ecosystem, but also across all of the web and mobile applications we use each day. If you suffer from the same condition I d...
API Contracts Shape the Gateway
I’ve looked at all the gateways out there today. I’ve been studying API management since 2010. While there are numerous characteristics that define the next generation of API gateways, in my mind t...
Making the First Mastodon API Call to My Instance
I just got a Mastodon instance setup for my Kin Lane domain. I am being thoughtful about this shift in my social presence, but as with every other aspect of my digital life, I am most interested in...
GraphQL for Metadata Standards
GraphQL is designed to handle numerous data use cases and and is particularly we suited to adjust to potentially changing data structures and content. But there are situations where the challenge i...
We Are Strengthening the Toxic Bros Playbook With Our Response to Twitter
Like most things online today, I am striving to not be emotional about what is happening with Twitter right now. I have signed up with an existing Mastodon node, with the intent to set up my own se...
.open is closed
The other day I was looking for a domain name to host APIs and related services for various R&D projects I’m involved in. When that’s the case, I usually stick to the classic .com and .org top ...
November 17, 2022
#domains
API Dimensions That Ground the Conversation
I am perpetually working on what I consider to be the essential API dimensions that ground how we talk about APIs. While having a common definition of the API lifecycle, as well as a clear list of ...
Where Does Mastodon Fit In With My Overall API Circus Stack?
I’ve spent a lot of time lately contemplating how I feel about Elon Musk taking over Twitter, and specifically about how I feel about the exodus to Mastodon that I see happening. As with many thing...
Helping Teams Stay Focused on APIs While Also Being Able To See the Whole Enterprise
I was talking with John Kilgore our product manager at Postman for the Postman API Network about strategies for making APIs more visible across teams, meeting teams where they are and enabling them...
The Four Most Important Dimensions That Block API Progress
I am working my way through 100+ Breaking Changes podcast conversations I have had , as well as 75+ customer conversations I have had this year, and reflecting on a book I just finished called The ...
That API Strategy Sounds Great, but Where Do We Start?
I regularly spend time with business and technical leadership at large enterprise organizations where I walk through my big picture strategy around the API Lifecycle and governance. 90% of these co...
Looking for Lessons When It Comes to Railroad Regulation That I Can Apply to My API Regulation and Deregulation Arguments
I am diving into the regulation of some of the major industries within the United States to better understand how regulation may unfold for the web using APIs. We are already seeing regulation in t...
November 6, 2022
#Regulations
#Policies
#Industry
#Railroads
#Investment
#Federal Government
#History
How Are We Going To Consistently Manage Policies Across Multiple API Gateway Vendors?
This is a question I heard several times this week, but have been consistently hearing it from customers, analysts, and others in my orbit. I think it is an important question, but it is also a ver...
GraphQL: First steps
I know little about GraphQL, but based on what I’ve seen so far, it is a very promising technology for providing access to data and delivering over open APIs. Unlike other API specifications whose ...
What I Learn Studying Federal Government APIs
I conducted another assessment of the APIs available across the federal government this weekend. It is work I enjoy because I always learn so much while doing it. I learn about government agencies ...
Taking Another Look at the APIs and Data Available Across U.S. Federal Agencies
Every couple of years I get motivated to take a fresh look at what is happening with APIs across the federal government. Since I worked for the Obama administration I have had a passion for underst...
October 29, 2022
#Government
#Federal Government
#Open Data
#Inventory
#Discovery
#Assessment
#Collections
#Visualizer
Data good practices: If it ain't computable, it's a string...
Choosing the right data type for a dataset variable, database fields, data model element, or API property can make a huge difference in terms of usability and quality. A mistake that I have commonl...
Assessing Government APIs with Help of Collection Visualizer
I joined in on some conversations around data and APIs with the White House this week and it got my juices flowing again when it comes to understanding APIs. One of the biggest challenges in doing ...
October 29, 2022
#Government
#Federal Government
#Open Data
#Inventory
#Discovery
#Assessment
#Collections
#Visualizer
We Should All Be API Consumers
I have long advocated that API producers should spend more time being an API consumer, so that they can feel the pain. I feel 100x this since I have been working at Postman. When you operate at the...
Focusing on Problems When Defining a New API
I am working on version 2.0 of the content API I am using as part of my work across Postman Open Technologies. It is a little meta, but I have an API for managing the content I produce and then dis...
We Still See Our API Gateway as Just Infrastructure
I have been thinking deep thoughts about API gateway and management offerings for the last couple of weeks. I am refreshing my memory of what has happened over the last decade with each wave of API...
Balancing What Your Customer Wants Versus What They Need As An API Service Provider
I always enjoy conversations about API management providers or more specifically what API gateway providers should or shouldn’t be providing as they work to specialize or be everything to everyone....
Data Knowledge Inference: A primer
Data in its current state is insufficient to meet the needs of users and intelligent applications. It needs to be elevated to digital knowledge by supplementing it with machine-actionable metadata...
ProgrammableWeb is Shutting Down
Albert Putnam(@AlbertPutnam) tuned me into the fact that ProgrammableWeb is shutting down this month, after seventeen years of operation. I have mixed feelings about this, in that I don’t tune into...
Considering the Next Generation of API Gateways and Management
I am trying to write nightly here on API Evangelist, capturing at least one thought from my work with APIs. One of the areas of API operations I am doing a deep dive into right now is the familiar ...
October 13, 2022
#Management
#Gateway
#Regions
#Protocols
#Federated
#Edge
#Policies
#Identity
#GitOps
Influencing People Indirectly Over Time to Obtain the API Change You Seek
I have learned a lot about influencing the way people think about APIs. I am not always successful in influencing people the way I desire, but I have had a significant amount of success in shaping ...
The Importance of Writing and Storytelling
I do not write on API Evangelist as much as I used to. I still write a lot, but posts tends to stay in my notebook or get published to the Postman blog. I miss writing every day. Writing is importa...
Demystifying Identifiers
Identifiers are used everywhere to be able to unambiguously reference resources. Examples, amongst many, include a passport number, a domain name, a book ISBN, a database record key, a UUID, a netw...
OAS Extension Profiles
The use of extensions in Open API Specification (OAS) has been supported since version 2.x based on a minimalistic approach whereby anyone can define a property starting with x- (e.g. x-myextension...
API Catalogs and Portals Keeping Pace with the Number of APIs, Change Across APIs, and the Expanding Roles Involved Across the API Lifecycle
I have been hearing about the challenges with keeping API portals, catalogs, directories, networks, hubs, marketplaces, and other similar constructs with the needed metadata, and adequately providi...
Speaking to API Strategy While Still Celebrating The Little Things That Matter
I was talking with Preetham from our product team at Postman last week about how much we’ve grown and how are messaging has shifted. Postman has 20M users, and while our bottom-up messaging is stro...
What is an API workspace?
One of the most powerful capabilities of the Postman platform is the concept of a workspace. Like many powerful concepts, it is also very misunderstood, not seen, and wildly underutilized as part o...
Swagger Reflects the Short-Sightedness of Many API Industry Service Providers
Before I tell this tale, I want to make it clear I am not looking to disparage anyone who has worked at SmartBear, or still works there, and this is purely my opinion as the API Evangelist, and doe...
A Postman Resource Bot
A rite of passage for most new Postman employees is creating their first collection. I asked my new collection developer Bello Gbadebo (@gbahdeyboh), or “Debo”, to spend his first week on his first...
API Perspectives
I enjoy a privileged perspective of the world of APIs. It has been one that I have carefully crafted over a decade in the space. I experience and engage with a lot of perspectives, and I am always ...
Zombie API Portals
I learned a new phrase a couple of months ago, and it is a phrase I have been hearing more and more amongst the conversations I am having on my Breaking Changes podcast, and with Postman customers ...
The Unbundling of API Management
When you ask people involved in API operations what API management is you’ll get a whole mix of answers. API management as we are sold it emerged out of the SOA world around 2006. Over the years it...
The Myth of One API Service Provider to Do It All
I hear enterprise organizations say that they need a single service provider to offer a bundle of services that meets all of their needs. I’d say this is the result of years of being told by analys...
OpenAPI is Your Source of Truth and Collections are Derivatives of That Truth Designed For Specific Business Outcomes
I love the spectrum of API awareness that exists out there, and the challenge of trying to figure out how to move people “forward” across that spectrum. One of the most visible metrics of where an ...
Twenty Problems That Postman is Solving for Developers in 2022
A co-worker of mine Bob Fahey said a customer had asked what the twenty problems that Postman is solving for developers in 2022. I am in writing mode this afternoon so I figured I’d craft a post to...
Stories > Code
I have learned so much from my partner Audrey Watters over the twelve years I have been with her, but one of the most powerful concepts I have picked up from her and ran with in my own way is the i...
Knowing Where Each Version of Our OpenAPIs Are
Almost every enterprise organization I know struggles with knowing where all of their APIs are. There are always shadow and invisible APIs that exist across the enterprise API landscape, and at wit...
Detecting Breaking Changes Across API Versions
API governance is still very much mired in the design phase of evolution, focused on the consistency in design of a single API. And while we all have a lot of work to onboard the enterprise masses ...
Beyond API Design Governance and Moving Towards Operational API Governance
When you talk about API governance, 90% of the people you encounter will assume you mean the governance of a single definition of an API, and not multiple versions of an API, or the operations and ...
Why I Pay Attention to APIs
It is that time again. Time to remind myself, and anyone who reads this, why it is that I pay attention to APIs. There are many people who simply hear my title and make all kinds of assumptions abo...
January 17, 2022
#Stories
You Are API-First
I am really struggling on a number of calls lately with people at companies who are doing really interesting things with APIs, having fully committed themselves to prioritizing APIs across the orga...
January 14, 2022
#API-First
The OpenAPI Community
I am taking a moment to recalibrate my chess board for the OpenAPI community, and there is no better way for me to accomplish this than to write a story here on the blog. I have several folks I am ...
The OpenAPI Community
I am taking a moment to recalibrate my chess board for the OpenAPI community, and there is no better way for me to accomplish this than to write a story here on the blog. I have several folks I a...
Design-First, Prototype-First, or Code-First APIs
I strongly believe in a design-first approach to delivering new APIs, and future iterations of existing APIs. Having an OpenAPI artifact to guide discussions, services, and tooling saves you time, ...
Being Transparent By Default and Over Communicating When Doing API Specifications
I forget what a great vehicle API Evangelist for sub-tweeting conversations that I see occurring across the API universe. I made a career out of doing this for the last decade, taking a moment to ...
Needing Inspiration to Care About APIs?
I always enjoy when I have the opportunity to light up someones imagination when it comes to APIs. I have had a couple of conversations with folks recently who had never heard about APIs until they...
Open Tech Partnership with APIMATIC
We have some great partnerships occurring within the Postman ecosystem. You can tune into storytelling from our developer relations around how we are partnering with Salesforce, Stripe, and other l...
A Blueprint for Hands-On API Storytelling
I am spending a lot of time studying and profiling how my teams at Postman do what they do. Last week I wrote a piece on how AsyncAPI is moving forward their specification out in the open, and this...
Some Thoughts on API Governance
API governance is a massive subject that takes regular work to make sense of and to be able to successfully articulate to others. With the growing number of APIs and microsservices in use across en...
Using Postman Visualizer as a Data Editor
I use and abuse the Postman platform for a lot of things it wasn’t designed for. In the same way that I have used and abused the Github platform for things it wasn’t designed for over the last five...
API Management to API Gateway and Beyond
It has been a while since I stepped back to assess the world of API management. API Evangelist was founded on the premise of studying and understanding API management, so it makes sense after a dec...
Starting Simple in the Overwhelming World of API Governance
The world of API governance can be pretty overwhelming when it comes to trying to figure out where to get started. Almost everyone I talk to, beginner and expert, has a difficult time getting their...
The Relationship Between OpenAPI and Postman Collections
I found myself talking about the relationship between OpenAPI and Postman Collections again today, and whenever I repeat a story like this I try to capture it here on the blog so I can scale my sto...
Can the API Portal Keep up with Change?
Building on my thoughts around the evolution of API documentation from a couple weeks back I repeatedly find myself questioning whether the current notion of the API portal will be able to keep pac...
Core Strengthening API Governance
When I engage with folks around API governance it inevitably centers around design governance applied at design time—focusing as far left as possible on the API lifecycle. Occasionally you find som...
Postman /me API Experimentation
I was doing my regular check-in with my partner in crime over in Postman devrel Joyce Lin (@PetuniaGray), and she reminded of the concept of a /me API, and Abhinav Asthana’s (@a85) vision that the ...
API Specifications Update for September 22nd, 2021
The evolution of OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, and JSON Schema is important to what I do at Postman, but also to the wider API space. I find it helpful to understand what is happening across each of the API...
September 22, 2021
#API Specification Update
The Evolution of API Documentation
One area of the API lifecycle that I struggle with helping folks understand the evolution of, is documentation. This fundamental aspect of how we produce and consume APIs has continued expand prett...
Building an API Platform That Will Support the Future
This is just one post in a massive queue of blog posts that are in my head following Abhinav’s post last week about The New Postman API Platform: Redefining API Management for the API-First Worlda&...
Working to Bring More Women and People of Color Into the API Specification Conversation
If you have worked within the world of API specifications you know that, like the rest of the technology sector, it is men, especially white men that are dominating the conversation. When it comes ...
What Are the Rules of API Design Governance?
I am iterating upon some API design governance collections and an essential element of two of these collections are the linting rules. Little modular but machine readable rules that describe a spec...
A Mix of Blueprints for the API Lifecycle
I am been doing a lot of research into what the API lifecycle can be, pulling together what I’ve gathered over recent conversations, but then also working to lay the foundation for driving the next...
OpenAPI Governance Using Rule-Based or Script-Based Approaches
I have been spending more time investing in my collection-based approach to applying governance to OpenAPI definitions. I have had several collections for using Postman’s testing capabilities to “t...
JSON Schema Adoption
I have been getting to know the JSON Schema community since Ben Hutton joined my team at Postman. One of the things I’ve been working to make more time to do is profile who has adopted JSON Schema....
API Specifications Update for September 8th, 2021
The evolution of OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, and JSON Schema is important to what I do at Postman, but also to the wider API space. I find it helpful to understand what is happening across each of the API...
September 8, 2021
#API Specification Update
API Specifications Update for September 1st, 2021
The evolution of OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, and JSON Schema is important to what I do at Postman, but also to the wider API space. I find it helpful to understand what is happening across each of the API...
September 1, 2021
#API Specification Update
API Specifications Update for August 25th, 2021
I try to stay up to speed with what is happening across the leading API specifications each week. The evolution of OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, and JSON Schema is important to what I do at Postman, but als...
August 25, 2021
#API Specification Update
The Stripe Public API Workspace
I regularly have to pinch myself regarding the different APIs that I get to work with each day at Postman. One of the public API Providers I get to work with on a regular basis is the Stripe team w...
What Is HTTPBin and What Can You Do with the API?
I recently became the owner of the request and response service HTTPBin. I am in exploratory mode regarding what is needed when it comes to the operation of this very interesting API. As with all ...
The Data Agency Registry
I have had a side project going with Pascal Heus , my partner in data crime over at Metadata Technology North America (MTNA) for a a few months now called the Data Agency Registry. It is an Jekyll ...
The API Lifecycle for New or Active APIs
One of the limitations of the recent research I have been doing around the API lifecycle is that the lifecycle begins with the import or creation of an OpenAPI. In a perfect utopian world this make...
API Specifications Update for August 6th, 2021
I try to stay up to speed with what is happening across the leading API specifications each week. The evolution of OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, and JSON Schema is important to what I do at Postman, but als...
August 6, 2021
#API Specification Update
The Dimensions of the API Lifecycle
Ok, I’ve gotten my recent immersion in thinking about the API lifecycle to a place where I think I want to put it to work on an actual API. I spent some on a draft OpenAPI extension to help guide m...
Enabling the API Lifecycle with the Postman Platform
I have been working to define the lifecycle of an OpenAPI defined API, and working establish a way to talk about, but also describe in a machine readable way the lifecycle of an API. One of the rea...
An OpenAPI Lifecycle Extension
Multiple API universes collided recently resulting in me spending some more time on defining what the API lifecycle is. A couple months back I asked a bunch of folks in my Twitter timeline what the...
API Specifications Update for July 30th, 2021
I try to stay up to speed with what is happening across the leading API specifications each week. The evolution of OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, and JSON Schema is important to what I do at Postman, but als...
July 30, 2021
#API Specification Update
Seeing API Change
The API landscape within any enterprise organization is ever changing and evolving, and with APIs being such an abstract and often undocumented aspects of organization work, it can be very difficul...
The Different Ways to Engage with the OpenAPI Specification
I am spending time thinking about the big picture of how each of the leading API specifications are operating, and trying to find the best way to communicate the different ways people in the commun...
Different Types of API Infrastructure All Working in Concert
API is a pretty catch all acronym for what is happening across the enterprise these days. I haven’t been writing enough here on the blog to help me separate the layers of the API onion as I work ea...
The Different Ways to Engage with the OpenAPI Specification
I am spending time thinking about the big picture of how each of the leading API specifications are operating, and trying to find the best way to communicate the different ways people in the comm...
June 21, 2021
Business-First API Design and Development
I spend a lot of time thinking about API-first design and development, where you craft an OpenAPI definition, mock, document, and iterate upon the design of an API before you develop it. An API-fir...
My Oracle vs Google API Copyright Journey
The Oracle vs. Google API copyright case began as two parts, 1) for patent violations, and 2) for copyright infringement involving the Java API. The jury found Google in violation of copyright law ...
Aligning the API Specification Contribution Process Across OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, and GraphQL
Mike Ralphson (@permittedsoc) suggested that the OAI follow AsyncAPIs lead when it comes to adopting a GraphQL like approach to managing contributions to the specification in the OpenAPI specificat...
When API Examples Become the Real Thing
I am using Postman public workspaces to manage all of my projects right now, and as part of my Postman collection workspace I have a variety of collections where I am bending the concept of how Pos...
A Workspace for Defining the API Lifecycle
I am moving my API lifecycle definition into a public workspace so that I can be a little more disciplined in how I version and move forward. It is a pretty lightweight draft at this point because ...
A Workspace for Defining API-First
Alongside my API lifecycle public workspace I have established an API-first public workspace to help me guide conversations around what is API-first. Like the API lifecycle it is another area we us...
A CSV to JSON File Conversion Postman Collection
I am regularly needing to convert CSV files into JSON, and to help me manually get the job done, as well as automate on a schedule or via the Postman API, I created a simple request for pulling a C...
A Collection To Generate Static APIs Using Postman Mock Servers
I have a lot of little datasets I am organizing for use across a variety of projects. Since Postman has replace Github as my place where I begin all of my API projects, I figured that it could also...
Targeting the Enterprise and Ignoring Developer’s Needs Around a Specific Stop Along the API LIfecycle
From time to time I see folks tweet how they are frustrated with Postman not doing exactly what they want in a particular area of the API lifecycle, letting us know they are moving on to greener pa...
Setting a Baseline API Lifecycle Definition
I find myself on this quest at regular intervals throughout the last decade-—seeking to define what the API lifecycle means. However, this time I am determined to ground myself in a vocabulary and ...
March 25, 2021
#Lifecycle
An Event-Driven View of the API Lifecycle
I am continuing my quest to define and visualize the API lifecycle across a diverse API toolbox. I am talking to anyone and everyone I possibly can when it comes getting their take on what the API ...
Working to Visualize the API Lifecycle
It is hard to have a discussion about things we can’t see. Some of us excel at dealing in the abstract, but most people prefer discussion involving more visual and tangible things. One of the criti...
Managing API Change, Discovery, and Documentation Using Bump
I have seen a lot of API service providers come and go over the last decade, and I always appreciate when simple, useful, and purpose built API solutions emerge. I can use up most of my fingers cou...
Postman Will Do for APIs What Github Did for Open Source
I woke up thinking about something Abhinav said recently, “What GitHub did to code, I imagine Postman will do that for APIs, shortening the cycle from using an API to building things with it.” Yes!...
Defining API Security with Eric Sheridan (@eric_sheridan) of WhiteHat Security
I sat down with Eric Sheridan (@eric_sheridan) of WhiteHat Security this week to talk about API security. I have been working with Eric as a partner of Postman for a number of months now, and I fin...
March 12, 2021
What is Your API Lifecycle?
I like asking questions on Twitter then leaving and coming back to see the great answers people leave. Sometimes I get crickets, but depending on how I phrase the question, and how people interpret...
March 11, 2021
#Lifecycle
Using Postman Testing for API Governance
I have been evolving my approach to API governance with Postman since I started working there 1.5 years ago, but recently I am finding more time to invest in how I am “testing” the surface area of ...
Evolving API Deployment to Be More Defined and Observable Using APIs
I love it when someone realizes that APIs have APIs during one of my talks or reading of of my stories. I find that people are so heads down in their daily jobs they don’t have much time to sit bac...
Turning Environmental Data Into a More Usable API
The work with our open data partners over at Metadata Technology North America (MTNA) continues, moving from our last post on CMS healthcare data to working with a variety of environmental datasets...
Turning Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Providers Data Files Into an API
I am working with our open data partners over at Metadata Technology North America (MTNA) to publish a mix of open data APIs across a variety of areas. First up on the list are the providers. We ar...
Learning About Commonly Used Standards and Classifications API with Ariā From Stats New Zealand
I did a marathon series of open data and specification sessions with our partners over at Metadata Technology North America (MTNA) last week, which during one of them I learned about Ariā, where yo...
Deriving Financial Products from the Exhaust of Our Digital Operations Is the next Big API Play
The secret to Amazon’s success is by far the number one story I have ever written on my blog. It was written nine years ago and still out performs other posts. It is also more fiction than most of ...
Nobody Likes Specifications - @jeanqasaur
Jean Yang from Akita Software pinged some of us in the API community with “People don’t like specs. There’s a long history of people not liking specs.” @thatplguy on how we need a new term for [PLA...
Validating the FHIR API Contract as You Use the API and Then Leaving Inline Comments on the OpenAPI
I am working with the OpenAPI for the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), getting more familiar with the specification as I get strengthen my awareness of the CMS Interoperability an...
Managing Multiple Versions of the UK Open Banking OpenAPIs in a Public API Workspace
I pushing forward the documenting and certifying of UK public APIs in a public workspace. Historically I only had a single OpenAPI definition for each of the six public banking APIs, but as part of...
Open Data Using Postman Collections
I am pushing forward how Postman can be used for public data. I have a whole mess of different data sets I need available for different projects I am working on. For one project I am aggregating te...
Gathering My Thoughts on API Discovery
I am working to load up all my API discovery experiences into my head for some upcoming conversations. So I sat down and pulled together a summary of my API discovery research to date to help refre...
February 11, 2021
#Discovery
API Storytelling with Mike and Aidan
If you have followed my work you know that I like telling stories. Stories are the single most important tool in my Chief Evangelist and API Evangelist toolbox. None of the code matters in my opini...
February 11, 2021
#Stories
Making Sense of the Different Types of API Testing
I have to admit something. I don’t fully grasp the entire landscape of API testing. I mean, I have a pretty decent awareness and experience in testing APIs, but I can’t close my eyes and coherently...
January 30, 2021
#Testing
Keeping API Entropy Low is Needed to Continue API Growth and Expansion
I love the word entropy. It means so many things to so many different people. In means different things in the physical realm versus the informational or virtual realms. It is one of those big word...
Examples of Minimum Viable and Complete Landscape APIs.json Index Files
I am preparing for the next version of APIs.json and I am taking another pass over what the specification is, but also taking a fresh look at why the specification exists. Part of this fresh look i...
Evaluating APIs.json API Property Types Alongside OpenAPI Extensions
I am giving some much needed love to my APIs.yaml and API.json API discovery format while using the work to also just think about the wider API landscape. This is the original intent behind APIs.js...
What Does Open Mean in the World of APIs?
The word “open” gets thrown around so much in the API space I find myself needing to regularly ground myself in what it actually means. It gets thrown around in so many different ways that I find e...
Taking a Fresh Look at APIs Across All the United States Federal Agencies
It has been a while since I looked at the 250K view of what is going on with APIs across federal government agencies in the United States. Since working for the Obama administration in 2013 I am pe...
December 27, 2020
#Federal Government
Reference, Capability, and Workflow Jira API Collections
I have struggled to properly articulate to partners the potential of publishing API collections to the Postman API network, as well as via public workspaces. Most folks I talk to see Postman collec...
A Postman Collection For Capitalizing Folders and Requests In Collections
Sometimes I need to do bulk updates to Postman collections and there is no better way to automate this than to use a Postman Collection that uses the Postman API—inception level stuff, so be carefu...
APIs are at the Center of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Lawsuit Against Facebook
The Federal Trade Commission is sueing Facebook, alleging that they are illegally maintaining a monopoly on the personal social network space using a continued series of anticompetitive behavior. T...
Gathering My Thoughts on Public API Workspaces
I have been neck deep in the release of Postman public workspaces lately. So much so, I haven’t had much time to gather my thoughts about what exactly they are, and why they matter. Time for a burs...
December 5, 2020
#Workspaces
Expanding the Vocabulary for Run in Postman Buttons
I have long been fascinated by the Run in Postman Button. A Run in Postman button can be published from any Postman collection, organizing a single, or a series of API calls into collection of API ...
A Postman Collection For Updating a Collection Host, Path, or Query Parameter
Sometimes I need to do bulk updates to Postman collections and there is no better way to automate this than to use a Postman Collection that uses the Postman API—inception level stuff, so be carefu...
November 30, 2020
#Collections
Helping the Public Data Commons Drive Our Economy Using APIs
What is an API? An API is a digital interface for sharing data, content, and algorithms with web, mobile, and device applications using the Internet, building on web technologies to make digital r...
November 27, 2020
#Data
Pulling the OpenAPI For Any API You Are Managing With Postman So That You Can Apply Across the API Lifecycle
I am using Postman to do more governance on my OpenAPI definitions as part of their API lifecycle. This is a top request of customers I am talking to, so I want to get better at make these individu...
Automating the Management of Postman Collections Using a Postman Collection
I am managing more collections via hundreds of different workspaces lately. As part of my work I am needing to make bulk changes to collections based upon a variety of properties. Sometimes I need ...
A High Level Look At API Specifications
I am having an increasing number of conversations around how the leading API specifications work together, and what the role of each are when it comes to various stops along the API lifecycle. To h...
November 23, 2020
#Specifications
Managing the Scope of Your OpenAPI
Managing the size of an OpenAPI is a common challenge for API development teams. I have regular conversations with teams about the ways in which you can minimize the overall scope of an API, breaki...
November 18, 2020
#OpenAPI
Using API Mocks as Part of an API-First Workflow
I owe an answer on my thoughts about mocking APIs to my coworker Andy, and I don’t want to incur his wrath, so I figured I’d write it up and share wider as I was getting back to him. I don’t have t...
November 17, 2020
#Mocks
The Multiple Dimensions of API Deployment
API deployment is the OG stop along the API lifecycle, but is still the most underserved when it comes to API service providers providing solutions, and as part of the full lifecycle API management...
November 17, 2020
#Depoyment
Some API Specification Toolbox Projects That Will Make an Impact
I have been conducting weekly discussions around API specifications each Friday mornings which I call the API Specification Toolbox. The goal is to just identify ways in which we can drive more dis...
November 12, 2020
#Specifications
An API Lifecycle Collection Playbook
I have a single API request that is becoming the first call I make on a growing number of Postman ccollections. It is a call to the Postman API to pull the OpenAPI for any API I am managing using P...
November 11, 2020
#Lifecycle
A Lifecycle for the API Factory Floor
I am pushing forward a handful of conversations with enterprise organizations about how to better formalize their API lifecycle workflow. To help me load up my talking points in my head I wanted to...
November 10, 2020
#Lifecycle
Shifting How API Providers Define What An Application Is When Onboarding and Integrating With Their APIs
When you sign up to access most APIs you will have to sign up for an account, create an application, and retrieve a set of keys and / or tokens before you will be able to use the API. This is stand...
Providing Source Metadata as Part of the API.json Index for Data APIs
The COVID-19 API resource center we launched back in April at Postman was a success. It generated a lot of traffic and API usage, but also brought in about 75 API submissions from the community. On...
Machine Readable API Monitoring Using the APIs.json CASC Score Property
I have been working with my friends over at APIMetrics on the COVID-19 and U.S. Election resource centers we launched recently. These API resource centers are all powered by an APIs.yaml index, pro...
Talking About the Importance of API Specifications with Marjukka Niinioja (@mniinioja)
One of the regular patrons of my weekly Friday open office hours around API specifications has been with API expert Marjukka Niinioja (@mniinioja), and a couple of weeks back we carved off 30 minut...
October 5, 2020
#Specifications
Why APIs Should Matter to You
This is a talk I gave Saturday this last morning to almost 100 students in India, helping demonstrate the potential of APIs when it comes to their career. It is easy for me to stay entrenched in a ...
September 20, 2020
#101
I Am An Evangelist
I have to write these posts every so often to help folks understand who I am and what it is I do as the API Evangelist. You see, there are regular streams of people who attempt to define me based u...
September 19, 2020
#Evangelism
FiveThirtyEight Shares the Election Data Behind Their Articles and Visualizations
My partners in crime Metadata Technologies North America (MTNA) and I are working on identifying the best election data and API resources available today, and one of the gems out there, when it com...
An OpenAPI and Postman Collections for the Census API
I am including the U.S. Census API in a couple of different projects in the queue, and to help me make the API more discoverable and usable by developers I needed an OpenAPI and Postman collection ...
Smoothing the Rough Edges Off Serverless with Nimbella
One of my current tasks at Postman is to help explore what the future of API deployment looks like. When I went into this work I expected serverless to play a significant role, but I have to admit ...
Generating a Serverless API in Multiple Languages From a Postman Collection
I am continue my storytelling around the work I am doing with Nimbella to help define what the future of API deployment looks like from within Postman, and next up on my list to do some storytellin...
Not Being Able to Post to My Facebook Feed Using the API
I am hung up (once again) on the fact that I can’t post to my personal Facebook feed via the Graph API. Facebook removed the ability for you to add or update to your Facebook feed via the API in 20...
Twitter OpenAPI, Docs, and Mocks in a Workspace
I am working on several demonstrations of what is possible when you use OpenAPI on the Postman platform, and as part of this storytelling I want to use the OpenAPI of leading API platforms to demon...
Stripe OpenAPI, Docs, and Mocks in a Workspace
I am working on several demonstrations of what is possible when you use OpenAPI on the Postman platform, and as part of this storytelling I want to use the OpenAPI of leading API platforms to demon...
GitHub OpenAPI, Docs, and Mocks in a Workspace
I am working on several demonstrations of what is possible when you use OpenAPI on the Postman platform, and as part of this storytelling I want to use the OpenAPI of leading API platforms to demon...
Atlassian OpenAPI, Docs, and Mocks in a Workspace
I am working on several demonstrations of what is possible when you use OpenAPI on the Postman platform, and as part of this storytelling I want to use the OpenAPI of leading API platforms to demon...
A Diverse API Workspace Example Using OpenAPI and GraphQL From GitHub
Like other successful API patterns REST and GraphQL have been in competition for mindshare since GraphQL emerged on the landscape. GraphQL folks love to say it is a replacement for REST, and the RE...
The Current State of Mock APIs Using Postman
One of the teams I work closely with at Postman is the group behind mocking APIs with Postman. The ability to statically mock APIs has received a lot of investment when it comes to recent releases,...
August 31, 2020
#Mocks
A Diverse API Toolbox is the Future
HTTP APIs, or as they are often referred to as REST APIs, are always the base layer for any API operation. This is where everyone should begin, but there are a number of other healthy patterns in u...
The Evolving World of API Discovery
The discovery of APIs has been the single most significant issue I’ve tracked on and contributed to over my career as the API Evangelist. It is also one of the stops along the API lifecycle I have ...
August 27, 2020
#Discovery
An API Toolbox Blueprint
I was needing a simple way to move forward a variety of API conversations I am having, ranging from COVID-19 APIs to API service providers who are using OpenAPI. I need a quick way to be able to fl...
August 26, 2020
#tag
Getting More Hands-On Talking About API Governance
I am getting more hands-on with my API governance guidance while working at Postman. It is one of the reasons I joined the company, so I could move more into the execution of my API lifecycle strat...
August 17, 2020
#Governance
I am Giving a Workshop on API Testing to Computer Science Students at Tecnológico de Monterrey Tomorrow
I am giving a presentation to my friend Ken Bauer Favel’s (@ ken_bauer) class of computer science sutdents at Tecnológico de Monterrey (@TecDeMonterrey) tomorrow, and I wanted to prepare an overvie...
Location-Aware Local Commerce Open Source API Standard From Beckn
I am working on profiling open specifications as part my work at Postman to help highlight how we can deploy APIs that use a common API and schema, reduce friction when on-boarding, while also incr...
Postman API Governance Collections
I have been moving forward a number of new types of Postman API collections as part of my Union Fashion reference implementation at Postman, and one of the new types I’m using as part of different ...
Managing Your OpenAPI and Postman Collection Publicly
I am having this conversation with multiple API providers right now, so I wanted to write it up, share it as part of these conversations, while also making it available for my wider audience here o...
Managing the API Lifecycle Using OpenAPI and Postman
I am having this conversation with over five separate API providers right now, so I wanted to write it up, share it as part of these conversations, while also making it available for my wider audie...
Leveraging FastAPI to Deploy APIs in the Postman Ecosystem
I am doing deep dives into each stop along the API lifecycle, beginning with deployment and management, to better understand how we can bring other features into Postman, without actually developin...
A Very Useful COVID-19 Data Collection and Visualization
This is a repost from the Postman community on a very slick COVID-19 data project with accompanying Postmn collection to actually work with the data and get back responses, and then view responses ...
Understanding How ShipEngine Manages Their APIs Using Moesif
I am working to better understand the Moesif Analytics API so that I can define a new type of Postman collection I am calling an API management collection. You wouldn’t use this collection to make ...
Producing a Postman Collection for Mulesoft API Manager and Platform
I am making my way through all of the partner conversation I am having, publishing stories for each of the conversations to help me move each one forward. Today I am focusing on API management prov...
Developing a Reference OpenAPI and Collection for the Moesif Analytics API So That I Can Build an API Management Collection
I am working my way through profiling API analytics provider Moesif. I have a pile of partner related work accumulating and there is no better way to work through what is going on than just writing...
Breaking Down the Capabilities of the WSO2 API Manager
I am profiling a number of API management APIs right now and reaching out to each of their teams to discuss moving forward a set of official API management collections that I can have published to ...
OpenAPI 101: Migrating From Swagger to OpenAPI (Open Office Hours Each Friday)
<p class="p1">OpenAPI has been around for five years now. There really is no reason for so many folks are still talking about Swagger 2.0, when there are more benefits associated with the Ope...
July 22, 2020
OpenAPI 101: Intro to OpenAPI (Open Office Hours Each Friday)
It can be difficult to understand exactly what OpenAPI is and what it isn’t sometimes. I get a lot of questions from folks who don’t entirely grasp what the OpenAPI specification is, a...
July 22, 2020
The Quickest Way to Partner with Postman Is Through the Network
One of the areas I am working on defining at Postman is how we partner with API providers, and API service providers. We are doing a lot of partnering right now, but we do not have a formal program...
Postman Runtime Integrations
I am working my way through all of the partner work I have on my workbench, and there is no better way to work through it than to write it out as blog posts here on API Evangelist. I just talked ab...
July 21, 2020
#Integrations
What are People Doing with Swagger and OpenAPI?
I recently harvested all of the open source tooling that is being built on the OpenAPI and Swagger specifications from GitHub. I am looking to better understand what people are doing with the speci...
The OpenAPI Demand Generation Office Hours Last Friday
I conducted the first OAI Demand Generation Public Office Hours last Friday. On behalf of the OAI I am looking to generate more awareness and demand around the specification, helping bring togethe...
July 20, 2020
OpenAPI is the HTTP Binding in AsyncAPI
I like researching and thinking more about each of the 13 AsyncAPI protocol bindings. It paints a picture of the past, present, and future of APIs for me. Leveraging AsyncAPI to define your event a...
What Are Some Resources For Understanding the World of Event-Driven APIs?
I have been asked by more than 10 people in the last couple of weeks for more information for helping them make sense of the whole event-driven API landscape. I have all kinds of links available, a...
July 16, 2020
#Event-Driven
Demand Generation for the OpenAPI Specification
I am making my rounds with folks in the API community talking about the next generation of the OpenAPI specification, getting people to move beyond Swagger 2.0, tooling and service providers to ado...
July 14, 2020
#OpenAPI
I Started API Evangelist 10 Years Ago
I started planning API Evangelist in July of 2010 after I saw what was happening with APIs being used in the cloud, and powering mobile applications. By September I had a plan in place, and I figur...
July 13, 2020
#Evangelism
I Am Speaking About Powering the API Lifecycle with Collections & Environments Tomorrow at @APIdaysGlobal INTERFACE
I am speaking tomorrow at 1PM Pacific time about using Postman collections and environments to define and power the API lifecycle at apidays INTERFACE. I am stoked that I get to have a dream job wh...
June 29, 2020
#Talks
API Examples, Schema, Mocks, Static, Synthetic, Dynamic, Data, Functions, Frameworks, Gateway, Deployment, Documentation, and Client
My head is swirling from a flurry of exciting meetings around what different Postman features are being worked on currently. I can’t speak directly on the features until they are released, but I am...
The Stops Along a Multi-Protocol API Lifecycle
I spent the last week looking through open source tooling built around leading API specifications. If you are tuned into the RSS or Twitter feed from this blog you probably saw the exhaust from my ...
The Open Source Community Tooling Built on Thrift
Continuing my journey through all of the leading API specifications I pulled the top open source projects that I could find via via the GitHub API. Pulling the cream off the top of what is being bu...
The Open Source Community Tooling Built on RAML
I have made my way through the open source community around Postman, OpenAPI, Swagger, AsyncAPI, JSON Schema, GraphQL, gRPC, Protocol Buffers, and Avro. Next up is RAML. Looking at the open source ...
The Open Source Community Tooling Built on Protocol Buffers
Specification protobuf - (forks: 11358) (stars: 42046) (watchers: 42046) - protocol buffers - google’s data interchange format Serialization flatbuffers - (forks: 2251) (stars: 14468) (wa...
The Open Source Community Tooling Built on JSON Schema
I am picking up my research into the open source tooling that is built around the common API specifications, and after looking at Postman collections, OpenAPI, Swagger, GraphQL, and gRPC, I wanted ...
The Open Source Community Tooling Built on Avro
Specification avro - (forks: 1066) (stars: 1594) (watchers: 1594) - apache avro is a data serialization system. Registries schema registry - (forks: 736) (stars: 1234) (watchers: 1234) - ...
The Open Source Community Tooling Built on AsyncAPI
Specification asyncapi - (forks: 77) (stars: 1139) (watchers: 1139) - the asyncapi specification allows you to create machine-readable definitions of your asynchronous apis. Documentation ...
The Open Source Community Tooling Built on API Blueprint
Specification api blueprint - (forks: 2095) (stars: 7969) (watchers: 7969) - api blueprint Generators aglio - (forks: 489) (stars: 4480) (watchers: 4480) - an api blueprint renderer with ...
The Open Source Community Tooling Built on gRPC
Specification grpc - (forks: 6625) (stars: 26420) (watchers: 26420) - the c based grpc (c++, python, ruby, objective-c, php, c#) Implementations grpc - (forks: 6625) (stars: 26420) (watch...
The Open Source Community Tooling Built on GraphQL
I have done several dives into the world of GraphQL. As part of some API specification work I am not getting another chance to look at what the open source community around GraphQL looks like. Alon...
The Open Source Community Tooling Built on Swagger
I am finally finding time to pick up some old work quantifying the open source that has risen up around API specifications. I just pulled all the GitHub repos when you search for “Postman” and “Ope...
The Open Source Community Tooling Built on Postman
I am finally finding time to pick up some old work quantifying the open source that has risen up around API specifications. I am pulling all of the open source tooling available on GitHub when you ...
June 8, 2020
#Tooling
The Open Source Community Tooling Built on OpenAPI
I am finally finding time to pick up some old work quantifying the open source that has risen up around API specifications. I am pulling all of the open source tooling available on GitHub when you ...
June 8, 2020
#OpenAPI
Setting Up API Broker Workspaces
I had begun playing around with the concept of API brokers back in 2014, and it is something that is recurring and evolving in a handful of the conversations I am having in the Postman ecosystem la...
Writing and Working in a COVID-19 #BlackLivesMatter Uprising Storm
Business is anything but usual these days. I have a lot of time on my hands when it comes to writing and working online, but the reality in the chair is anything but easy. When I sit down to tackle...
June 5, 2020
#Covid
The Building Blocks of API Sharing and Collaboration
I am tasked with defining what sharing and collaboration means when it comes to API operations at work. I have never had a tool like Postman to help me define how we work as a team across an organi...
What Layer Are You Used to API Complexity Being At?
I’d say one of the most controversial aspects of the world of APIs involves the places where people are used to and prefer to deal with API complexity at. After you look at thousands of APIs you be...
May 22, 2020
#Complexity
Where is the API Value?
I had some thoughts bouncing around in my head the last couple days about where the value in this whole API game actually resides. When it comes to the types of APIs I am seeing be deployed, and wh...
May 8, 2020
#Value
API Spec-First Development
I am fleshing out ideas from a couple of recent conversations around API life cycle religion and philosophy. We’ve made our way through several lofty ideologies around how you should or shouldn’t d...
May 7, 2020
#API-First
The Basics of Postman Role Based Access Control (RBAC)
I am working up towards a loftier piece on the importance of RBAC to the API life cycle, and as part of my research I was going through all of the documentation postman has for roles and permission...
Learn by API
I was playing around with my co-worker Sue Smith’s Learn by API project today, and found it to be a pretty powerful usage of Postman for not just teaching users about Postman, but also teach them a...
May 5, 2020
#101
HHS and CMS Finalizes Rules to Provide Patients More Control of Their Health Data Using APIs
I have had a pretty massive API story in my notebook for a couple of weeks now that I just didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to process, but eventually I’m finding the energy to think about APIs ...
Blog Posts to Work Through My API Task List
I would say today reflects the purpose of API Evangelist in my world. Helping me get through the work I have on the table, while expanding my awareness of what is going on in the world of APIs. Mo...
May 5, 2020
The Quickest Way To Make An Idea for an API Usable By Others
I have used Postman in a handful of webinars and takes recently to demonstrate how you can quickly go from idea to a tangible usable API. My goal is to equip myself with a way to I can quickly demo...
May 4, 2020
#Onboarding
Using Postman Workspaces and GitHub Repositories Together
I find that it helps to have defined boundaries for your APIs. If you have the resources and interest I recommend studying subjects like domain driven design. Investment in properly defining the bo...
An API Deployment Narrative
This is the narrative from one of the last webinars I did for Postman oin my API-first e-commerce reference implementation Union Fashion. I always try to write what I am going to be saying furing a...
May 1, 2020
#Deployment
API Deployment Collections - AWS API Gateway, Lambda, and RDS
After over a decade of API evolution, API deployment is still much more of a dark art than it is something that ever sees the light of day. Sure you can setup a pipeline for an API, making a known ...
April 21, 2020
#Deploiyment
API Deployment Collections - AWS API Gateway and DynamoDB
After over a decade of API evolution, API deployment is still much more of a dark art than it is something that ever sees the light of day. Sure you can setup a pipeline for an API, making a known ...
April 21, 2020
#Deployment
Running and Organizing AWS Lambdas with Postman Collections
When it comes to deploying APIs with AWS infrastructure using a Postman collection, there were two things I couldn’t do purely with AWS APIs, which pushed me to create AWS Lambda functions that wou...
The Layers of the API Specifications, Definitions, and Schema Onion
I struggle with using the right words in my API storytelling. Striking a blend between what people are saying across the sector, and what people should be saying. There are many words and phrases i...
We Should Have Built an API First
One Product Catalog With Multiple Destinations Products are a ubiquitous resource in an online world. By 2000, if we were selling products in the real world, we also began needing to publish produ...
April 15, 2020
#API-First
Growth in the Number of API Collections Over the Last Five Years
There are surprisingly few meaningful API numbers to showcase across the API sector. There are few API or API service providers who have a view of the landscape that can produce meaningful numbers,...
April 15, 2020
#Collections
Real Time Email Notifications About API Deprecations Down the Road
I got an email from GitHub after firing up an older Postman collection I had. The collection was originally engineered to just pass in a GitHub token using a query parameter, which historically has...
Establishing an API-First Reference Implementation
I do a lot of API blah blah blah’ing about abstract technical concepts. Sometimes I am able to craft a coherent narratives around some complex technology goings on, but most of the time I am just p...
Crowdsourcing COVID-19 Testing Location Data
Framing the COVID-19 Testing Location Problem Before I dive into what I built, let me talk a little about how I landed on this being a problem in the first place, which is an important first step ...
April 3, 2020
#Covid
COVID-19 Data and Information
When it comes to coping with the stressful world unfolding around us I like to lose myself in my work. Data and APIs is a great way to tune out the world and keep myself busy while in isolation. Li...
March 26, 2020
#Covid
The Official Cloudflare API Postman Collection
I use Cloudflare for my DNS. I like the threat protection they offer, the dead simple DNS management, and their robust API. I automate the management of a handful of my domains. Providing maintenan...
A Proof of Concept API Service Tier
If you have followed me over the years you know that I get very frustrated by the access or lack of access to APIs, as well as the services and tooling that target the sector. As someone who is pe...
March 12, 2020
#Access
API-First [Business]
I am working my way through defining a more precise definition of what API-first means which I can use across my API storytelling and conversations. I workshopped the widest definiti...
March 10, 2020
#API-First
What Is API First?
I really struggled with this piece on API-first. It is one of those holistic API advice pieces I am very conflicted about. API-first feels like yet another marketing phrase or latest trend like mic...
March 9, 2020
#API-First
API-First [Design || Code]
I worked through my thoughts on what API first is, which I consider to be the outer layers of what is going on when we use this phrase. I wanted to focus on the technical and business rift that exi...
March 9, 2020
#API-First
What Is My API Network
I am working on the vision for the Postman Network. As I do with everything, I want to start with the basics human aspects of what is going on, and then relate them to the more technical and then b...
The Building Blocks of API Partner Programs
I’m doing a deep dive into partner API research, taking a fresh look at how API providers and service providers are operating their partner programs. I looked through around a hundred partner progr...
March 4, 2020
#Partners
Postman API Reference and Capability Collections
An AWS EC2 Reference Collection An example of a Postman reference API collection can be found in the collections I worked on leading up to AWS re:Invent last December. One of the reference API col...
Peeling the OpenAPI-Driven API Life Cycle Collaboration Onion
I am trying to better understand how we all work together to deliver and consume APIs. Fleshing out more meaning behind some of the common words we use in the space such as collaboration, platform,...
The Technology, Business, and Politics of the OpenAPI Conversation
I was pondering a tweet from Aidan Cunniffe (@aidandcunniffe) over at Optic they other day. He was expressing what he says is a “controversial opinion that keeps getting backed up by conversations...
Design and Build API with Postman
It is natural for developers to want to roll up their sleeves and begin coding to deliver an API. It is what they are trained to do. However, it makes a lot more sense to involve business stakehold...
February 25, 2020
#Design
Managing API Secrets Using Postman Environments
Environments are an essential building block to be considered as part of wider API governance strategy. Like Postman collection, environments will need the greatest amount of governance to inject t...
Content Negotiation for APIs and the Web
The World Wide Web, commonly known as the Web, is an information system where documents and other web resources are identified by Uniform Resource Locators, which may be interlinked by hypertext, a...
The Caltech University API Landscape
I regularly take a look at what different universities are up to when it comes to their APIs. I spent two days talking with different universities at the University API summit in Utah a couple week...
February 19, 2020
#Universities
API Interrogation
I was doing some investigation into how journalists are using APIs, or could / should be using APIs. After some quick Googling, Binging, and DuckDuckGoing, I came across a workshop by David Eads o...
All of the Discussions from the BYU API University Workshop in Utah
I went to Provo Utah a couple weeks ago and participated in the sixth annual Brigham Young University (BYU) University API Workshop. I was the keynote opener for the first edition of the conference...
February 12, 2020
#Universities
Postman Governance as the Foundation for Wider API Governance
This an overview of possible strategies for governing how Postman is used across a large organization. It is common for Postman to be already in use across an organization by individuals operating ...
February 11, 2020
#Governance
Conducting API Weaponization Audits
Let’s take what we’ve learned from Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and others. Let’s look at the general security landscape, but let’s get more creative when it comes to coloring within the lines of an...
February 11, 2020
#Audits
The Basics of Working with the Postman API
API access, integration, and automation should be the default with everything you do online—desktop, web, mobile, and device applications all use APIs. Your API infrastructure is no different. Post...
February 10, 2020
#Postman
Standardizing My API Life Cycle Governance
I am working on redesigning all of my base APIs, as well as produce a mess of new ones. As part of the process I am determined to be more thoughtful and consistent in how I design and deliver the A...
Backend AWS API Gateway Integration OpenAPI Extensions
I have spent a lot of time automating my AWS API infrastructure, working to make it so I can automatically deploy API infrastructure to AWS. I am using AWS API Gateway as part of this suite of API...
API Links For Every UI Element
I’ve showcased ClokudFlare’s approach making their API available as part of their user interface several times now. It is a practice I want to see replicated in more desktop, web, and mobile applic...
Secrets and Personally Identifiable Information (PII) Across Our API Definitions
As API providers and consumers we tend to have access to a significant amount of credentials, keys, tokens, as well as personally identifiable data (PII). We use this sensitive information througho...
An Introduction to API Authentication
APIs operate using the web, but like web applications, many API require some sort of authentication or authorization before you can access the valuable resources available within each API path. Whe...
January 27, 2020
#Authentication
Profiling Adobe APIs
As I was profiling APIs on my list of APIs I found myself profiling Adobe. I am moving through the list of companies alphabetically, so you can see how far along I am. Anyways, like any other large...
Three Ways to Use Postman and Azure DevOps
I set out to understand the role that Postman can play in an Azure DevOps powered API life cycle. I was fully prepared to crash course Azure Dev Ops, and begin mapping out the role that Postman can...
The State of California Doing APIs The Right Way By Starting Simple
I got introduced to the CA.gov Alpha Team by my fellow government change maker Luke Fretwell (@lukefretwell) the other day, and I am beginning to tune into what they are up to in similar ways to ho...
January 22, 2020
#State Government
Help Defining 13 of the AsyncAPI Protocol Bindings
I have been evolving my definition of what my API toolbox covers, remaining focused on HTTP APIs, but also make sure I am paying attention to HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 APIs, as well as those that depend on...
My Upcoming Talk with the UK Government Digital Services (GDS): The API Life Cycle Is For Everyone
I am heading to London in February to talk to the UK government about APIs. They invited me out to talk about my history of work with government in the US and EU, and share my views of the API life...
Looking at Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) Reminds Me that the API Economy is Just Getting Started
I am neck deep in the expansion of what I consider to be my API toolbox, and I have been spending time mapping out the world of EDI. If you aren’t familiar with the Electronic Data Interchange (ED...
I Think We Will Have To Embrace Chaos With the Future of APIs
I like studying APIs. I like to think about how to do APIs well. I enjoy handcrafting a fully fleshed out OpenAPI definition for my APIs. The challenge is convincing other folks of the same. I see ...
January 21, 2020
#Chaos
Expanding My API Toolbox for the Next Decade
I am continuing to iterate on what I consider to be a modern API toolbox. API Evangelist research is born out of the SOA and API worlds colliding, and while I have been heavily focused on HTTP APIs...
January 21, 2020
#Protocols
DevOps Azure Style
I am spending time thinking more deeply about how APIs can be delivered via Azure. I spent much of the holidays looking at how to deliver APIs on AWS, but only a small amount of time looking at Azu...
A View of the API Delivery Life Cycle from the Azure Getting Started Page
I am working my way through doing more work around the multi-cloud deployment of APIs and spending some more time on the Azure platform here in 2020, and I found their getting started page pretty r...
What Is Your API Development Workflow?
I am going to invest in a new way to tell stories here on API Evangelist—we will see if I can make this stick. I enjoy doing podcasts but I am not good at the scheduling and reliable repetition man...
January 16, 2020
#Deployment
My Eventbrite API Keys Were Easy To Find
If you read my blog regularly you know I rant all the time about having to sign up for new APIs and then find my API keys and tokens. API providers excel at making it extremely difficult to get up ...
API Life Cycle Governance Beyond Just API Design
When you hear enterprise organizations talk about API governance they usually mean the governance of API design practices across the organization. This is the place where everyone starts when it co...
Eventbrite Events with Order Count and Capacity Using the API
My boss asked me if I could build a Postman collection that would pull our future events from Evenbrite and display ticket counts for each individual event. So I got to work hacking on the Eventbri...
January 15, 2020
#Events
Why Hasn’t There Been Another Stripe or Twilio?
I am going to spend some time flagging some of the new APIs who do rise the to the occasion, but while I am working on that I wanted to pose some questions about why we haven’t seen the Twilio and ...
The State of Simple CRUD API Creation
We even have the vocabulary to describe all of the details of my API (OpenAPI), and I still can’t just push a button and get my API. I can take my complete OpenAPI definition and publish it to AWS,...
A Postman API Governance Collection
You can use Postman to test your APIs. With each request you can include a test script which evaluates each incoming response and validates for specific elements, displaying the test results along ...
January 9, 2020
#Governance
Spreading API Collections From My Personal Workspaces Across Multiple Workspaces
As a Postman user for a number of years I have several hundred random collections littering my personal workspace. I had noticed that workspaces emerged a while back, but really hadn’t ever put muc...
January 8, 2020
#Workspaces
Postman Tutorials are Common but the Postman Collection is Often Missing
I am amazed at the number of blog posts I come across for API providers explaining how their API consumers can use Postman with their API, but do not actually share a complete Postman collection fo...
Deploy, Publish or Launch An API?
I’m always fascinated by the words we use to describe what we do in a digital world. One dimension of the API life cycle that perpetually interests me is the concept of deploying an API, or as some...
Dead Simple Real World API Management
I began API Evangelist research almost a decade ago by looking into the rapidly expanding concept of API management, so I think it is relevant to go into 2020 by taking a look at where things are t...
January 8, 2020
#Management
Postman Open Source
I get asked a lot if Postman is open source. I get told ocasionally that people wish it was open source. I have to admit I didn’t fully grasp how open Postman was until I helped work on the new ope...
January 7, 2020
#Open Source
Challenges Binding APIs Deployed Via Gateway To Backend Services
Don’t get me wrong, if you want to just gateway an existing API using AWS, Azure, or Google, it is pretty straightforward. You just have to learn each of their mapping techniques and you can quickl...
Academic or Street API Tooling
There always seems like there are two separate types of tools in my world, the academic tools that consider the big picture and promise to steer me in the right direction, and then there is the str...
The Fundamentals: Deploying APIs From Your Databases
You know, I tend to complain about a lot of things across the API space while focusing on the damage caused by fast moving technology startups and the venture capital that fuels them. Amidst all of...
Postman Collections For Pulling My Twitter Friends And Followers
I have been cranking out the Twitter API capabilities lately, crafting single request Postman collections that focus on a specific capability of the popular social API. I use the API for a number o...
My Levels of Postman API Environment Understanding To Date
I have been a pretty hardcore Postman user since the beginning. Over the years I felt like I understood what Postman was all about, but one of the first concepts that blew up my belief around what ...
January 6, 2020
#Environments
A Dynamic Salesforce REST API Postman Collection Builder Collection
I have been working on developing new ways to make the Salesforce API more accessible and easier to onboard with over the last couple of months, helping reduce friction every time I have to pick up...
The Many Differences Between Each API
I’m burning my way through profiling, updating, and refreshing the listings for about 2K+ APIs in my directory. As I refresh the profile of each of the APIs in my index I am looking to make sure I ...
January 3, 2020
#Differences
Pricing Comparison for Screen Capture APIs
I have had a machine readable schema for defining API pricing for almost five years now. I’ve profiled common resources like email, SMS, and others, but ultimately haven’t had the resources to inve...
Not Just An API Provider But Also An API Matchmaker
Your API is always the best. Of course it is. However, not everyone will see the value your API delivers without a little enlightenment. Sometimes the value of an API is missed in isolation when yo...
What Is The API Life Cycle?
I regularly struggle with the words and phrases I use in my storytelling. I’m never happy with my level of word-smithing, as well as the final output. Ultimately I don’t let it stop me, I just push...
January 2, 2020
#Lifecycle
Deploying My Postman OpenAPI To AWS API Gateway
I created a bunch of different Postman collections for AWS services leading up to re:Invent this year, and now I’m using individual requests to deliver on some different Postman AWS API life cycle ...
A Postman Collection for Managing the Life Cycles Of My APIs
I had grown weary of just researching, talking, and teaching about the API lifecycle over the last ten years as the API Evangelist. This was one of the major motivators for me to join the Postman t...
Pulling Your Twitter Bookmarks Via The Twitter API
I created two Twitter API capabilities the other day to help someone pull a list of their Twitter favorites using the Twitter API. They said they wanted bookmarks and I assumed they used favorites ...
Pulling Links From Those Tweets You Have Favorited
I am busy crafting new API capabilities from my laundry list of requests I have from folks. When I get an email or come across a Tweet with someone asking how they do something on Twitter I will ad...
How My API Evangelist Research and Writing Works
Many folks don’t quite get my work and writing style. They are confused by the erratic flow of stories being published to API Evangelist, the incomplete nature of some of my research sites, and oth...
Atlassian Provides Run in Postman and OpenAPI by Default for Jira, Confluence, and BitBucket APIs
I was profiling the Atlassian APIs, considering what is possible with JIRA, Confluence, and Bitbucket. Three services that are baked into many enterprise organizations I’ve worked with over the yea...
Applying An API-First Approach To Understanding The Pacific Northwest Mushroom Industry
This is an API first project for mapping out the mushroom industry. I have always had a passion for mushrooms, but as I get older I am looking at investing in more side projects that aren’t always ...
API Providers Should Maintain Their Own API Definitions
I am working my way through 2K+ API providers, refreshing my view of the API landscape, and the data I use to tune into the API economy. As I refresh the profile of each API provider, one of the ma...
Where Does The Exhaust For Your API Operations End Up Being Stored?
As part of my ongoing API discovery and observability research, I am interested in better defining where the common places are within the enterprise that we find API signals. Those log files and ot...
OpenAPI is the Static Truth and Postman Collections are Real World Derivatives of that Truth
I was talking with the Optic folks this morning about API definitions when they asked me for my opinions on what the difference between OpenAPI and Postman were. A question that isn’t easy to answe...
How I Profile The TypeForm API
I was being asked for more information about how I profile APIs, and deal with the many differences I come across. It isn’t easy navigating the differences between different APIs, and come out with...
December 20, 2019
#Profiles
What Else Has Influenced APIs Over the Last 50+ Years?
Because I have so many smart folks in my Twitter timeline I want to put out some of the seeds for stories I am working on for 2020. I want your help determining what has set the stage for the world...
December 19, 2019
#History
The 3dcart Developer Home Page Is Nice and Clean
I look through a lot of API developer portals and when I come across interesting layouts I like to pause and highlight them showing to other API providers what is possible, while turning API Evange...
Taming The Salesforce API Scope
I was recently looking to building a prototype integration between Salesforce and Workday, where I find myself needing to on-board with the Salesforce REST API for probably the 50+ time in my caree...
APIs For Victoria Australia
I was helping out someone trying to download air quality data in Australia today, and while I was playing around the Victoria Australia government AirWatch data API I thought I’d go ahead and add t...
A Portable 23andMe API Sandbox
I was creating a Postman collection for the 23andMe API. The 23andMe API is still available, despite the company pulling back somewhat when it comes to accessing the DNA and genetics API. You can s...
Being Flexible With Authorization When It Comes To Multiple APIs Within A Single API Collection
I am working on a Postman collection that deploys an API to AWS. I’m pulling the OpenAPI from Postman using the Postman API API (mind blown), and then publishing the API to AWS as an API using the ...
API Observability Is More Than Just Testing And Monitoring
API observability is something I have written about for a while now after learning about it from Stripe. It is a phrase that has grown popular in API testing, monitoring, and performance circles. B...
Believing The Technology Startup Hype And Refusing See Anything Else
I’ve been in numerous discussions with defenders of the Instructure Canvas platform after posting the Instructure LMS data points. These folks are blindly and passionately defending Instructure as ...
December 14, 2019
#Statups
Remember That An Application Is Not Just About Someone Building A Web or Mobile Application With Your API
I encounter regular waves of API providers who are discouraged with the traffic to their API portal as well as the number of developers who are actually building something on top of their API. Many...
December 13, 2019
#Applications
The Postman Business Model Is In Alignment With Enterprise Objectives
One of the things that became very clear during my conversations with folks at AWS re:Invent last week is that Postman’s revenue model is in alignment with what is needed within the enterprise. To ...
Focusing On Digital API Capabilities Over Just Doing APIs
As I work on creating more useful Postman collections I am distilling my API definitions down to the small possible unit as I possibly can. While I have many robust reference Postman collections an...
December 12, 2019
#Capabilities
Automatically Generate OpenAPI For Your APIs Just By Using Them
I am a big fan of tools that just augment our normal existence then make our lives easier without having to do much additional work. One of the tools that fits into this category is Optic, an open ...
December 12, 2019
#OpenAPI
We Will Not Convince Everyone To Go API Design First
I believe in going API first. I think it provides a positive step for development teams. I think it is one that makes sense for most enterprise organizations. But if I have learned anything in the ...
December 11, 2019
#API-First
My Thoughts ON Amazon EventBridge Schema Registry And Discovery
My friend Fran Méndez (@fmvilas) over at AsyncAPI asked me to share my opinions on Amazon’s EventBridge schema registry and discovery which is in preview. Something that is looking to be a pretty c...
Abstracting Away API Response Complexity With Postman Visualizer
I was creating a Postman collection for validating the status of Twitter users, where I was looking to extract a subset of data from the very verbose Twitter API response for a Tweet Lookup. There ...
Validating Twitter Users Using The Twitter API Without Writing Code
I was asked on Twitter if I had any code for pulling the status of Twitter users. Since I am the API Evangelist, and the Chief Postman at Twitter I tend to prefer sharing of Postman collections rat...
December 9, 2019
#Twitter
Twitter API Authorization Using Postman
I just created a new Postman collection for validating Twitter users via the Twitter API. As part of the Postman collection documentation and tutorial I included the steps for authorizing with the ...
A Postman Meetup This Tuesday In Seattle
I am all recovered from being at AWS re:Invent all week in Las Vegas, and gearing up for a Postman meetup in Seattle this Tuesday. I am stoked to be doing ane vent on my home turf, but I am aslo pr...
We Will Not Discuss APIs Without A Postman Collection
I heard a story this morning while having breakfast with someone at the Venetian before I made my way to the re:Invent registration counter which reminded me of the now infamous secret to Amazon’s ...
December 2, 2019
#Collections
Mock AWS Services Using Postman Collections With Examples
As I create each of the 50+ Postman collections for AWS services I am always striving for establishing as complete of a collection I as possibly can—this includes having examples for each API reque...
gRPCs Potentially Fatal Weakness
I was reading an article on Microsofts DevBlog about gRPC vs HTTP APIs. It makes the usual arguments of how gRPC compares with HTTP APIs. While the arguments for gRPC are definitely compelling, I f...
December 2, 2019
#gRPC
I Am Heading To Vegas For AWS re:Invent
I’m sitting in the Seattle airport waiting for my flight to Las Vegas. I’m heading to AWS re:Invent, spending the entire week talking everything APIs with the masses at the flagship conference. It ...
I Am Happy I Chose The Term Evangelism
There is always lot of discussion around the proper term to use for describing what it is we all do when it comes to getting the word out about our APIs. Some of use use the word evangelism, while ...
November 27, 2019
#Evangelism
Bulk Updating My Postman Collections Using The Postman API
I had recently pulled all of the AWS Postman collections I have created and spread across Postman workspaces. After creating over 50 AWS Postman collections I learned some things along the way, and...
November 27, 2019
#Collections
So You Wanna Build An iPaaS Solution
I’m getting more emails and DMs from startups doing what I’d consider to be integration platform as a service (iPaaS) solutions. These are services that help developers or business users integrate ...
Pulling All My Postman Collections Using The Postman API
I needed access to all of the AWS Postman collections I am building. The problem is they are distributed across multiple different workspaces. I had organized over 50 AWS Postman collections based ...
November 26, 2019
#Collections
Is it an Amazon or AWS Branded Service
I’m working on 50+ AWS Postman collections at the moment, as well as crafting Postman environments for use across them. I’ve encountered some namespace challenges in this work, and I was needing to...
Where O Where Is My API Key
Finding your API key for an API provider can be a real pain in the ass. Depending on the account it can be buried deep within your settings, or possibly out in the back 40 in another separate devel...
API Design Consistency Across Amazon Web Services
I have been crafting Postman collections for as many AWS APIs as I can before re:Invent. As I work my way through the different APIs I”m reminded of the difficulties involved in API consistency and...
API Copyright: Directories
I am gearing up for API copyright heading to the Supreme Court, having another look at whether or not the naming and ordering of your API interface is copyrightable, as well as whether or not reimp...
November 25, 2019
#Copyright
Reducing API On-Boarding Friction With API Environments
I’m obsessed with making my Postman collections more accessible and executable to developers and non-developers. I’m really frustrated that on-boarding with APIs is still so difficult, and I’m dete...
Developing An API Environment Naming Strategy
I’m creating more Postman environments lately. I’m realizing the potential for using environments as a pivotal layer in defining and working with Postman collections. Environments are the missing i...
API Copyright: Restaurant Menu
I am gearing up for API copyright heading to the Supreme Court, having another look at whether or not the naming and ordering of your API interface is copyrightable, as well as whether or not reimp...
November 22, 2019
#Copyright
The Missed Revenue Opportunities For The State Of California Because They Do Not Have A Business Registry API
I was talking with OpenCorporates CEO Chris Taggart (@countculture) while in Washington DC a couple of weeks ago, reminding me of a previous conversation we had about the current state of business ...
Reference And Walkthrough API Documentation And Collections From ShipEngine
One of the things I have been thoroughly enjoying as part of my work with Postman is the many different ways in which Postman collections are being work. If you’ve followed my blog over the years y...
Attracting The Big Customers You Desire Requires A Steady Stream Of API Storytelling
API storytelling is the number tool in my toolbox, and this should be the same for API providers and service providers. I know that many folks, especially the more technical folks snicker every tim...
November 21, 2019
#Stories
Company Specific API Workspaces
I have many different workspaces defined within my Postman team account. I’m organizing a couple thousands APIs into different topical categories that help articulate the value they deliver. Once I...
November 20, 2019
#Worspaces
Azure Provides SDK Governance Guidelines
Most companies I encounter who are doing API governance are purely focused on API design, with a handful also thinking more deeply about documentation, testing, monitoring, and other stops along th...
The Common Building Blocks Of Evangelism
As part of my work as the Chief Evangelist for Postman I find myself regularly talking to other devrel, advocates, and evangelists who are looking for ideas on how to expand their evangelism toolbo...
November 19, 2019
#Evangelism
API Copyright: Blank Forms
I am gearing up for API copyright heading to the Supreme Court, having another look at whether or not the naming and ordering of your API interface is copyrightable, as well as whether or not reimp...
November 19, 2019
#Copyright
Subway Map Visualization Postman Collection
I have been working to migrate all the different API driven JavaScript solutions I have developed over the years and run on GitHub using Jekyll to operate self-contained Postman collections. Now th...
Organizing EC2 API Actions As A Postman Collection
I’m crafting Postman collections in support of the upcoming re:Invent conference in Vegas in December. One of the first collections I crafted was for Amazon EC2, allowing anyone put the Postman col...
API Copyright Heading To The Supreme Court
I received an email this last Friday that the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case on the freedom to reimplement APIs, as well as reconsider the copyrightability of APIs, and whether their reimple...
Why Is API On-Boarding And Authentication Still So Hard?
I was teaching a class to business users yesterday and they were very curious about being able to play with some of the public APIs that exist, but for me, once again I found myself struggling with...
What You Mean When You Say You Have An Open API (Not OpenAPI)
My friend Lorenzino Vaccari (@lvaccari) asked me to help him with what I think of as an open API. Not to be confused with the OpenAPI specification, but an API that is “open”. I’ll begin with the s...
November 13, 2019
#Access
People Are Aware Of Public APIs But Less Aware Of Mobile APIs
After some time in DC talking API governance I’m reminded that the “normals” are increasingly aware of public APIs, being able to actively discuss Facebook, Twitter, and other APIs, but are still v...
How Much Was The API Portal A Construct Of API Management Providers?
I am always wondering how much of the API sector is a construct of API providers, or something that was introduce by API service providers. Ok, I guess there is probably a third category of how muc...
Thinking About Data and API Governance As Well As Observability
Join Our Weekly API Governance Knowledge Bulding Sessions I just got back to Seattle from Washington DC after spending a day talking about data governance at the Data Governance Design Conferen...
Getting You Up To Speed On API Definitions
After spending some time in DC talking about data governance and the role API definitions play in how we quantify the data we have, as well as how it is accessed by all stakeholders, I have a serio...
A Postman Collection As Unit of Compute For The API Lifecycle
I have written several times about what a Postman collection means to my API discovery and search workflow. I have thousands of OpenAPI definitions indexed as part of my research, but until there i...
What Is Behind The CLI Making A Comeback?
As I read the recent announcement about Stripe releasing a command line interface (CLI) I find myself think more about the reasons behind the recent resurgence of the CLI, and what makes it a growi...
November 5, 2019
#CLI
Nobody Has API Governance Figured Out
I was on a call recently with some folks doing the hard work of moving the API conversation forward across their enterprise organization, and the topic of API governance came up (again). This is a ...
November 5, 2019
#Governance
Most API Definitions Are Just Fan Fiction
My friend Tim Burks (@timburks) over at Google gave a great workshop presentation at the API Specifications Conference (ASC) in Vancouver. His talk was on OpenAPI, GraphQL, and gRPC, but one phase ...
Do We Deploy, Provide, Publish, or Produce an API?
I think a lot about the words we use in the technology sector. What they mean, and what they don’t mean. One of the stops along the API life cycle I struggle with a lot is about how we descr...
November 4, 2019
Shit-Storming — The Latest (and Previous) Waves of How APIs Get Planned
I have had the pleasure of sitting in on several event storming sessions, where an organization is brainstorming the design of the next generation of their APIs, ensuring that every idea and resour...
Pushing Us To Think Externally Is The Most Important API Lesson
I see it over and over—organizations learning new ways of thinking, moving beyond their legacy constraints by investing in APIs. This is one of the disruptive powers of APIs which can be all about ...
Profiling The bunq Banking API
The banking API bunq purchased one of my API profile packages, so I spent some time this week going through what they offer. Every API provider who purchases one of my profiling packages will utlim...
A Diverse API.json Index Example For Slack
My friend James Higginbotham had a really nice example of using APIs.json in a talk I saw him give the other day. It was one of those things that jumpstarted my desire to showcase different ways of...
Why Are APIs Better Than Direct ODBC / JDBC Connections?
I had someone email me a question the other day, asking about how they should respond when someone asks them why APIs are a better choice that using a direct ODBC / JDBC database connection. Before...
Managing Your API Definitions On GitHub
I was profiling the banking API bunq over the weekend and noticed they were managing their Postman collections on GitHub. I have long been an advocate for API providers to manage OpenAPI and Swagge...
API Environments Are An Essential Format For Our API Definition Toolboxes
I am a big fan of there being many versatile and competiting API definitions that describe many different dimensions of how we put APIs to work. I hear folks say that they’d prefer to have one sing...
A Dedicated Open Source Page For Your API Platform
After looking through 20 separate open source pages for leading API providers, here are the building blocks of an open source page I’ve identified. Overview: FMA - Tag Line - Simple phrase des...
October 30, 2019
#Open Source
The PSD2 Sandbox From Banking API Provider bunq
I am a big fan of all API providers who offer sandboxes, and providing synthetic APIs, data, and other resources. It should be the default operating mode for anyone offering a public API, but it is...
Portable No-Code Way Of Sending an SMS With Nexmo
I am at the Vonage Campus event today in San Francisco listening to a variety of talks from their team and partners. As I’m listening I can’t help but play around with their APIs, and explore what ...
20 Open Source Landing Pages From Leading API Providers
I am spending time understanding how API providers have invested in their open source offerings. Mapping out which leading API providers have dedicated pages for showcasing not only the open source...
October 29, 2019
#Open Source
The SalesForce API Could Use A Little Modernization
I regularly find myself shining a spotlight on the SalesForce API, holding it up as an example of why APIs matter. They are the OG API pioneer, and 20 years later they are still rocking it with the...
More Information Is Not Always Better When On-Boarding Someone With An API
I process a lot of API documentation, trying to make sense of what each API does. As I wade through the human and machine generated API documentation for the different APIs I am profiling I am remi...
October 28, 2019
#On-Boarding
Individual API Life Cycle Stops And Operational Life Cycle Stops
One difficulty I have telling stories across the API lifecycle involves the separation of stops along the API life cycle that are about each individual API, and those that are about serving the ent...
Embedding JSON-LD To Power API Discovery
If you have been in charge of operating a public API you know how hard it is to get your APIs found. One important way you can increase the discoverability of your API is by embedding JSON-LD into ...
Sometimes My Desire To Automate Is More About Laziness Than Innovation
As I’m working through my tasks each day I am always looking for ways to automate away the cumbersome portions of what I need to accomplish. I am always weighing having to manually accomplish somet...
Some API Evangelism Metrics
Channeling APIs, and cranking out API content i what I do. I find it pretty easy to regularly produce a regular flow of diverse content spanning the entire API life cycle. However, one challenge I ...
October 21, 2019
#Evangelism
It Is Difficult To Know Where To Begin With APIs
The API landscape is huge. APIs are being used to power desktop, web, mobile, and device applications across almost every business sector. While there are many common patterns used across the leadi...
Documentation Pushes The Human Readability of Your API Definitions
I like machine readable definitions that are also human readable. Depending on how much you care about your API consumers, and how mature your API life cycle is, your will invest different amounts ...
Most People Just Want to Deliver the API and Will Not Be Interested in the Process
The is my regular reminder that not everyone will care about APIs as much as I do. Most people just want to do their job, and aren’t interested in understanding the nuance of API design. I’d say th...
Well-Defined API Workflows Are Sign Of API Maturity
Having standard API practices established across our development teams plays an important role in pushing us to deliver more consistent and usable APIs. Establishing a feedback loop with API consum...
Introductory API Concepts Are Timeless
I’ve been working on a series of introductory API blog posts for Postman, helping introduce people to the concepts of APIs. When I do series like this I tend to get comments from people that the wo...
Are You The API Librarian Within Your Organization?
I think back regularly to my days as a database administrator in the 1990s, and the critical role I played in so many different organizations by being a keeper of the valuable data that was used to...
October 14, 2019
#Discovery
Most API Owners Are Just Focused On Issues
One of the biggest challenges I face in reaching API practitioners in my work as the Chief Evangelist for Postman is that most people in these roles are more focused on the day to day details of th...
Learn to API
You hear a lot about learning to code in the tech sector. I want to invest more in people “learning to API”. Not just developers, but anyone who wants to understand how to push back a little on the...
October 10, 2019
#101
Making Your API Collection The Tutorial
I am going through a bunch of different tutorials from API providers looking to motivate users to accomplish some fundamental API on-boarding task, or introduce them to some meaningful workflow inv...
Capital G API Governance vs Lowercase g API Governance
API governance is a hot topic amongst leadership and stakeholders who care about the long term health of API operations. I regularly get questions from folks about what I’m seeing when it comes to ...
October 8, 2019
#Governance
Increasing API Adoption and Consumption
I am preparing for a busy week of conversation with folks at API World, and with an inbox full of requests to meet and discuss the challenges API providers and service providers face, I want to wor...
Getting API Providers To Step Up to SLOs/SLAs
I am preparing for a busy week of conversation with folks at API World, and with an inbox full of requests to meet and discuss the challenges API providers and service providers face, I want to wor...
Conducting An API Landscape Analysis
I am having conversations with different organizations about where to start with APIs, pushing me to revisit some of my previous API landscape analysis work, like an evaluation of the Department of...
API Provider On-Boarding Best Practices
I am preparing for a busy week of conversation with folks at API World, and with an inbox full of requests to meet and discuss the challenges API providers and service providers face, I want to wor...
Personal API Tokens For All APIs Please
I have written about this several times before, and it is something I will keep writing about until it comes true. Every API provider that employs OAuth for their APIs, show have a quick and easy, ...
Getting Started With Postman Templates
I am getting ready for my first API event as the Chief Evangelist for Postman—API World next week. To help prepare us, Joyce Lin (@PetuniaGray), fellow developer relations team member shared some P...
October 4, 2019
#Templates
API First With Legacy APIs
It is common to think API-first just applies to new green field APIs being developed. However, I’d say that it should become a priority with addressing legacy APIs as well. I’m working to evolve my...
API Collaboration Is The Next Killer Feature
As I work my way through the features of Postman and work to bring it all into alignment with my existing storytelling around APIs, one of the areas I’ve been slowly adding to my collective API res...
October 3, 2019
#Collaboration
How Often Do You Receive API Responses Or API Definitions In Emails From People?
I regularly receive emails from random strangers, as well as known individuals who I am working with, that contain JSON responses from an API request, asking for some analysis, troubleshooting, or ...
Do You Have Visibility Into Which Teams Are Developing Your APIs?
One of the biggest benefits from the evolution of the API management over the last decade was the visibility and awareness it gave us around who is using our APIs. While this is something that is p...
REST And Hypermedia And GraphQL And gRPC And Event-Driven
API folks are great at being passionate about the technologies they believe in. This is great for them, but it isn’t always great for the folks who aren’t quite as passionate and are just working t...
API First Is Hard To Adopt Because API Deployment Is Still A Manual Step For Many
One of the high level API concepts I have been championing for a couple of years now is helping API providers move from a code-first approach, to an API design first, or as I like to call it, and A...
October 1, 2019
#API-First
API Evangelist API Industry Guide: Regions
To help API providers understand the growing importance of how geographic regions can be leveraged, I distilled down my API regions research into the follow areas, resulting in this guide that is f...
Ensuring We Invest In Educating And Engaging With Leadership Around Our API Operations
I’m working on my strategy as the Chief Evangelist at Postman. We have a kick ass developer relations team and a passionate community of users who generate tutorials and other content, and while I ...
A Robust Example Of An API.json Index Cataloging Public Data APIs
I crafted a pretty useful APIs.json index over the weekend. I thought it provided a pretty robust look at what APIs.json can do when it comes to providing machine readable API catalogs. This is a p...
The Developer On-boarding Use Case For Postman
I am working my way through the use cases on the Postman website, getting familiar with how their customers are using the platform. They have some very straightforward use cases that they have asse...
September 26, 2019
#On-Boarding
I Understand That Not Everyone Wants To Use The Command Line
I like using the command line, but I get that it is intimidating for a lot of folks. I’m not 100% sure why, but at different points in my career I have embraced and distanced myself from the comman...
September 26, 2019
#CLI
How Do We Measure The Efficiency, Agility, and Velocity Of An API-Centric Way Of Doing Things?
One of the benefits of doing APIs that we have always touted as API believers, is that APIs increases efficiency. We are able to move faster. Be more agile. Increased velocity of what our teams can...
Simple Or Complex API Collections For Different Levels Of API Consumers
I have been learning a lot about the different ways in which Postman users are using collections in my new role. One of the more interesting use cases I’m tracking on is for assisting the on-boardi...
I Did Not Fully Understand What A Postman Collection Was All About
I have been using Postman collections for a couple of years now. I have been auto-generating them from my central database alongside OpenAPI 3.0, and previously Swagger 2.0, as part of my regular w...
September 25, 2019
#Collections
Attacking Cumbersome API Queries With A More Organized and Coherent API Collection
I’m working extra hard when it comes to creating APIs across every possible industry I can think of to help push my understanding of what Postman collections are all about, and what is possible whe...
Making An API Request To Update Examples In My API Documentation And Power My API Mocks
As I was working to improve upon a couple of the API collections I’m building, and trying to assess at what constitutes a “complete enough” or “robust enough” collection, I noticed how the process ...
Enabler Mock Data APIs Alongside Other APIs Within My Collections
I was demonstrating to to someone how you can document the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) National Drug Code (NDC) API using Postman and I found a way to enrich real world APIs by publishing mo...
API Industry Guide: API Definitions
This API definitions guide is the result of almost 10 years of research and participation in the evolution of API definitions as part of community development, conferences, and the API efforts behi...
September 24, 2019
#Definitions
Adding the Twilio Referral Program As An API Building Block
They made the Twilio referral program pretty straightforward, which is nice because many affiliate related solutions can be pretty cumbersome—it goes something like this: You get a personal ref...
Making An API Request To Update Examples In My API Documentation And Power My API Mocks
As I was working to improve upon a couple of the API collections I’m defining, and define what constitutes a “complete enough” or “robust enough” collection, I noticed...
September 23, 2019
Looking For APIs By Industry
I am working to expand the vocabulary I use to search for new APIs. I already have a pretty extensive set of keywords and phrases I have from mining the world of APIs over the last nine years, but ...
September 23, 2019
#Industries
An Open Source Sitemap API For Every Domain
I invest a lot of resources into spidering domains. I spend probably about $50.00 to $75.00 a month in compute resources to scrape domains I have targeted as part of my API research. This is someth...
Publishing Your Early Canary (Beta) APIs In Their Own API Workspace
Providing early access to your APIs is nothing new. It is something that all API providers should do whether they are publishing their APIs publicly or keeping them private for internal or partner ...
Going Outside The API Echo Chamber With Your API Services And Tooling
You ever feel like you just preach to the choir when evangelizing your API tool or service? I do. All the time! While crafting stories for the blog I am constantly burying topics that I find super ...
September 20, 2019
#Business
Some Questions To Ask When Quantifying Your Organizational API Maturity
The government agencies, institutions, organizations, and companies that I talk to on a regular basis always express their desire to get a handle on how to consistently deliver APIs across the API ...
September 19, 2019
#Maturity
Publishing My FHIR API Collection As Documentation And Making Available In The Postman Network
I had generated a Postman Collection for the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) the other day. Making a simple, easy to use, executable representation of any FHIR compliant API. I wa...
JSON Schema, Examples, And Postman Collections For 600 Schema.org Objects
I wanted a ready to go supply of JSON examples from a variety of industries for me to use in my storytelling. No better place to begin with a project like this than with Schema.org, who provides a ...
Postman Has Documentation And Executable Collection For Their Own API
A true test of any API service provider is whether or not they have an API. It is one of the most critical tests I have for any company who is selling a service to API providers. If you are sell se...
Is This The Offer API You Were Needing?
Going from an idea for an API, to something you can actually share with another team member or stakeholder is historically something that can take hours, days or even weeks. Even if you manage to c...
September 18, 2019
#Offers
Creating A Postman Collection For The Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) Specification
I have been working on healthcare APIs in government for over five years now, providing feedback regularly to the Blue Button API effort over at Health and Human Service (HHS), including having the...
Business Users Do Not Search For API Solutions, They Just Search For Solutions
As I craft stories for my blog I am always working to reach as wide possible audience as I can. It is one of the reasons I write so many stories, because the process helps me refine how I say thing...
Being The Source Of API Truth At Your Organization
When doing web services and API inventory at enterprise organizations I always come across one or two individuals or groups who are the keepers of the APIs, schema, and related knowledge and truth ...
What Are You Doing With Postman?
I am now immersed in all things Postman. After a week at Postman, attending POSTCON, and listening to how API developers are putting the API development environment, I have realized what a Swiss ar...
September 17, 2019
#Clients
It Is Hard To Not Just Get To Work Coding My API
I need a couple of generic APIs for some storytelling and workshop materials. Just some basic example of web API in action managing some common everyday resources like notes, products, and company ...
I Will Be At The API Specifications Conference In Vancouver Next Month
Looking through the ASC program schedule I am seeing coverage of the entire API toolbox, covering REST ,Hypermedia, GraphQL, gRPC, and event-driven APIs, with representation for JSON Schema, JSON-L...
API-First Development
This is part of my on-boarding work as Chief Evangelist with Postman. Part of my work to understand how Postman users are putting the platform to work is to process earch one of their use cases in ...
September 17, 2019
#API-First
The Stops Along The API Lifecycle That Postman Services
I’m currently processing the common Postman use cases, and overlaying what the platform offers in context of historically what I’ve called my API lifecycle research. I plan on brining my vision mor...
September 15, 2019
#Lifecycle
She Asked “What Now” After Seeing Me Put Together My NASA API Collection
I thoroughly enjoy engaging with my wife when it comes to APIs. She has been along for the entire API Evangelist ride, and she has absorbed more about APIs from listening to me talk about APIs than...
I Preemptively Apologize For The Flood Of Postman Storytelling You Are About To Endure
As some of you may have heard, I joined Postman as their Chief Evangelist last week. What does this mean? It means I will be telling a LOT of stories about my journey with the Postman team. Abhinav...
September 15, 2019
#Evangelism
Giving A Postman Collection To Your Sales Team
EasyPost spoke at the Postman User Conference (POSTCON) last week, and while they shared a number of very interesting stories, one that really stuck with me was about how they create Postman Collec...
Creating A NASA API Postman Collection And Environment
This is a story derived from work to help develop a Postman Collection that could be used by the International Space Apps Challenge, establishing a machine readable definition for all the NASA APIs...
API Workspace and Environment Management
I have hundreds of collections within my Postman, but I’ve never done much collaboration with others in there until now. I find myself getting more organized with the Postman collections for API Ev...
I Am Joining Postman As Their Chief Evangelist
I am determined to continue taking my career to the next level. I’ve done well doing API Evangelist over the years, but I feel like I’ve gone as far as I can all by my lonesome. To level things up ...
September 12, 2019
#Evangelism
AsyncAPI Version 2.0 Is Ready For Use
The latest major version of the event-driven API specification format AsyncAPI is ready for production. The AsyncAPI community has been working hard in recent months to hammer out the next generati...
September 11, 2019
#AsyncAPI
API Management For An Event-Driven API Landscape
I’ve talked recently about a second coming of API management, which in my opinion is a wave that has several fronts. One of those fronts I see rolling out is in the area of event-driven API infrast...
The API Reality In Our Heads Versus The Reality On The Ground
I am spending some time grounding my views of the API landscape. Working my through all of my beliefs, and systematically blowing them to bits to see how they hold up against the stress of reality ...
September 10, 2019
#Politics
Discovering The Confluent Schema Registry
While spending time doing some research into schema management tooling I came across the Confluents Schema Registry. The schema management solutions is one of the first formal tools I’ve come acros...
Continue Pushing The API Documentation Conversation Forward
I am been finally seeing the investment across the API sector I wanted to see when it comes to API documentation. There are multiple API definition driven API documentation offerings available on t...
September 9, 2019
#Documentation
Bridging Grand Visions of an API Lifecycle With People on the Ground Being Successful In Their Work
p>While my work as the API Evangelist can burn me out some of the time, I generally find it intellectually challenging. The work takes me from industry to industry, country to country, and to th...
September 9, 2019
#Lifecycle
Where Do You Like Your API Complexity?
I prefer my API complexity at the path, query, then schema levels of my API design—specifically in that order. I don’t mind a huge number of individual API calls to get the job done because I just ...
September 6, 2019
#Complexity
API Management Should Not Just Limit Me, It Should Allow Me To Scale
I do a lot of thinking about API management. After almost a decade of contemplating how we manage our API infrastructure, I feel it is still the most important stop along the API lifecycle. I don’t...
September 6, 2019
#Management
API Evangelist Does Not Run On GitHub Anymore
I migrated the main API Evangelist site off of GitHub the other day. The moved followed the migration of 100+ network sites of my API research a couple of weeks back. While I still have a handful o...
September 6, 2019
#Evangelism
The Different Ways API Providers Use The OpenAPI Servers Collection
I was looking through the OpenAPI definitions I have harvested via some automated scripts I have running, and I came across an API definition that had a variety of URLs available for their APIs, ma...
Controlling The Conversation Around Your Mobile Application APIs
I have seen it play out over and over since I began monitoring the API conversation. Companies who launch APIs to power a mobile application but refuse to, or are unaware of how they should be cont...
Benefits Of Treating My API Infrastructure As API-First
Most API providers I speak with see the value of consistently delivering API infrastructure to power desktop, web, mobile, device, and network applications. Less than 10% of these providers see the...
Benefits Of Treating My API Infrastructure As API-First
Most API providers I speak with see the value of consistently delivering API infrastructure to power desktop, web, mobile, device, and network applications. Less than 10% of these providers see th...
August 26, 2019
Doing A Diff Between Available Web, Mobile and Public APIs
I spend a lot of time running web and mobile applications through a proxy to reverse engineer their APIs. I generally use Charles Proxy for routing my desktop, web, and mobile traffic through, whic...
An API Policy Domain Specialist At Twitter
There are some jobs on the Internet I apply for no matter what my current situation is, and an API policy domain specialist at Twitter was one of them that popped up recently. I applied for the job...
August 22, 2019
#Politics of APIs
#Policy
#Terms of Service
#Privacy Policy
#Service Level Agreement
Multiple Overlapping API Life Cycle(s)
One of the toughest parts about teaching people about APIs is that there are many different views of what the API life cycle can be depending on who you are, and what your intentions are. As an adv...
The API Conferences I Am Tracking On For The Fall
As we approach the fall it is time to begin thinking about the conference season, and what the most relevant API conferences are. I haven’t been doing any events this year, but staying in tune with...
Human Empathy Is One Of My Most Important API Outreach Tools
I am an empathic human being. It is one of my top strengths, as well as one of my top weaknesses. It is also one of the most important tools in my API toolbox. Being able to understand the API expe...
Postman Collection As A Single Quantifiable, Shareable, Executable Unit Of Representation For Any Digital Capability
In my world API definitions are more valuable than code. Code is regularly thrown away and rewritten. API definitions hold the persistent detail of what an API delivers, and contain all of the prop...
A Second Wave of API Management is Going On
I fully surfed the first wave of API management. API Evangelist began by researching what Mashery, Apigee, and 3Scale had set into motion. API Evangelist continued to has exist through funding from...
A Second Wave of API Management is Going On
I fully surfed the first wave of API management. API Evangelist began by researching what Mashery, Apigee, and 3Scale had set into motion. API Evangelist continued to has exist through funding fro...
August 19, 2019
Seeing API Consumers As Just The Other Ones
As API providers, it can be easy to find ourselves in a very distant position from the consumers of our APIs. In recent weeks I have been studying the impacts of behavioral approaches to putting te...
Four Phases Of Internal API Evangelism
General evangelism around what APIs are, as well as more precise advocacy around specific APIs or groups of API resources takes a lot of work, and repetition. Even as a seasoned API evangelist I ca...
An Observable Regulatory Provider Or Industry API Management Gateway
I wrote a separate piece on an API gateway specification standard recently, merging several areas of my research and riffing on a recent tweet from Sukanya Santhanam (@SukanyaSanthan1). I had all t...
An API Platform Reliability Engineer At Stripe
I find that the most interesting and telling API building blocks come out of the companies who are furthest along in their API journey, and have made the conscious effort to heavily invest in their...
An Observable Regulatory Provider Or Industry API Management Gateway
I wrote a separate piece on an API gateway specification standard recently, merging several areas of my research and riffing on a recent tweet from Sukanya Santhanam (@SukanyaSanthan1). I had all ...
August 15, 2019
Some Of The API Gateway Building Blocks
The inspiration for this post wasn’t fully mine, I’m borrowing and building upon what Sukanya Santhanam (@SukanyaSanthan1) tweeted out the other day. It is a good idea, and something that should be...
A Look At Behavioral API Patents
I have been studying uses of behavioral technology lately. Riffing off my partner in crimes work on the subject, but putting my own spin on it, and adding APIs (of course) into the mix. Applying on...
Reverse Engineering Mobile APIs To Show A Company Their Public APIs
One story I tell a lot when talking to folks about APIs, is how you can reverse engineer a mobile phone to map out the APIs being used. As the narrative goes, many companies that I talk with claim ...
Didn’t We Already Do That?
When you are in the API game you hear this phrase a lot, “didn’t we already do that?”. It is a common belief system that because something was already done, that it means it will not work ever agai...
The Future Of APIs Will Be In The Browser
I have been playing with the new browser reporting API lately, and while it isn’t widely supported, it does work in Chrome, and soon Firefox. I won’t go into too much technical detail, but the API ...
About Giving Away API Knowledge For Free
I’m in the business of providing access to the API knowledge accumulated over the last decade. Despite what many people claim, I do not know everything about APIs, but after a decade I have picked ...
About Giving Away API Knowledge For Free
I’m in the business of providing access to the API knowledge accumulated over the last decade. Despite what many people claim, I do not know everything about APIs, but after a decade I have picked...
August 1, 2019
The Challenges Of API Discovery Conversations Being Purely Technical
Ironically one of the biggest challenges facing API discovery on the web, as well as within the enterprise, is that most conversations focus purely on the technical, rather than the human and often...
Differences Between API Observability Over Monitoring, Testing, Reliability, and Performance
I’ve been watching the API observability coming out of Stripe, as well as Honeycomb for a couple years now. Then observability of systems is not a new concept, but it is one that progressive API pr...
Peer API Design Review Sessions
Public APIs have always benefitted from something that internal APIs do not always received—-feedback from other people. While the whole public API thing didn’t play out as I originally imagined, t...
API For Processing Common Logging Formats And Generating OpenAPI Definitions
I’ve invested a lot of time in the last six months into various research, scripts, and tooling to help me with finding APIs within the enterprise. This work is not part my current role, but as a si...
API Storytelling Within The Enterprise
Storytelling is important. Storytelling within the enterprise is hard. Reaching folks on the open web is hard work to, but there is usually an audience that will eventually tune in, and over time y...
APIs and Browser Bookmarklets
I have quite a few API driven bookmarklets I use to profile APIs. I recently quit using Google Chrome, so I needed to migrate all of them to Firefox. I saw this work as an opportunity to better de...
APIs and Browser Bookmarklets
I have quite a few API driven bookmarklets I use to profile APIs. I recently quit using Google Chrome, so I needed to migrate all of them to Firefox. I saw this work as an opportunity to better def...
Absolutism Around API Tools Increases Friction And Failure
I know you believe your tools are the best. I mean, from your vantage point, they are. I also know that when you are building a new API tool, your investors want you to position your tooling as the...
The Higher Level Business Politics That I Am Not Good At Seeing In The API Space
I have built successful startups. I’m good at the technology of delivering new solutions. I am decent at understanding and delivering much of business side of bringing new technological solutions t...
API Provider And Consumer Developer Portals
I’ve been studying API developer portals for almost a decade. I’ve visited the landing pages, portals, websites, and other incarnations from thousands of API providers. I have an intimate understan...
July 23, 2019
#Portals
The Higher Level Business Politics That I Am Not Good At Seeing In The API Space
I have built successful startups. I’m good at the technology of delivering new solutions. I am decent at understanding and delivering much of business side of bringing new technological solutions ...
July 23, 2019
The Role Having Awareness Of Your API Traffic Plays In API Security
One of the biggest reasons we adopt new technology, and justify the development of new technology, is we do not want to do the heavy lifting when it comes to what we already have in place. A common...
Happy Path API Testing Bias
I see a lot of happy path bias when it comes to the development of APIs, but specifically when it comes to crafting testing to ensure APIs are delivering as expected. Happy path is a term used in t...
What Is An Application?
I have struggled asking this question in many discussions I’ve had around the world, at technology conferences, on consulting projects, and in the back rooms of dimly lit bars. What is an applicat...
July 18, 2019
#Applications
What Makes You Think Your GraphQL Consumers Will Want To Do The Work
Data work is grueling work. I’ve been working with databases since my first job developing student information databases in 1988 (don’t tell my wife). I’ve worked with Cobol, Foxpro, SQL Server, Fi...
What Is An Application?
I have struggled asking this question in many discussions I’ve had around the world, at technology conferences, on consulting projects, and in the back rooms of dimly lit bars. What is an applicati...
July 18, 2019
#Applications
What Is An Application?
I have struggled asking this question in many discussions I’ve had around the world, at technology conferences, on consulting projects, and in the back rooms of dimly lit bars. What is an a...
July 18, 2019
The Many Ways In Which APIs Are Taken Away
APIs are notorious for going away. There are so many APIs that disappear I really stopped tracking on it as a data point. I used keep track of APIs that were shuttered so that I could play a role i...
Paying for API Access
APIs that I can’t pay for more access grinds my gears. I am looking at you GitHub, Twitter, Facebook, and a few others. I spend $250.00 to $1500.00 a month on my Amazon bill, depending on what I’m ...
Imperative, Declarative, and Workflow APIs
At every turn in my API work I come across folks who claim that declarative APIs solutions are superior to imperative ones. They want comprehensive, single implementation, do it all their way appro...
Hoping For More Investment In API Design Tooling
I was conducting an accounting of my API design toolbox, and realized it hasn’t changed much lately. It is still a very manual suite of tooling, and sometimes services, that help me craft my APIs. ...
What Is An API Contract?
I am big on regularly interrogating what I mean when I use certain phrases. I’ve caught myself repeating and reusing many hollow, empty, and meaningless phrases over my decade as the API Evangelist...
My Primary API Search Engines
I am building out several prototypes for the moving parts of an API search engine I want to build, pushing my usage of APIs.json and OpenAPI, but also trying to improve how I define, store, index, ...
Taking A Fresh Look At The Nuance Of API Search
I have a mess of APIs.json and OpenAPI definitions I need to make sense of. Something that I could easily fire up an ElasticSearch instance, point at my API “data lake”, and begin defining facets a...
Navigating API Rate Limit Differences Between Platforms
I always find an API providers business model to be very telling about the company’s overall strategy when it comes to APIs. I’m currently navigating the difference between two big API providers, ...
The JSON Schema Tooling In My Life
I am always pushing for more schema order in my life. I spend way too much time talking about APIs, when a significant portion of the API foundation is schema. I don’t have as many tools to help me...
Navigating API Rate Limit Differences Between Platforms
I always find an API providers business model to be very telling about the company’s overall strategy when it comes to APIs. I’m currently navigating the difference between two big API providers, t...
Navigating API Rate Limit Differences Between Platforms
I always find an API providers business model to be very telling about the company’s overall strategy when it comes to APIs. I’m currently navigating the difference between two big AP...
July 10, 2019
The Details Of My API Rating Formula
Last week I put some thoughts down about the basics of my API rating system. This week I want to go through each of those basics, and try to flesh out the details of how I would gather the actual d...
Thinking Differently When Approaching OpenAPI Diffs And Considering How To Layer Each Potential Change
I have a lot of OpenAPI definitions, covering about 2,000 separate entities. For each entity, I often have multiple OpenAPIs, and I am finding more all the time. One significant challenge I have in...
Why The Open Data Movement Has Not Delivered As Expected
I was having a discussion with my friends working on API policy in Europe about API discovery, and the topic of failed open data portals came up. Something that is a regular recurring undercurrent ...
API Interoperability is a Myth
There are a number of concepts we cling to in the world of APIs. I’ve been guilting of inventing, popularizing, and spreading many myths in my almost decade as the API Evangelist. One of them that ...
July 3, 2019
#Interoperability
API Interoperability is a Myth
There are a number of concepts we cling to in the world of APIs. I’ve been guilting of inventing, popularizing, and spreading many myths in my almost decade as the API Evangelist. One of them that...
July 3, 2019
Your API and Schema Is That Complex Because You Have Not Done The Hard Work To Simplify
I find myself looking at a number of my more complex API designs, and saying to myself, “this isn’t complicated because it is hard, it is complicated because I did not spend the time required to si...
July 2, 2019
#Schema
Your API and Schema Is That Complex Because You Have Not Done The Hard Work To Simplify
I find myself looking at a number of my more complex API designs, and saying to myself, “this isn’t complicated because it is hard, it is complicated because I did not spend the time required to s...
July 2, 2019
The Basics of My API Rating Formula
I have been working on various approaches to rating APIs since about 2012. I have different types of algorithms, even having invested in operating one from about 2013 through 2016, which I used to ...
The Complexity of API Discovery
I can’t get API discovery out of my mind. Partly because I am investing significant cycles in this area at work, but it is also something have been thinking about for so long, that it is difficult ...
July 1, 2019
#Discovery
The Basics of My API Rating Formula
I have been working on various approaches to rating APIs since about 2012. I have different types of algorithms, even having invested in operating one from about 2013 through 2016, which I used to...
July 1, 2019
Why Schema.org Does Not See More Adoption Across The API Landscape
I’m a big fan of Schema.org. A while back I generated an OpenAPI 2.0 (fka Swagger) definition for each one and published to GitHub. I’m currently cleaning up the project, publishing them as OpenAPI...
Avoiding Complexity and Just Deploying YAML, JSON, and CSV APIs Using GitHub, GitLab, or BitBucket
I find that a significant portion of I should be doing when defining, designing, developing, and delivering an API is all of avoiding complexity. Every step away along the API journey I am faced wi...
Avoiding Complexity and Just Deploying YAML, JSON, and CSV APIs Using GitHub or GitLab
I find that a significant portion of I should be doing when defining, designing, developing, and delivering an API is all of avoiding complexity. Every step away along the API journey I am faced w...
June 24, 2019
Organizing My APIs Using OpenAPI Tags
I like my OpenAPI tags. Honestly, I like tags in general. Almost every API resource I design ends up having some sort of tagging layer. Too help me organize my world, I have a centralized tagging v...
June 19, 2019
#OpenAPI
Organizing My APIs Using OpenAPI Tags
I like my OpenAPI tags. Honestly, I like tags in general. Almost every API resource I design ends up having some sort of tagging layer. Too help me organize my world, I have a centralized tagging ...
June 19, 2019
Doing The Hard Work To Define APIs
Two years later, I am still working to define the API driven marketplace that is my digital self. Understanding how I generate revenue from my brand (vomits in mouth a little bit), but also fight o...
June 17, 2019
#Design
There Is No Single Right Way To Do APIs
My time working in the API sector has been filled with a lot of lessons. I researched hard, paid attention, and found a number of surprising realities emerge across the API landscape. The majority ...
API Definitions Are Important
I found myself scrolling down the home page of API Evangelist and thinking about what topic(s) I thought were still the most relevant in my mind after not writing about APIs for the last six month...
June 12, 2019
#Definitions
API Evangelist Is Open For Business
After six months of silence I've decided to fire API Evangelist back up again. I finally reached a place where I feel like I can separate out the things that caused me to step back in the first pla...
June 10, 2019
#Evangelism
Stepping Back From API Evangelist
After eight years of storytelling I have decided to step back from API Evangelist. There just aren’t enough nutrients in the work to sustain me financially, ethically, or creatively. It has been a...
January 22, 2019
Asking The Honest Questions When It Comes To Your API Journey
I engage with a lot of enterprise organizations in a variety of capacities. Some are more formal consulting and workshop engagements. While others are just emails, direct messages, and random conv...
A Diverse API Toolbox Driving Hybrid Integrations Across An Event-Driven Landscape
I’m heading to Vegas in the morning to spend two days in conversations with folks about APIs. I am not there for AWS re:Invent, or the Gartner thingy, but I guess in a way I am, because there are ...
A Diverse API Toolbox Driving Hybrid Integrations Across An Event-Driven Landscape
I’m heading to Vegas in the morning to spend two days in conversations with folks about APIs. I am not there for AWS re:Invent, or the Gartner thingy, but I guess in a way I am, because there are ...
November 25, 2018
The API Journey
I’ve been researching the API space full time for the last eight years, and over that time I have developed a pretty robust view of what the API landscape looks like. You can find almost 100 stops...
YAML API Management Artifacts From AWS API Gateway
I’ve always been a big supporter of creating machine readable artifacts that help define the API lifecycle. While individual artifacts can originate and govern specific stops along the API lifecyc...
YAML API Management Artifacts From AWS API Gateway
I’ve always been a big supporter of creating machine readable artifacts that help define the API lifecycle. While individual artifacts can originate and govern specific stops along the API lifecyc...
November 23, 2018
What Does The Next Chapter Of Storytelling Look Like For API Evangelist?
I find myself refactoring API Evangelist again this holiday season. Over the last eight years of doing API Evangelist I’ve had to regularly adjust what I do to keep it alive and moving forward. As...
What Does The Next Chapter Of Storytelling Look Like For API Evangelist?
I find myself refactoring API Evangelist again this holiday season. Over the last eight years of doing API Evangelist I’ve had to regularly adjust what I do to keep it alive and moving forward. As...
November 21, 2018
The Ability To Link To API Service Provider Features In My Workshops And Storytelling
All of my API workshops are machine readable, driven from a central YAML file that provides all the content and relevant links I need to deliver what I need during a single, or multi-day API strat...
November 16, 2018
The Ability To Link To API Service Provider Features In My Workshops And
All of my API workshops are machine readable, driven from a central YAML file that provides all the content and relevant links I need to deliver what I need during a single, or multi-day API strat...
November 16, 2018
Flickr And Reconciling My History Of APIs Storytelling
Flickr was one of the first APIs that I profiled back in 2010 when I started API Evangelist. Using their API as a cornerstone of my research, resulting in their API making it into my history of API...
Flickr And Reconciling My History Of APIs Storytelling
Flickr was one of the first APIs that I profiled back in 2010 when I started API Evangelist. Using their API as a cornerstone of my research, resulting in their API making it into my history of AP...
November 6, 2018
The Impact Of Travel On Being The API Evangelist
Travel is an important part of what I do. It is essential to striking up new relationships, and reenforcing old ones. It is important for me to get out of my bubble, expose myself to different per...
What Are Your Enterprise API Capabilities?
I spend a lot of time helping enterprise organizations discover their APIs. All of the organizations I talk to have trouble knowing where all of their APIs are–even the most organized of them. Dev...
Join Me For A Fireside Chat At The Paris API Meetup This Wednesday
I am in Europe for most of October, and while I am in Paris we thought it would be a good idea to pull together a last minute API Meetup. Romain Simiand (@RomainSimiand), the API Evangelist at Peo...
I Participated In An API Workshop With The European Commission Last Week
I was in Ispra, Italy last week for a two day workshop on APIs with the European Commission. The European Commission’s DG CONNECT together with the Joint Research Centre (JRC) launched a study wit...
Join Me For A Fireside Chat At The Paris API Meetup This Wednesday
I am in Europe for most of October, and while I am in Paris we thought it would be a good idea to pull together a last minute API Meetup. Romain Simiand (@RomainSimiand), the API Evangelist at Peo...
October 22, 2018
I Participated In An API Workshop With The European Commission Last Week
I was in Ispra, Italy last week for a two day workshop on APIs with the European Commission. The European Commission’s DG CONNECT together with the Joint Research Centre (JRC) launched a study wit...
October 22, 2018
API Evangelist API Lifecycle Workshop on API Discovery
I’ve been doing more workshops on the API lifecycle within enterprise groups lately. Allowing me to refine my materials on the ground within enterprise groups, further flesh out the building block...
API Evangelist API Lifecycle Workshop on API Design
I’ve been doing more workshops on the API lifecycle within enterprise groups lately. Allowing me to refine my materials on the ground within enterprise groups, further flesh out the building block...
The Layers Of Completeness For An OpenAPI Definition
Everyone wants their OpenAPIs to be complete, but what that really means will depend on who you are, what your knowledge of OpenAPI is, as well as being driven by your motivation for having an Open...
A Quick Manual Way To Create An OpenAPI From A GET API Request
I have numerous tools that help me create OpenAPIs from the APIs I stumble across each day. Ideally I’m crawling, scraping, harvesting, and auto-generating OpenAPIs, but inevitably the process gets...
A Quick Manual Way To Create An OpenAPI From A GET API Request
I have numerous tools that help me create OpenAPIs from the APIs I stumble across each day. Ideally I’m crawling, scraping, harvesting, and auto-generating OpenAPIs, but inevitably the process gets...
October 9, 2018
API Evangelist And Streamdata.io API Lifecycle Workshops
I have been partnering with Streamdata.io to evolve how I work with enterprise groups on their API lifecycle strategy. After working closely with the Streadata.io sales team, it became clear that ...
API Developer Outreach Research For The Department of Veterans Affairs
This is a write-up for research I conducted with my partner Skylight Digital. The team conducted a series of interviews with leading public and private sector API platforms regarding how they appr...
Having The Dedication To Lead An API Effort Forward Within A Large Enterprise Organization
I work with a lot of folks who work in large enterprise organizations, institutions, and government agencies who are moving the API conversation forward within their groups. I’m all too familiar w...
Having The Dedication To Lead An API Effort Forward Within A Large Enterprise
I work with a lot of folks who work in large enterprise organizations, institutions, and government agencies who are moving the API conversation forward within their groups. I’m all too familiar w...
September 20, 2018
Understanding The Event-Driven API Infrastructure Opportunity That Exists Across The API Landscape
I am at the Kong Summit in San Francisco all day tomorrow. I’m going to be speaking about research into the event-driven architectural layers I’ve been mapping out across the API space. Looking fo...
Talking Healthcare APIs With The CMS Blue Button API Team At #APIStrat In Nashville Next Week
We have the API evangelist from one of the most significant APIs out there today at #APIStrat in Nashville next week. Mark Scrimshire (@ekivemark), Blue Button Innovator and Developer Evangelist f...
Understanding The Event-Driven API Infrastructure Opportunity That Exists
I am at the Kong Summit in San Francisco all day tomorrow. I’m going to be speaking about research into the event-driven architectural layers I’ve been mapping out across the API space. Looking fo...
September 18, 2018
Talking Healthcare APIs With The CMS Blue Button API Team At #APIStrat In
We have the API evangelist from one of the most significant APIs out there today at #APIStrat in Nashville next week. Mark Scrimshire (@ekivemark), Blue Button Innovator and Developer Evangelist f...
September 18, 2018
Sadly Stack Exchange Blocks API Calls Being Made From Any Of Amazon's IP Block
I am developing an authentication and access layer for the API Gallery that I am building for Streamdata.io, while also federating it for usage as part of my API Stack research. In addition to bui...
Justifying My Existence In Your API Sales And Marketing Funnel
I feel like I’m regularly having to advocate for my existence, and the existence of developers who are like me, within the sales and marketing funnel for many APIs. I sign up for a lot of APIs, an...
I Am Needing Some Evidence Of How APIs Can Make An Impact In Government
Eric Horesnyi (@EricHoresnyi), the CEO of Streamata.io and I were on a call with a group of people who are moving forward the API conversation across Europe, with the assistance of the EU. The pro...
September 17, 2018
#Federal Government
#State Government
#County Government
#City Government
#Regulations
#Europe
Being Open Is More About Being Open So Someone Can Extract Value Than Open Being About Any Shared Value
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in the last eight years, is that when people are insistent about things being open, in both accessibility, and cost, it is often more about things re...
"Sadly Stack Exchange Blocks API Calls Being Made From Any Of Amazons IP Block"
I am developing an authentication and access layer for the API Gallery that I am building for Streamdata.io, while also federating it for usage as part of my API Stack research. In addition to bui...
September 17, 2018
Justifying My Existence In Your API Sales And Marketing Funnel
I feel like I’m regularly having to advocate for my existence, and the existence of developers who are like me, within the sales and marketing funnel for many APIs. I sign up for a lot of APIs, an...
September 17, 2018
I Am Needing Some Evidence Of How APIs Can Make An Impact In Government
Eric Horesnyi (@EricHoresnyi), the CEO of Streamata.io and I were on a call with a group of people who are moving forward the API conversation across Europe, with the assistance of the EU. The pro...
September 17, 2018
Being Open Is More About Being Open So Someone Can Extract Value Than Open
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in the last eight years, is that when people are insistent about things being open, in both accessibility, and cost, it is often more about things re...
September 17, 2018
Providing Minimum Viable API Documentation Blueprints To Help Guide Your API Developers
I was taking a look at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) API documentation for the VA Facilities API, and intending on providing some feedback on the API implementation. The API itself is pr...
Please Refer The Engineer From Your API Team To This Story
I reach out to API providers on a regular basis, asking them if they have an OpenAPI or Postman Collection available behind the scenes. I am adding these machine readable API definitions to my ind...
Providing Minimum Viable API Documentation Blueprints To Help Guide Your API
I was taking a look at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) API documentation for the VA Facilities API, and intending on providing some feedback on the API implementation. The API itself is pr...
September 13, 2018
Stack Exchange Has An API That Returns The Details For All Of Your Access Tokens
I’m a big fan of helpful authentication features, where API providers make it easier to manage our increasingly hellish environment, application, token, and other management duties of the average ...
Some Ideas For API Discovery Collections That Students Can Use
This is a topic I’ve wanted to set in motion for some time now. I had a new university professor city my work again as part of one of their courses recently, something that floated this concept to...
Stack Exchange Has An API That Returns The Details For All Of Your Access
I’m a big fan of helpful authentication features, where API providers make it easier to manage our increasingly hellish environment, application, token, and other management duties of the average ...
September 10, 2018
The Path To Production For Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) API Applications
This post is part of my ongoing review of the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) developer portal and API presence, moving on to where I take a closer look at their path to production process, and...
An API Value Generation Funnel With Metrics
I’ve had several folks asking me to articulate my vision of an API centric “sales” funnel, which technically is out of my wheelhouse in the sales and marketing area, but since I do have lots opinio...
The Path To Production For Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) API Applications
This post is part of my ongoing review of the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) developer portal and API presence, moving on to where I take a closer look at their path to production process, and...
September 7, 2018
My API Storytelling Depends On The Momentum From Regular Exercise And Practice
I’ve been falling short of my normal storytelling quotas recently. I like to have at least 3 posts on API Evangelist, and two posts on Streamdata.io each day. I have been letting it slip because i...
Allowing Users To Get Their Own OAuth Tokens For Accessing An API Without The Need For An API Application
I run a lot of different applications that depend on GitHub, and use GitHub authentication as the identity and access management layer for these apps. One of the things I like the most about GitHu...
My API Storytelling Depends On The Momentum From Regular Exercise And Practice
I’ve been falling short of my normal storytelling quotas recently. I like to have at least 3 posts on API Evangelist, and two posts on Streamdata.io each day. I have been letting it slip because i...
September 6, 2018
Allowing Users To Get Their Own OAuth Tokens For Accessing An API Without The
I run a lot of different applications that depend on GitHub, and use GitHub authentication as the identity and access management layer for these apps. One of the things I like the most about GitHu...
September 6, 2018
What Have You Done For Us Lately (API Partner Edition)
I’ve been working on developing and evolving the Streamdata.io partner program, trying to move forward conversations with other service providers in the space that have existed long before I start...
September 4, 2018
#Partners
The Federal Agencies Who Use Their developer.[domain].gov Subdomain
I was reviewing the new developer portal for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and one of things I took notice of, was their use of the developer.va.gov subdomain. In my experience, the API...
The Basics Of The VA API Feedback Loop
I’m working to break down the moving parts of API efforts over at the VA, and work to provide as much relevant feedback as I possibly can. One of the components I’m wanting to think about more is ...
Remembering That APIs Are Used To Reduce Everything Down To A Transaction
This is our regular reminder that APIs are not good, nor bad, nor neutral. They are simply a tool in our technological toolbox, and something that is often used for very dark reasons, and occasion...
September 4, 2018
#Politics of APIs
What Have You Done For Us Lately (API Partner Edition)
I’ve been working on developing and evolving the Streamdata.io partner program, trying to move forward conversations with other service providers in the space that have existed long before I start...
September 4, 2018
Remembering That APIs Are Used To Reduce Everything Down To A Transaction
This is our regular reminder that APIs are not good, nor bad, nor neutral. They are simply a tool in our technological toolbox, and something that is often used for very dark reasons, and occasion...
September 4, 2018
Why I Feel The Department Of Veterans Affairs API Effort Is So Significant
I have been working on API and open data efforts at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for five years now. I’m passionate about pushing forward the API conversation at the federal agency beca...
Understanding Where Folks Are Coming From When They Say API Management Is Irrelevant
I am always fascinated when I get push back from people about API management, the authentication, service composition, logging, analysis, and billing layer on the world of APIs. I seem to be find ...
API Portals Designed For API Provider And API Consumers
I’ve been working a couple organizations who are struggling with providing information within their API developer portal intended for API publishers, pushing their API portal beyond just being for...
August 29, 2018
#Portals
Understanding Where Folks Are Coming From When They Say API Management Is
I am always fascinated when I get push back from people about API management, the authentication, service composition, logging, analysis, and billing layer on the world of APIs. I seem to be find ...
August 29, 2018
API Portals Designed For API Provider And API Consumers
I’ve been working a couple organizations who are struggling with providing information within their API developer portal intended for API publishers, pushing their API portal beyond just being for...
August 29, 2018
Trying To Define An Algorithm For My AWS API Cost Calculations Across API Gateway, Lambda, And RDS
I am trying to develop a base base API pricing formula for determining what my hard costs are for each API I’m publishing using Amazon RDS, EC2, and AWS API Gateway. I also have some APIs I am dep...
Reviewing The Department Of Veterans Affairs New Developer Portal
I wanted to take a moment and review the Department Of Veterans Affairs (VA) new developer portal. Spending some time considering at how far they’ve come, what they published so far, and brainstor...
Not All Companies Are Interested In The Interoperability That APIs Bring
I’ve learned a lot in eight years of operating API Evangelist. One of the most important things I’ve learned to do is separate my personal belief and interest in technology from the realities of t...
Helping The Federal Government Get In Tune With Their API Uptime And Availability
Nobody likes to be told that their APIs are unreliable, and unavailable on a regular basis. However, it is one of those pills that ALL APIs have to swallow, and EVERY API provider should be paying ...
Trying To Define An Algorithm For My AWS API Cost Calculations Across API
I am trying to develop a base base API pricing formula for determining what my hard costs are for each API I’m publishing using Amazon RDS, EC2, and AWS API Gateway. I also have some APIs I am dep...
August 28, 2018
Reviewing The Department Of Veterans Affairs New Developer Portal
I wanted to take a moment and review the Department Of Veterans Affairs (VA) new developer portal. Spending some time considering at how far they’ve come, what they published so far, and brainstor...
August 28, 2018
Helping The Federal Government Get In Tune With Their API Uptime And
Nobody likes to be told that their APIs are unreliable, and unavailable on a regular basis. However, it is one of those pills that ALL APIs have to swallow, and EVERY API provider should be paying ...
August 28, 2018
Provide Your API Developers With A Forkable Example of API Documentation In Action
I responded about how teams should be documenting their APIs when they have both legacy and new APIs the other day. I wanted to keep the conversation thread going with an example of one possible A...
How Do We Get API Developers To Follow The Minimum Viable API Documentation Guidance?
After providing some guidance the other day on how teams should be documenting their APIs, one of the follow up comments was: “Now we just have to figure out how to get the developers to follow th...
Do Not Miss Internal Developer Portals: Developer Engagement Behind the Firewall by Kristof Van Tomme (@kvantomme), Pronovix (@pronovix) At @APIStrat in Nashville, TN This September 24th-26th
We are getting closer to the 9th edition of APIStrat happening in Nashville, TN this September 24th through 26th. The schedule for the conference is up, along with the first lineup of keynote spea...
Provide Your API Developers With A Forkable Example of API Documentation In
I responded about how teams should be documenting their APIs when they have both legacy and new APIs the other day. I wanted to keep the conversation thread going with an example of one possible A...
August 27, 2018
How Do We Get API Developers To Follow The Minimum Viable API Documentation
After providing some guidance the other day on how teams should be documenting their APIs, one of the follow up comments was: “Now we just have to figure out how to get the developers to follow th...
August 27, 2018
Do Not Miss Internal Developer Portals: Developer Engagement Behind the
We are getting closer to the 9th edition of APIStrat happening in Nashville, TN this September 24th through 26th. The schedule for the conference is up, along with the first lineup of keynote spea...
August 27, 2018
May Contain Nuts: The Case for API Labeling by Erik Wilde (@dret), API Academy (@apiacademy)
We are getting closer to the 9th edition of APIStrat happening in Nashville, TN this September 24th through 26th. The schedule for the conference is up, along with the first lineup of keynote spea...
Living In A Post Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram API World
While Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram will always have a place in my history of APIs, I feel like we are entering a post Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram API world. All three platforms are going ...
How Should Teams Be Documenting Their APIs When You Have Both Legacy And New APIs?
I’m continuing my work to help the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) move forward their API strategy. One area I’m happy to help the federal agency with, is just being available to answer quest...
May Contain Nuts: The Case for API Labeling by Erik Wilde (@dret), API Academy
We are getting closer to the 9th edition of APIStrat happening in Nashville, TN this September 24th through 26th. The schedule for the conference is up, along with the first lineup of keynote spea...
August 24, 2018
How Should Teams Be Documenting Their APIs When You Have Both Legacy And New APIs?
I’m continuing my work to help the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) move forward their API strategy. One area I’m happy to help the federal agency with, is just being available to answer quest...
August 24, 2018
The Importance Of Postman API Environment Files
I’m a big fan of Postman, and the power of their development environment, as well as their Postman Collection format. I think their approach to not just integrating with APIs, but also enabling th...
Getting Email Updates From The API Providers I Care About Is One Way To Stay In Sync
I do not like email. I do not have a good relationship with my inbox. However, it is one of those ubiquitous tools I have to use, and understand the value it can bring to my world. The goal is to ...
Any Way You Want It: Extending Swagger UI for Fun and Profit by Kyle Shockey (@kyshoc) of SmartBear Software (@SmartBear) At @APIStrat In Nashville
We are getting closer to the 9th edition of APIStrat happening in Nashville, TN this September 24th through 26th. The schedule for the conference is up, along with the first lineup of keynote spea...
The Importance Of Postman API Environment Files
I’m a big fan of Postman, and the power of their development environment, as well as their Postman Collection format. I think their approach to not just integrating with APIs, but also enabling th...
August 23, 2018
Getting Email Updates From The API Providers I Care About Is One Way To Stay
I do not like email. I do not have a good relationship with my inbox. However, it is one of those ubiquitous tools I have to use, and understand the value it can bring to my world. The goal is to ...
August 23, 2018
Any Way You Want It: Extending Swagger UI for Fun and Profit by Kyle Shockey
We are getting closer to the 9th edition of APIStrat happening in Nashville, TN this September 24th through 26th. The schedule for the conference is up, along with the first lineup of keynote spea...
August 23, 2018
Testing and Meaningful Mocks in a Microservice System by Laura Medalia (@codergirl__) of Care/Of At @APIStrat In Nashville
We are getting closer to the 9th edition of APIStrat happening in Nashville, TN this September 24th through 26th. The schedule for the conference is up, along with the first lineup of keynote spea...
Searching For APIs That Possess Relevant Company Information
I’m evolving the search for the Streamdata.io API Gallery I’ve been working on lately. I’m looking to move the basic keywords search that searches the API name and description, as well as the API ...
It Is Hard To Go API Define First
Last year I started saying API define first, instead of API design first. In response to many of the conversations out there about designing, then mocking, and eventually deploying your APIs into ...
Testing and Meaningful Mocks in a Microservice System by Laura Medalia
We are getting closer to the 9th edition of APIStrat happening in Nashville, TN this September 24th through 26th. The schedule for the conference is up, along with the first lineup of keynote spea...
August 22, 2018
Identifying The Different Types Of APIs
APIs come in many shapes and sizes. Even when APIs may share a common resource, the likelihood that they are similar in functional, will be slim. Even after eight years of studying APIs, I still s...
August 21, 2018
#Discovery
Describing Your API with OpenAPI 3.0 by Anthony Eden (@aeden), DNSimple (@dnsimple) At @APIStrat In Nashville
We are getting closer to the 9th edition of APIStrat happening in Nashville, TN this September 24th through 26th. The schedule for the conference is up, along with the first lineup of keynote spea...
Algolia Kindly Provides A Hacker News Search API
I was working on a serverless app for Streamdata.io that takes posts to Hacker News and streams them into an Amazon S3 data lake, and I came across the Algolia powered Hacker News search API. Afte...
Describing Your API with OpenAPI 3.0 by Anthony Eden (@aeden), DNSimple
We are getting closer to the 9th edition of APIStrat happening in Nashville, TN this September 24th through 26th. The schedule for the conference is up, along with the first lineup of keynote spea...
August 21, 2018
We Need You API Developers Until We Have Grown To A Certain Size
I’m watching several fronts along the API landscape evolve right now, with large API providers shifting, shutting down, and changing how they do business with their APIs–now that they don’t need t...
The Redirect URL To Confirm Selling Your API In AWS Marketplace Provides Us With A Positive Template
I am setting up different APIs using the AWS API Gateway and then publishing them to the AWS Marketplace, as part of my work with Streamdata.io. I’m getting a feel for what the process is all abou...
Microservice'ing Like a Unicorn With Envoy, Istio & Kubernetes With Christian Posta Of Red Hat At APIStrat In Nashville
We are getting closer to the 9th edition of APIStrat happening in Nashville, TN this September 24th through 26th. The schedule for the conference is up, along with the first lineup of keynote spea...
Having An API Deprecation Page Like EVRYTHNG Does
The API providers I talk to regularly are rarely proactive when it comes to addressing API deprecation. Most API providers aren’t thinking about shutting down any service they deliver until they’v...
The Redirect URL To Confirm Selling Your API In AWS Marketplace Provides Us With A Positive
I am setting up different APIs using the AWS API Gateway and then publishing them to the AWS Marketplace, as part of my work with Streamdata.io. I’m getting a feel for what the process is all abou...
August 20, 2018
Microserviceing Like a Unicorn With Envoy, Istio & Kubernetes With Christian
We are getting closer to the 9th edition of APIStrat happening in Nashville, TN this September 24th through 26th. The schedule for the conference is up, along with the first lineup of keynote spea...
August 20, 2018
It Isn't Just That You Have A PDF For Your API Docs, It Is Because It Demonstrates That You Do Not Use Other APIs
I look at a lot of APIs. I can tell a lot about a company, and the people behind an API from looking at their developer portal, documentation, and other building blocks of their presence. One of t...
August 13, 2018
#Documentation
Bringing Discovery Within Data API Marketplaces Out Into The Open
I spend time reviewing each wave of data API marketplaces as they emerge on the landscape every couple of years. There are a number of reasons why these data marketplaces exist, ranging from suppo...
"It Isnt Just That You Have A PDF For Your API Docs, It Is Because It Demonstrates That You Do Not Use Other APIs"
I look at a lot of APIs. I can tell a lot about a company, and the people behind an API from looking at their developer portal, documentation, and other building blocks of their presence. One of t...
August 13, 2018
Bringing Discovery Within Data API Marketplaces Out Into The Open
I spend time reviewing each wave of data API marketplaces as they emerge on the landscape every couple of years. There are a number of reasons why these data marketplaces exist, ranging from suppo...
August 13, 2018
Working With My OpenAPI Definitions In An API Editor Helps Stabilize Them
I’m deploying three new APIs right now, using a new experimental serverless approach I’m evolving. One is a location API, another providing API access to companies, and the third involves working ...
Twice The Dose Of Vanick Digital At APIStrat in Nashville, TN Next Month
We are kicking it into overdrive now that the schedule is up for APIStrat in Nashville, TN this September 24th through 26th. From now until the event at the end of September you are going to hear ...
I Am Speaking In Washington D.C. At The Blue Button 2.0 Developer Conference On The API Life Cycle This Monday
I’m heading to Washington D.C. this Monday to speak on the API life cycle as part of the Blue Button 2.0 Developer Conference. We’ll be coming together in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building,...
Twice The Dose Of Vanick Digital At APIStrat in Nashville, TN Next Month
We are kicking it into overdrive now that the schedule is up for APIStrat in Nashville, TN this September 24th through 26th. From now until the event at the end of September you are going to hear ...
August 7, 2018
I Am Speaking In Washington D.C. At The Blue Button 2.0 Developer Conference
I’m heading to Washington D.C. this Monday to speak on the API life cycle as part of the Blue Button 2.0 Developer Conference. We’ll be coming together in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building,...
August 7, 2018
Making Sure My API Dependencies Include Data Provenance
I am publishing a new API for locations. I am tired of needing some of the same location based resources across projects, and not having a simple, standardized API I can depend on. So I got to wor...
SAP And Being Late To The API Game
I’ve been having regular meetings with the SAPI API team lately, talking through their presence in the API space, and throwing out ideas for what the future might hold. This isn’t a paid engagemen...
Automating Inequality (and APIs)
As we prepare for APIStrat in Nashville, TN this September 24th through 26th, I asked my partner in crime Audrey Watters (@audreywatters) to write a post on the significance of Virginia Eubanks, t...
We Need Your Help Moving The AsyncAPI Specification Forward
We need your help moving the AsyncAPI specification forward. Ok, first, what is the AsyncAPI specification? “The AsyncAPI Specification is a project used to describe and document Asynchronous APIs...
Practical SecDevOps for APIs From @42Crunch At APIStrat In Nashville This Fall
We are gearing up for the next edition of APIStrat in Nashville, TN this September 24th through 26th. With the conference less than two months away, and the schedule up, I’m building momentum with...
The Service Level Agreement (SLA) Definition For The OpenAPI Specification
I’m currently learning more about SLA4OAI, an open source standard for describing SLA in APIs, which is based on the standards proposed by the OAI, adding an optional profile for defining SLA (Ser...
The Service Level Agreement (SLA) Definition For The OpenAPI Specification
I’m currently learning more about SLA4OAI, an open source standard for describing SLA in APIs, which is based on the standards proposed by the OAI, adding an optional profile for defining SLA (Ser...
July 27, 2018
Thinking Deeply About Other People Using Your API Is The Most Valuable Lesson Of API Design
I am deploying a patent review API for a client, using data from the Patent Examination Data System (PEDS). You can download complete JSON or XML data from the United States Patent Office (USPTO), ...
Monolithic Serverless? WTF?
While writing about the discussions I’ve been having with folks around using monorepos to manage microservices, I came across this post about whether or not people should be using a single monolit...
Kicking The Tires On The SAP API Business Hub
I told the folks over at SAP that I would take a look at their API Business Hub. It isn’t paid work, just helping provide feedback on another addition to the API discovery front, something I’m pre...
July 26, 2018
#Discovery
Avoid Being Captain Obvious When Documenting Your API
I read a lot of API documentation, and help review API portals for clients, and one of the most common rookie mistakes I see made, is people pointing out the obvious, and writing a bunch of fluffy...
Thinking Deeply About Other People Using Your API Is The Most Valuable Lesson
I am deploying a patent review API for a client, using data from the Patent Examination Data System (PEDS). You can download complete JSON or XML data from the United States Patent Office (USPTO), ...
July 26, 2018
Discover, Profile, Quantify, Rank, And Publish New APIs To The Streamdata.io API Gallery
About 60% of my work these days is building upon the last five years of my API Stack research, with a focus on building out the Streamdata.io API Gallery. We are fine tuning our approach for disco...
July 19, 2018
#Discovery
API Governance Models In The Public and Private Sector
This is a report for the Department of Veterans Affairs microconsulting project, “Governance Models in Public and Private Sector”. Providing an overview of API governance to help the VA, “understa...
Discover, Profile, Quantify, Rank, And Publish New APIs To The Streamdata.io
About 60% of my work these days is building upon the last five years of my API Stack research, with a focus on building out the Streamdata.io API Gallery. We are fine tuning our approach for disco...
July 19, 2018
TVMaze Uses HAL For Their API Media Type
One of the layers of the API universe where I come across an increased number Hypermedia APIs is in the movie, television, and entertainment space. Where having a more flowing API experience makes...
If A Search For Swagger or OpenAPI Doesn't Yield Results I Try For A Postman Collection
While profiling any company, a couple of the Google searches I will execute right away are for “[Company Name] Swagger” and “[Company Name] OpenAPI”, hoping that a provide is progressive enough to...
For Every Competitor You Keep Out Of Your API Docs You Are Keeping Twenty New Customers Out
It is interesting for me to still regularly come across so many API providers who have a public API portals, but insist on keeping most of their documentation behind a login. Stating that they are...
Concern Around Working With Many Github Repositories
I’m regularly fascinated with API development teams I work with expressing their concern with working with many Github repositories. With all of the complexity I watch teams embrace when it comes ...
TVMaze Uses HAL For Their API Media Type
One of the layers of the API universe where I come across an increased number Hypermedia APIs is in the movie, television, and entertainment space. Where having a more flowing API experience makes...
July 16, 2018
If A Search For Swagger or OpenAPI Doesnt Yield Results I Try For A Postman
While profiling any company, a couple of the Google searches I will execute right away are for “[Company Name] Swagger” and “[Company Name] OpenAPI”, hoping that a provide is progressive enough to...
July 16, 2018
For Every Competitor You Keep Out Of Your API Docs You Are Keeping Twenty New
It is interesting for me to still regularly come across so many API providers who have a public API portals, but insist on keeping most of their documentation behind a login. Stating that they are...
July 16, 2018
Concern Around Working With Many Github Repositories
I’m regularly fascinated with API development teams I work with expressing their concern with working with many Github repositories. With all of the complexity I watch teams embrace when it comes ...
July 16, 2018
My API Lifecycle Checklist And Scorecard
I am working on delivering a handful of new APIs, which I will be turning into products. I will be prototyping, developing, and operating them in production environments for myself, and for a hand...
July 12, 2018
Ping Identity Acquires ElasticBeam To Establish New API Security Solution
You don’t usually find me writing about API acquisitions unless I have a relationship with the company, or there are other interesting aspects of the acquisition that makes it noteworthy. This acq...
Monetizing Your Device Location Data With LotaData
There are a lot of people making money off of the acquisition, organization, and providing access to data in our digital world. While I quietly tune into what the data monetization trends are, I a...
I Am Sorry, But Your Company Is Too Big For Me To Talk To
It is funny work with companies, organizations, institutions, and government agencies of all shapes and sizes, and learn all the weird practices they have, and the strange belief systems they’ve e...
July 11, 2018
#Politics of APIs
People Do Not Use Tags In Their OpenAPI Definitions
I import and work with a number of OpenAPI definitions that I come across in the wild. When I come across a version 1.2, 2.0, 3.0 OpenAPI, I import them into my API monitoring system for publishin...
My Moving Towards a Modern API Lifecycle From POST/CON 2018
I gave a talk early in in June at POST/CON 2018 in San Francisco. The conference was a great mix of discussions reflecting the Postman community. You can find all the talks on Google, including min...
Long Running API Requests And Differential API Responses
I am shifting my long running API operations from a PHP / EC2 based implementation to a more efficient Node.js / Lambda based solution, and I promised James Higginbotham (@launchany) that I’d shar...
Using OpenAPI And JSON PATCH To Articulate Changes For Your API Road Map
I’m doing a lot of thinking regarding how JSON PATCH can be applied because of my work with Streamdata.io. When you proxy an existing JSON API with Streamdata.io, after the initial response, every...
Using OpenAPI And JSON PATCH To Articulate Changes For Your API Road Map
I’m doing a lot of thinking regarding how JSON PATCH can be applied because of my work with Streamdata.io. When you proxy an existing JSON API with Streamdata.io, after the initial response, every...
July 10, 2018
My Moving Towards a Modern API Lifecycle From POST/CON 2018
I gave a talk early in in June at POST/CON 2018 in San Francisco. The conference was a great mix of discussions reflecting the Postman community. You can find all the talks on Google, including min...
July 10, 2018
Using Plain Language In Your API Paths
It is tough to help developers think outside of the world they operate within. Most software is still developed and managed within silos, knowing it’s inner workings will never be seen by anyone o...
July 9, 2018
#Design
Operating Your API In The Cloud Kill Zone
When you operate your application within the API ecosystem of a large platform, depending on the platform, you might have to worry about the platform operator copying, and emulating what you do. T...
I Love The API Enthusiasm Predix, But Please Publish An API Style Guide For Your Team
I was profiling the volume of API from the Internet of Things platform Predix this last week. Luckily they have OpenAPI definitions for each of the APIs, something that makes my life a lot easier....
July 9, 2018
Concerns Around Managing Many Microservice Repositories And Going With A Mono Repo
About half of the teams I work with on microservices strategy are beginning to freak out about the number repositories they have, and someone is regularly bringing up the subject of having a mono ...
Using Plain Language In Your API Paths
It is tough to help developers think outside of the world they operate within. Most software is still developed and managed within silos, knowing it’s inner workings will never be seen by anyone o...
July 9, 2018
I Love The API Enthusiasm Predix, But Please Publish An API Style Guide For
I was profiling the volume of API from the Internet of Things platform Predix this last week. Luckily they have OpenAPI definitions for each of the APIs, something that makes my life a lot easier....
July 9, 2018
Concerns Around Managing Many Microservice Repositories And Going With A Mono
About half of the teams I work with on microservices strategy are beginning to freak out about the number repositories they have, and someone is regularly bringing up the subject of having a mono ...
July 9, 2018
Looking For Sponsors For APIStrat 2018 In Nashville, TN This September
We are building up to the 9th edition of API Strategy & Practice (APIStrat) happening in Nashville, Tennessee this September 24th through 26th. As part of the build up we are looking for spons...
GraphQL And REST Differences Explained With Burgers
GraphQL folks keep on with the GraphQL vs REST narratives, rather than a REST and / or GraphQL narrative lately with a recent burger meme/narrative. Continuing to demonstrate their narrow view of t...
Mayors, Governors, And Lawmakers: Tech Companies Are Getting Rich Mining Your Constituents Data
It has been a fascinating and eye opening experience sitting at the intersection of tech startups and the web, mobile, and device applications they’ve built over the last decade. In 2010 I was cap...
Mayors, Governors, And Lawmakers: Tech Companies Are Getting Rich Mining Your Constituents Data
It has been a fascinating and eye opening experience sitting at the intersection of tech startups and the web, mobile, and device applications they’ve built over the last decade. In 2010 I was cap...
June 29, 2018
Looking For Sponsors For APIStrat 2018 In Nashville, TN This September
We are building up to the 9th edition of API Strategy & Practice (APIStrat) happening in Nashville, Tennessee this September 24th through 26th. As part of the build up we are looking for spons...
June 29, 2018
GraphQL And REST Differences Explained With Burgers
GraphQL folks keep on with the GraphQL vs REST narratives, rather than a REST and / or GraphQL narrative lately with a recent burger meme/narrative. Continuing to demonstrate their narrow view of t...
June 29, 2018
Why Is API Versioning In The Path Still The Dominant Pattern?
API versioning is almost always one of the top attended discussions at conferences I help organize, and one of the first questions I get in the QA sessions at workshops I conduct. People want to u...
Not Liking OpenAPI (fka Swagger) When You Have No Idea What It Does
People love to hate in the API space. Ok, I guess its not exclusive to the API space, but it is a significant aspect of the community. I receive a regular amount of people hating on my work, for n...
A Public Self-Service API Platform as a Competitive Advantage
When it comes to providing data, content, and even ML and AI models via APIs, having a public platform will become a competitive advantage. I know that many companies see it as giving away somethi...
June 26, 2018
#Politics of APIs
A Public Self-Service API Platform as a Competitive Advantage
When it comes to providing data, content, and even ML and AI models via APIs, having a public platform will become a competitive advantage. I know that many companies see it as giving away somethi...
June 26, 2018
Staying Informed of API Changes Using Streamdata.io
My friend James Higginbotham (@launchany) was sharing his frustration with being able to stay in tune with changes to a variety of APIs. Like me, James works to stay in tune with a variety of sign...
Do Not Try To Service All The Stops Along The API Lifecycle As An API Service Provider
One thing I see a lot from API service providers who are selling their services to the API sector, is that once they find success servicing one stop along the API lifecycle, they often want to ser...
Working To Keep Programming Language Dogma At Edges Of The API Conversation
I’m fascinated by the dominating power of programming languages. There are many ideological forces at play in the technology sector, but the dogma that exists within each programming language comm...
Do Not Try To Service All The Stops Along The API Lifecycle As An API Service
One thing I see a lot from API service providers who are selling their services to the API sector, is that once they find success servicing one stop along the API lifecycle, they often want to ser...
June 21, 2018
Adding A Lead To SalesForce Using The REST API
I spend a lot of time talking about the SalesForce API, using it as a reference for where the API evolution began 18 years ago, but it has been a long time since I’ve actually worked with the Sale...
Adding A Lead To SalesForce Using The REST API
I spend a lot of time talking about the SalesForce API, using it as a reference for where the API evolution began 18 years ago, but it has been a long time since I’ve actually worked with the Sale...
June 19, 2018
VA API Landscape Analysis and Roadmapping Project Report
This report summarizes Skylight’s evaluation of the VA’s public datasets, which exist within the va.gov web domain, as well as an analysis of what types of data representatives of the Veteran com...
The Importance Of OpenAPI Tooling
In my world, OpenAPI is always a primary actor, and the tooling and services that put it to work are always secondary. However, I’d say that 80% of the people I talk with are the opposite, putting...
June 18, 2018
#Definitions
VA API Landscape Analysis and Roadmapping Project Report
This report summarizes Skylight’s evaluation of the VA’s public datasets, which exist within the va.gov web domain, as well as an analysis of what types of data representatives of the Veteran com...
June 18, 2018
People Still Think APIs Are About Giving Away Your Data For Free
After eight years of educating people about sensible API security and management, I’m always amazed at how many people I come across who still think public web APIs are about giving away access to...
The Rockstar Committees We Have Assembled To Make APIStrat Nashville Rock!!
It is APIStrat time again! This time it is in Nashville, Tennessee! We are in the early stages of the event, but we are getting close to the deadline of the call for papers. We’ve assembled anothe...
I Will Be Discussing The Government API Lifecycle At DevNation Federal In DC Tuesday Afternoon
I’m kicking off a busy week of travel and talks this week in DC with a discussion about delivering microservices at federal agencies at DevNation Federal on Tuesday, June 5th, 2018. I was invited ...
Catch Me At The DC API User Group in Washington DC This Tuesday Evening
After I speak at DevNation Federal in Washington DC this Tuesday, I am going to give a similar talk at the DC API API User Group that evening. I love going to the Meetups in DC, partly because my ...
Making Connections At The API Management Layer
I’ve been evaluating API management providers, and this important stop along the API lifecycle in which they serve for eight years now. It is a space that I’m very familiar with, and have enjoyed ...
The Rockstar Committees We Have Assembled To Make APIStrat Nashville Rock!!
It is APIStrat time again! This time it is in Nashville, Tennessee! We are in the early stages of the event, but we are getting close to the deadline of the call for papers. We’ve assembled anothe...
June 4, 2018
I Will Be Discussing The Government API Lifecycle At DevNation Federal In DC
I’m kicking off a busy week of travel and talks this week in DC with a discussion about delivering microservices at federal agencies at DevNation Federal on Tuesday, June 5th, 2018. I was invited ...
June 4, 2018
Catch Me At The DC API User Group in Washington DC This Tuesday Evening
After I speak at DevNation Federal in Washington DC this Tuesday, I am going to give a similar talk at the DC API API User Group that evening. I love going to the Meetups in DC, partly because my ...
June 4, 2018
When The Right API Solution Is Not Always The Sensible One
I conducted an API workshop at Genscape in Boston yesterday. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation with the technical folks there, and found their pragmatic, yet educated views on APIs refreshing....
May 31, 2018
#Design
How Should We Be Organizing All Of Our Microservices?
A question I get regularly in my API workshops is, “how should we be organizing all of our microservices?” To which I always recommend they tune into what the API Academy team is up to, and then I...
When The Right API Solution Is Not Always The Sensible One
I conducted an API workshop at Genscape in Boston yesterday. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation with the technical folks there, and found their pragmatic, yet educated views on APIs refreshing....
May 31, 2018
APIStrat Nashville Call For Papers Closes At The End Of Next Week
I know, time flies and we are all very busy, but have you submitted your talk for APIStrat Nashville? The call for papers closes next Friday, June 8, 2018 at 11:59 PM PST! This is the second editi...
May 30, 2018
#API Events
APIStrat Nashville Call For Papers Closes At The End Of Next Week
I know, time flies and we are all very busy, but have you submitted your talk for APIStrat Nashville? The call for papers closes next Friday, June 8, 2018 at 11:59 PM PST! This is the second editi...
May 30, 2018
A Microprocurement Package For API Monitoring And Testing
I’m kicking off a micro-procurement project with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) this week. I’m going to to be conducting one of my API low hanging fruit campaigns for them, where I help t...
API Coordination And Communication Across Federal Government Agencies
Most of this API stuff isn’t technical. For APIs to work at scale within a single company, a wider industry, or across government agencies, you need people who are committed to evangelism, coachin...
A Microprocurement Package For API Monitoring And Testing
I’m kicking off a micro-procurement project with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) this week. I’m going to to be conducting one of my API low hanging fruit campaigns for them, where I help t...
May 29, 2018
Every Moment Is Potentially An API Story
I was on a call for a federal government API platform project with my partner in crime Chris Cairns (@cscairns) of Skylight.Digital. We were back channeling in our Slack channel during the call, w...
API Evangelist Is Partnering With Bridge Software To Tell More API Integration Stories
I have been intrigued by the people who reached out after I published a story about my partner program. One of the companies that reached out was the API integration agency Bridge Software, who re...
API Evangelist Is Partnering With Bridge Software To Tell More API Integration
I have been intrigued by the people who reached out after I published a story about my partner program. One of the companies that reached out was the API integration agency Bridge Software, who re...
May 16, 2018
Cautiously Aware Of How APIs Can Be Used To Feed Government Privatization Machinations
I’m working to define APIs at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) on several fronts right now. I’ve provided not just one, but two detailed reponses to their Lighthouse API platform RFIs. Addi...
General Services Administration (GSA) Needs Help Testing Their FedBizOpps API
The General Services Administration (GSA) has an open call for help to test the new FedBizOpps API. Setting a pretty compelling precedent for releasing APIs in the federal government, slowly bring...
Opportunity For OpenAPI-Driven Open Source Testing, Performance, Security, And Other Modules
I’ve been on five separate government reflated projects lately where finding modular OpenAPI-driven open source tooling has been a top priority. All of these projects are microservice-focused and ...
API Lifecycle Seminars In New York City
I’ve had a huge demand for putting on API seminars for a variety of enterprise groups lately. Helping bring my API 101, history, lifecycle, and governance knowledge to the table. I’ve conducted se...
Opportunity For OpenAPI-Driven Open Source Testing, Performance, Security, And
I’ve been on five separate government reflated projects lately where finding modular OpenAPI-driven open source tooling has been a top priority. All of these projects are microservice-focused and ...
May 15, 2018
Cautiously Aware Of How APIs Can Be Used To Feed Government Privatization
I’m working to define APIs at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) on several fronts right now. I’ve provided not just one, but two detailed reponses to their Lighthouse API platform RFIs. Addi...
May 15, 2018
Sports Data API Simulations From SportRadar
I’m a big fan of API sandboxes, labs, and other virtualization environments. API sandboxes should be default in heavily regulated industries like banking. I also support the virtualization of sche...
Using Jekyll To Look At Microservice API Definitions In Aggregate
I’ve been evaluating microservices at scale, using their OpenAPI definitions to provide API design guidance to each team using Github. I just finished a round of work where I took 20 microservices...
Measuring Value Exchange Around Government Data Using API Management
I’ve written about how the startup community has driven the value exchange that occurs at the API management layer down a two lane road with API monetizatin and plans. To generate the value that i...
Looking At 20 Microservices In Concert
I checked out the Github repositories for twenty microservices of one of my clients recently, looking understand what is being accomplished across all these services as they work independently to ...
Sports Data API Simulations From SportRadar
I’m a big fan of API sandboxes, labs, and other virtualization environments. API sandboxes should be default in heavily regulated industries like banking. I also support the virtualization of sche...
May 14, 2018
Measuring Value Exchange Around Government Data Using API Management
I’ve written about how the startup community has driven the value exchange that occurs at the API management layer down a two lane road with API monetizatin and plans. To generate the value that i...
May 14, 2018
API Discovery is for Internal or External Services
The topic of API discovery has been picking up momentum in 2018. It is something I’ve worked on for years, but with the number of microservices emerging out there, it is something I’m seeing becom...
API Gateway As A Node And Moving Beyond Backend and Frontend
The more I study where the API management, gateway, and proxy layer is headed, the less I’m seeing a front-end or a backend, I’m seeing just a node. A node that can connect to existing databases, ...
Making the OpenAPI Contract Friendlier For Developers and Business Stakeholders
I was in a conference session about an API design tool today, and someone asked if you could get at the OpenAPI definition behind the solution. They said yes, but quickly also said that the defini...
Constraints Introduced By Supporting Standardized API Definitions and Schema
I’ve had a few API groups contact me lately regarding the challenges they are facing when it comes to supporting organizational, or industry-wide API definitions and schema. They were eager to sup...
API Design, Either the Provider Does the Work or the Consumer Will Have To
I’m always fascinated by the API design debate, and how many entrenched positions there are when it comes to the right way of doing it. Personally, I don’t see any right way of doing it, I just se...
May 8, 2018
#Design
Making the OpenAPI Contract Friendlier For Developers and Business
I was in a conference session about an API design tool today, and someone asked if you could get at the OpenAPI definition behind the solution. They said yes, but quickly also said that the defini...
May 8, 2018
Constraints Introduced By Supporting Standardized API Definitions and Schema
I’ve had a few API groups contact me lately regarding the challenges they are facing when it comes to supporting organizational, or industry-wide API definitions and schema. They were eager to sup...
May 8, 2018
API Design, Either the Provider Does the Work or the Consumer Will Have To
I’m always fascinated by the API design debate, and how many entrenched positions there are when it comes to the right way of doing it. Personally, I don’t see any right way of doing it, I just se...
May 8, 2018
Turning The Stack Exchange Questions API Into 25 Separate Tech Topic Streaming APIs
I’m turning different APIs into topical streams using Streamdata.io. I have been profiling hundreds of different APIs as part of my work to build out the Streamdata.io API Gallery, and as I’m crea...
Doing Away With Social Logins Due To A Lack Of Trust
I received an email from my CRON job API (EasyCRON) provider this morning about discontinuing the usage of social logins to their service with Gmail, Facebook, etc. Something that I think is a sig...
GraphQL, Just Get Out Of My Way And Give Me What I Want
One of the arguments I hear for why API providers should be employing GraphQL is that they should just get out of developers way, and let them build their own queries so that they can just get exa...
API Management In Real-Time Instead Of After The Media Shitstorm
I have been studying API management for eight years now. I’ve spent a lot of time understanding the approach of leading API providers, and the services and tools put out there by API service provi...
Turning The Stack Exchange Questions API Into 25 Separate Tech Topic Streaming
I’m turning different APIs into topical streams using Streamdata.io. I have been profiling hundreds of different APIs as part of my work to build out the Streamdata.io API Gallery, and as I’m crea...
May 7, 2018
API Management In Real-Time Instead Of After The Media Shitstorm
I have been studying API management for eight years now. I’ve spent a lot of time understanding the approach of leading API providers, and the services and tools put out there by API service provi...
May 7, 2018
Synthetic Healthcare Records For Your API Using Synthea
I have been working on several fronts to help with API efforts at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) this year, and one of them is helping quantify the deployment of a lab API environment for...
Facebook And Twitter Only Now Beginning To Police Their API Applications
I’ve been reading about all the work Facebook and Twitter have been doing over the last couple of weeks to begin asserting more control over their API applications. I’m not talking about the depre...
A README For Your Microservice Github Repository
I have several projects right now that are needed a baseline for what is expected of microservices developers when it comes to the README for their Github repository. Each microservice should be a...
Facebook And Twitter Only Now Beginning To Police Their API Applications
I’ve been reading about all the work Facebook and Twitter have been doing over the last couple of weeks to begin asserting more control over their API applications. I’m not talking about the depre...
April 30, 2018
Venture Capital Obfuscating The Opportunities For Value Exchange At The API Management Level
p></p>When I talk to government agencies, non-profit organizations, or organizations doing internal APIs I regularly receive pushback about the information I share regarding API management...
April 27, 2018
#Monetization
#Plans
#Business of APIs
#Investment
#Management
#Logging
#Rate Limiting
Existing Processes And Culture Grinding Down New API Efforts
I’m always amazed what large organizations can achieve. They definitely have more resources, more momentum, and do way more than any single individual can achieve. However, as an individual actor ...
Balancing Virtual API Evangelism With In-Person API Evangelism
I haven’t published any stories this week on API Evangelist. I’ve been on the road in Lyon and Paris, France. Giving talks, and conducting workshops about my API lifecycle and governance work. Oft...
Venture Capital Obfuscating The Opportunities For Value Exchange At The API
p></p>When I talk to government agencies, non-profit organizations, or organizations doing internal APIs I regularly receive pushback about the information I share regarding API management...
April 27, 2018
Balancing Virtual API Evangelism With In-Person API Evangelism
I haven’t published any stories this week on API Evangelist. I’ve been on the road in Lyon and Paris, France. Giving talks, and conducting workshops about my API lifecycle and governance work. Oft...
April 27, 2018
Delivering Large API Responses As Efficiently As Possible
I’m participating in a meeting today where one of the agenda items will be discussing the different ways in which the team can deal with increasingly large API responses. I don’t feel there is a p...
Machine Readable API Regions For Use At Discovery And Runtime
I wrote about Werner Vogel of Amazon’s post considering the impact of cloud regions a couple weeks back. I feel that his post captured an aspect of doing business in the cloud that isn’t discussed...
REST and gRPC Side by Side In New Google Endpoints Documentation
Google has been really moving forward with their development, and storytelling around gRPC. Their high speed to approach to doing APIs that uses HTTP/2 as a transport, and protocol buffers (ProtoB...
OpenAPI Makes Me Feel Like I Have A Handle On What An API Does
APIs are hard to talk about across large groups of people, while ensuring everyone is on the page. APIs don’t have much a visual side to them, providing a tangible reference for everyone to use by...
My Response To The VA Microconsulting Work Statement On API Outreach
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is listening to my advice around how to execute their API strategy and adopting a micro-approach to not just delivering services, but also to the business o...
My Response To The VA Microconsulting Work Statement On API Landscape Analysis and Near-term Roadmap
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is listening to my advice around how to execute their API strategy and adopting a micro-approach to not just delivering services, but also to the business o...
My Response To The VA Microconsulting Work Statement On API Outreach
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is listening to my advice around how to execute their API strategy and adopting a micro-approach to not just delivering services, but also to the business o...
April 17, 2018
My Response To The VA Microconsulting Work Statement On API Landscape Analysis
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is listening to my advice around how to execute their API strategy and adopting a micro-approach to not just delivering services, but also to the business o...
April 17, 2018
If Github Pages Could Be Turned On By Default I Could Provide A Run On Github Button
My world runs on Gitub. 100% of my public website projects run on Github Pages, and about 75% of my public web applications run on Gitub Pages. The remaining 25% of it all is my API infrastructure...
My GraphQL Thoughts After Almost Two Years
It has been almost a year and half since I first wrote my post questioning that GraphQL folks didn’t want to do the hard work of API design, which I also clarified that I was keeping my mind open ...
My GraphQL Thoughts After Almost Two Years
It has been almost a year and half since I first wrote my post questioning that GraphQL folks didn’t want to do the hard work of API design, which I also clarified that I was keeping my mind open ...
April 16, 2018
Sharing API Definition Patterns Across Teams By Default
This is a story, in a series I’m doing as part of the version 3.0 release of the Stoplight.io platform. Stoplight.io is one the few API service providers I’m excited about what when it comes to wh...
The ClosedAPI Specification
You’ve heard of OpenAPI, right? It is the API specification for defining the surface area of your web API, and the schema you employ–making your public API more discoverable, and consumable in a v...
I Will Be Speaking At The API Conference In London This Week
I am hitting the road this week heading to London to speak at the API Conference. I will be giving a keynote on Thursday afternoon, and conducting an all day workshop on Friday. Both of my talks a...
Details Of The API Evangelist Partner Program
I’ve been retooling the partner program for API Evangelist. There are many reasons for this, and you can read the full backstory I have written a narrative for these changes to the way in which I ...
April 9, 2018
#Partners
Crafting A Productive API Industry Partner Program
I struggle with partner relationships. I’ve had a lot of partners operating API Evangelist over the years. Some good. Some not so good. And some amazing! You know who you are. It’s tough to fund w...
Crafting A Productive API Industry Partner Program
I struggle with partner relationships. I’ve had a lot of partners operating API Evangelist over the years. Some good. Some not so good. And some amazing! You know who you are. It’s tough to fund w...
April 9, 2018
Nest Branding And Marketing Guidelines
I’m always looking out for examples of API providers who have invested energy into formalizing process around the business and politics of API operations. I’m hoping to aggregate a variety of appr...
Seamless API Lifecycle Integration With Github, Gitlab, And BitBucket
This is a story, in a series of stories that I’m doing as part of the version 3.0 release of the Stoplight.io platform. Stoplight.io is one the few API service providers I’m excited about what whe...
Helping Stoplight.io Get The Word Out About Version 3.0
I’ve been telling stories about what the Stoplight.io team has been building for a couple of years now. They are one of the few API service provider startups left that are doing things that intere...
OpenAPI Is The Contract For Your Microservice
I’ve talked about how generating an OpenAPI (fka Swagger) definition from code is still the dominate way that microservice owners are producing this artifact. This is a by-product of developers se...
Github Is Your Asynchronous Microservice Showroom
When you spend time looking at a lot of microservices, across many different organizations, you really begin to get a feel for the ones who have owners / stewards that are thinking about the bigge...
Github Is Your Asynchronous Microservice Showroom
When you spend time looking at a lot of microservices, across many different organizations, you really begin to get a feel for the ones who have owners / stewards that are thinking about the bigge...
April 3, 2018
An OpenAPI Service Dependency Vendor Extension
I’m working on a healthcare related microservice project, and I’m looking for a way to help developers express their service dependencies within the OpenAPI or some other artifact. At this point I...
The API Stack Profiling Checklist
I just finished a narrative around my API Stack profiling, telling the entire story around the profiling of APIs for inclusion in the stack. To help encourage folks to get involved, I wanted to he...
My API Stack Profiling Process
I am escalating conversations I’m having with folks regarding how I profile and understand APIs as part of my API Stack work. It is something I’ve been evolving for 2-3 years, as I struggle with d...
The API Stack Profiling Checklist
I just finished a narrative around my API Stack profiling, telling the entire story around the profiling of APIs for inclusion in the stack. To help encourage folks to get involved, I wanted to he...
April 2, 2018
An OpenAPI Service Dependency Vendor Extension
I’m working on a healthcare related microservice project, and I’m looking for a way to help developers express their service dependencies within the OpenAPI or some other artifact. At this point I...
April 2, 2018
The OpenAPI 3.0 GUI
I have been editing my OpenAPI definitions manually for some time now, as I just haven’t found a GUI editor that works well with my workflow. Swagger editor really isn’t a GUI solution, and while ...
Obtaining A Scalable API Definition Driven API Design Workflow On Github Complete With API Governance
There is a lot of talk of an API design first way of doing things when it comes to delivering microservices. I’m seeing a lot of organizations make significant strides towards truly decoupling how...
Using Postman to Explore the Triathlon API
I’m taking time to showcase any API I come across who have published their OpenAPI definitions to Github like New York Times, Box, Stripe, SendGrid, Nexmo, and others have. I’m also taking the tim...
Using Postman to Explore the Triathlon API
I’m taking time to showcase any API I come across who have published their OpenAPI definitions to Github like New York Times, Box, Stripe, SendGrid, Nexmo, and others have. I’m also taking the tim...
March 30, 2018
Obtaining A Scalable API Definition Driven API Design Workflow On Github
There is a lot of talk of an API design first way of doing things when it comes to delivering microservices. I’m seeing a lot of organizations make significant strides towards truly decoupling how...
March 30, 2018
The Impact Of Availability Zones, Regions, And API Deployment Around The Globe
Werner Vogels shared a great story looking back at 10 years of compartmentalization at AWS, where he talks about the impact Amazon has made on the landscape by allowing for the deployment of resou...
Sharing The APIs.json Vision Again
I know many folks in the API sector don’t know about APIs.json, and if they do they often think it is yet another API definition format, competing wit OpenAPI, Postman Collections, and others. So,...
A Decade Later Twitter's API Plan Slowly Begins To Take Shape
It’s been a long, long road for Twitter when it comes to realizing the importance of having a plan when it comes to their API management strategy. Aside from monetizing the firehose through former...
Data Driven Apps At Scale Using Github And Jekyll
I’ve pushed my Github driven, Jekyll fueled, application delivery process to a new levels the last couple of weeks. I’ve been investing more cycles into my API Stack work, as I build out an API Ga...
A Decade Later Twitters API Plan Slowly Begins To Take Shape
It’s been a long, long road for Twitter when it comes to realizing the importance of having a plan when it comes to their API management strategy. Aside from monetizing the firehose through former...
March 28, 2018
OAuth Has Many Flaws But It is The Best We Have At The Moment
I was enjoying the REST API Notes newsletter from my friend Matthew Reinbold (@libel_vox) today, and wanted to share my thoughts on his mention of my work while it was top of my mind. I always enj...
Sharing Your API First Principles
I’ve been publishing regular posts from the API design guides of API providers I’ve been studying. API providers who publish their API design guides tends to be further along in their API journey....
Government Has Benefitted From Lack Of Oversight At The Social API Management Layers As Well
There are many actors who have benefitted from Facebook not properly management their API platform. Collecting so many data points, tracking so many users, and looking the other way as 3rd party d...
Acknowledging That Why I Do APIs Is Very Different Than Why Others Are Doing APIs
When I started doing API Evangelist in 2010 I was still very, very, very naive about why people were doing APIs. While I do not always expect everyone doing APIs to be ethical and sensible with th...
Government Has Benefitted From Lack Of Oversight At The Social API Management
There are many actors who have benefitted from Facebook not properly management their API platform. Collecting so many data points, tracking so many users, and looking the other way as 3rd party d...
March 27, 2018
Acknowledging That Why I Do APIs Is Very Different Than Why Others Are Doing
When I started doing API Evangelist in 2010 I was still very, very, very naive about why people were doing APIs. While I do not always expect everyone doing APIs to be ethical and sensible with th...
March 27, 2018
Nexmo Manages Their OpenAPI 3.0 Definition Using Github
I’m big on supporting API providers that publish their OpenAPI definitions to Github. It is important for the wider API community that ALL API definitions are machine readable, and available in a ...
A Regulatory Framework For Facebook And Other Platforms Is Already In Place
There is lots of talk this week about regulating Facebook after the Cambridge Analytica story broke. Individuals, businesses, lawmakers, and even Facebook are talking about how we begin to better ...
Investment In API Security Will Continue To Fall Short While There Is No Breach Accountability
I have a lot of conversations with folks down in the trenches about API security, and what they are doing to be proactive when it comes to keeping their API infrastructure secure. The will and the...
Facebook's Business Model Is Out Of Alignment With Their API Management Layer
All the controls for Facebook to have done something about the Cambridge Analytics situation are already in place. The Facebook API management layer has everything needed to have prevented the typ...
Investment In API Security Will Continue To Fall Short While There Is No
I have a lot of conversations with folks down in the trenches about API security, and what they are doing to be proactive when it comes to keeping their API infrastructure secure. The will and the...
March 21, 2018
SendGrid Managing Their OpenAPI Using Github
This is a post that has been in my API notebook for quite a while. I feel it is important to keep showcasing the growing number of API providers who are not just using OpenAPI, but also managing t...
Breaking Down Your Postman API Collections Into Meaningful Units Of Compute
I’m fascinated with the unit of compute as defined by a microservice, OpenAPI definition, Postman Collection, or other way of quantifying an API-driven resource. Asking the question, “how big or h...
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Forcing Us To Ask Questions About Our Data
I’ve been learning more about the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) recently, and have been having conversation about compliance with companies in the EU, as well as the US. In short, G...
Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, And Knowing What API Consumers Are Doing With Our Data
I’m processing the recent announcement by Facebook to shut off the access of Cambridge Analytica to it’s valuable social data. The story emphasizes the importance of having a real time awareness a...
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Forcing Us To Ask Questions About
I’ve been learning more about the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) recently, and have been having conversation about compliance with companies in the EU, as well as the US. In short, G...
March 19, 2018
68 Stops In A Comprehensive API Strategy Transit Map
I am refining my comprehensive list of stops that I highlight as part of the API lifecycle, or what I call API Transit–the stops that each of the services we deliver will have “pass through” at so...
68 Stops In A Comprehensive API Strategy Transit Map
I am refining my comprehensive list of stops that I highlight as part of the API lifecycle, or what I call API Transit–the stops that each of the services we deliver will have “pass through” at so...
March 16, 2018
A Visual View Of API Responses Within Our Documentation
Interactive API documentation is nothing new. We’ve had Swagger UI, and other incarnations for over five years now. We also have API explorers, and full API lifecycle client solutions like Postman...
LinkedIn Account Validation For New API Consumers
I was on-boarding with the data marketplace Dawex the other day, and I thought their on-boarding process was interesting. It is pretty rigid, requiring users to validate themselves in multiple way...
An OpenAPI Vendor Extension For Defining Your API Audience
The clothing marketplace Zalando has an interesting approach to classifying their APIs based upon who is consuming them. It isn’t just about APIs being published publicly, or privately, they actua...
Rules for Extending Your API With Each Version
I’m spending time learning from the API design guides of other leading API providers, absorbing their healthy practices, and assimilating them into my own consulting and storytelling. One API desi...
Seeing Messy API Design Practices As An Opportunity
I’m generating OpenAPI definitions for a wide variety of APIs currently, and I’m regularly stumbling on the messiness of the API design practices being deployed. When you are exposed to a large nu...
Google Releases a Protocol Buffer Implementation of the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) Standard
Google is renewing its interest in the healthcare space by releasing a protocol buffer implementation of the fast healthcare interoperability resources (FHIR) standard. Protocol buffers are “Googl...
Multi-Lingual Machine Learning API Deployments
Machine learning API ParallelDots has a story on launching their APIs in multiple languages. Allowing them to “serve a truly global customer base with following language options for our key APIs (...
API As A Product Principles From Zalando
As I’m working through the API design guides from API leaders, looking for useful practices that I can include in my own API guidance, I’m finding electronic commerce company Zalando’s API design ...
Google Releases a Protocol Buffer Implementation of the Fast Healthcare
Google is renewing its interest in the healthcare space by releasing a protocol buffer implementation of the fast healthcare interoperability resources (FHIR) standard. Protocol buffers are “Googl...
March 13, 2018
API As A Product Principles From Zalando
As I’m working through the API design guides from API leaders, looking for useful practices that I can include in my own API guidance, I’m finding electronic commerce company Zalando’s API design ...
March 13, 2018
The Importance Of Tags In OpenAPI Definitions For Machine Learning APIs
I am profiling APIs as part of my partnership with Streamdata.io, and my continued API Stack work. As part of my work, I am creating OpenAPI, Postman Collections, and APIs.json indexes for APIs in...
Some Common API Data Types To Put To Use
I’m continuing my exploration of the API design guidance published by leading API providers. This time, I am taking a look at the API design guide publish by Adidas, specifically the portion of it...
Thinking About API Status Codes For Destroying Entities Using DELETE
I am pulling together some API design guidance for some projects I’m consulting on, so I’m spending time reviewing the API design guides the leading API providers who have published them publicly....
A Machine Readable Baseline For API Providers In My API Stack Work
I’m rebooting my API Stack work as part of my partnership with Streamdata.io. I’m spending a significant portion of my day profiling API providers, documenting what it is they bring to the table. ...
Thinking About API Status Codes For Destroying Entities Using DELETE
I am pulling together some API design guidance for some projects I’m consulting on, so I’m spending time reviewing the API design guides the leading API providers who have published them publicly....
March 12, 2018
Defining The Smallest Unit Possible For Use At API Runtime
I’m thinking a lot about what is needed at API runtime lately. How we document and provide machine readable definitions for APIs, and how we provide authentication, pricing, and even terms of serv...
The Postman API Network
The Postman API Network is one of the recent movements in the API discovery space I’ve been working to get around to covering. As Postman continues its expansion from being just an API client, to ...
March 9, 2018
#Discovery
Keeping Track Of Federal Government Open Source Projects Using The Code.gov API
Open source software is increasingly driving the federal government, despite the wishes of companies like Oracle. I’ve been watching an interesting project grow within the federal government to he...
Keeping Track Of Federal Government Open Source Projects Using The Code.gov
Open source software is increasingly driving the federal government, despite the wishes of companies like Oracle. I’ve been watching an interesting project grow within the federal government to he...
March 9, 2018
Imagine A Mock Only API Development Reality
Imagine if we didn’t actually write code when we developed our APIs initially. What if the bar for putting an API into production was so high, that many APIs never actually made it to that level. ...
Your Obsessive Focus On The API Resource Is Hindering Meaningful Events From Happening
I’ve been profiling a number of market data APIs as part of my work with Streamdata.io to identify valuable sources of data that could be streamed using their service. A significant portion of the...
Axway Asking for an OpenAPI of The Streamdata.io API So They Can Screenshot It
We are working closely with Axway on a number of projects over here at Streamdata.io. After we got out of a meeting with their team the other day we received an email from them asking if we had an...
Your Obsessive Focus On The API Resource Is Hindering Meaningful Events From
I’ve been profiling a number of market data APIs as part of my work with Streamdata.io to identify valuable sources of data that could be streamed using their service. A significant portion of the...
March 8, 2018
Imagine A Mock Only API Development Reality
Imagine if we didn’t actually write code when we developed our APIs initially. What if the bar for putting an API into production was so high, that many APIs never actually made it to that level. ...
March 8, 2018
Axway Asking for an OpenAPI of The Streamdata.io API So They Can Screenshot It
We are working closely with Axway on a number of projects over here at Streamdata.io. After we got out of a meeting with their team the other day we received an email from them asking if we had an...
March 8, 2018
Where Do We Start The API Conversation At Our Large Organization?
It can be tough to know where to start with APIs at your large organization. Everyone is already in motion, in a variety of groups, geographic regions, serving different lines of business. The API...
US Companies Getting Ahead Of EU Regulations
I find it to be a telling sign of the culture at US companies when it comes to their response, or lack of response to EU regulations. I’ve been curating stories from the API providers that I track...
Explaining API Security To Organizational Leadership
I’ve been tasked with helping explain API security to senior leadership, and wanted to work through my ideas here on the blog. For this audience, I’m not going to get down into the weeds regarding...
Capital One DevExchange Provides An Important Banking API Blueprint
When you take a look at the banking API landscape in the United States, there is one clear leader in the game–Capital One. Their DevExchange program is miles ahead of every one of their competitor...
Serverless, Like Microservices Is About Understanding Our Dependencies And Constraints
I am not buying into all the hype around the recent serverless evolution in compute. However, like most trends I study, I am seeing some interesting aspects of how people are doing it, and some po...
An OpenAPI-Driven, API Governance Rules Engine
Phil Sturgeon (@philsturgeon) alerted me to a pretty cool project he is cooking up, called Speccy. Which provides a rules engine for validating your OpenAPI definitions. “Taking off from where Mik...
People Seem to Want Lego Kits and Not a Bucket of Lego Blocks When It Comes To Doing APIs
While I wish everyone saw the modular potential of APIs and microservices like I do, I’ve come to the realization that most people are just interested in ready to go kits that walk them through ev...
The Need for Standardized API Plans and Pricing to Compete with Cloud Providers
Google launched their Cloud Billing Catalog API, providing access to thee pricing for their cloud API catalog the other day. Azure has their billing API, and AWS has their cost explorer API servic...
The Need for Standardized API Plans and Pricing to Compete with Cloud
Google launched their Cloud Billing Catalog API, providing access to thee pricing for their cloud API catalog the other day. Azure has their billing API, and AWS has their cost explorer API servic...
March 5, 2018
Serverless, Like Microservices Is About Understanding Our Dependencies And
I am not buying into all the hype around the recent serverless evolution in compute. However, like most trends I study, I am seeing some interesting aspects of how people are doing it, and some po...
March 5, 2018
People Seem to Want Lego Kits and Not a Bucket of Lego Blocks When It Comes To
While I wish everyone saw the modular potential of APIs and microservices like I do, I’ve come to the realization that most people are just interested in ready to go kits that walk them through ev...
March 5, 2018
An OpenAPI-Driven, API Governance Rules Engine
Phil Sturgeon (@philsturgeon) alerted me to a pretty cool project he is cooking up, called Speccy. Which provides a rules engine for validating your OpenAPI definitions. “Taking off from where Mik...
March 5, 2018
Thoughts On The Schema.Org WebAPI Type Extension
I’m putting some thought into the Schema.Org WebAPI Type Extension proposal by Mike Ralphson (Mermade Software) and Ivan Goncharov (APIs.guru), to “facilitate better automatic discovery of WebAPIs...
An Observable Industry Level Directory Of API Providers And Consumers
I’ve been breaking down the work on banking APIs coming out of Open Banking in the UK lately. I recently took all their OpenAPI definitions and published as a demo API developer portal. Bringing t...
An Open Banking API Portal Blueprint
I have been learning all about the banking API efforts out of Open Banking in the UK lately. They are evolving a set of read / write account and transaction API, as well as public data APIs for som...
What We Need To Be Machine Readable At API Run Time
I had breakfast with Mike Amundsen (@mamund) and Matt McLarty (@MattMcLartyBC) of the CA API Academy team this morning in midtown this morning. As we were sharing stories of what each other was wo...
The Business of Running Government As A Microservices Platform
I recently wrote a response to a recent Department of Veterans Affairs RFI which contained a section about the business of operating government as a microservices platform.I know that many folks w...
An Open Banking API Portal Blueprint
I have been learning all about the banking API efforts out of Open Banking in the UK lately. They are evolving a set of read / write account and transaction API, as well as public data APIs for som...
February 28, 2018
What Is The Streamdata.io API Gallery?
As I prepare to launch the Streamdata.io API Gallery, I am doing a handful of presentations to partners. As part of this process I am looking to distill down the objectives behind the gallery, and...
Three Areas I Would Like To Cover When We Sit Down For An API Consulting Session
I’m putting together some presentations for a handful of upcoming engagements, where I’m wanting to help my audience understand what an initial engagement will look like. While I am looking to hav...
Mapping Out The API Landscape
As I prepare to launch the Streamdata.io API Gallery, I am doing a handful of presentations to partners. As part of this process I am looking to distill down the objectives behind the gallery, and...
What Is The Streamdata.io API Gallery?
As I prepare to launch the Streamdata.io API Gallery, I am doing a handful of presentations to partners. As part of this process I am looking to distill down the objectives behind the gallery, and...
February 27, 2018
Three Areas I Would Like To Cover When We Sit Down For An API Consulting
I’m putting together some presentations for a handful of upcoming engagements, where I’m wanting to help my audience understand what an initial engagement will look like. While I am looking to hav...
February 27, 2018
One Of The Best API Getting Started I Have Come Across
I’m working my way through banking and Fintech companies in the UK, and I stumbled across the Starling banking API. I began doing my usual clicking around as I do with any API, looking at the docu...
The Banking API Actors In The UK
I’ve been profiling the work of the Open Banking Implementation Entity when nit comes to banking API standards in the UK. As part of my getting up to speed on the banking ecosystem in the UK, and ...
Round Two Of The Department of Veterans Affairs Lighthouse Platform RFI
I’m spending some more time thinking about APIs at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), in response to round two of their request for information (RFI). A couple months back I had responded to...
Round Two Of The Department of Veterans Affairs Lighthouse Platform RFI
I’m spending some more time thinking about APIs at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), in response to round two of their request for information (RFI). A couple months back I had responded to...
February 24, 2018
AWS IAM-Like Policies For AWS API Gateway And Marketplace Billing
The primary reason I’ve been adopting more AWS solutions as part of my API stack, and using tools I have historically felt lock me into the AWS ecosystem, is the available of AWS identity and acce...
Provisioning A Default App And Keys For Your API Consumers On Signup
I sign up for a lot of APIs. I love anything that reduces friction when on-boarding, and allows me to begin making an API call in 1-3 clicks. I’m a big fan of API providers that allow me to signup...
An Open Banking in the UK OpenAPI Template
After learning more about what Open Banking is doing for APIs in the UK, I realized that I needed an OpenAPI template for the industry specification. There are six distinct schema available as part...
An Opportunity Around Providing A Common OpenAPI Enum Catalog
I’m down in the details of the OpenAPI specification lately, working my way through hundreds of OpenAPI definitions, trying to once again make sense of the API landscape at scale. I’m working to p...
What Is Open Banking In The UK?
I am profiling banks in the UK as part of an effort move forward my API Stack work, and populate the Streamdata.io API Gallery. One significant advantage that banks in the UK have over other count...
An Open Banking in the UK OpenAPI Template
After learning more about what Open Banking is doing for APIs in the UK, I realized that I needed an OpenAPI template for the industry specification. There are six distinct schema available as part...
February 21, 2018
Relationship Between OpenAPI Path, Summary, Tags and AysncAPI Topics
I’m working my way through several hundred OpenAPI definitions that I have forked from APIs.guru, Any API, and have automagically generated from API documentation scrape scripts I have developed o...
People Who Provide Enum For Their OpenAPI Definitions Are Good People
I’m processing a significant amount of OpenAPI definitions currently, as well as crafting a number of them from scraped API documentation. After you work with a lot of OpenAPI definitions, aiming ...
Relationship Between OpenAPI Path, Summary, Tags and AysncAPI Topics
I’m working my way through several hundred OpenAPI definitions that I have forked from APIs.guru, Any API, and have automagically generated from API documentation scrape scripts I have developed o...
February 20, 2018
Insecurity Around Providing Algorithmic Transparency And Observability Using APIs
I’m working on a ranking API for my partner Streamdata.io to help quantify the efficiencies they bring to the table when you proxy an existing JSON web API using their service. I’m evolving an alg...
Using Jekyll And OpenAPI To Evolve My API Documentation And Storytelling
I’m reworking my API Stack work as independent sets of Jekyll collections. Historically I just dumped all APIs.json, and OpenAPIs into the central data folder, and grouped them into folders by com...
Using Jekyll And OpenAPI To Evolve My API Documentation And Storytelling
I’m reworking my API Stack work as independent sets of Jekyll collections. Historically I just dumped all APIs.json, and OpenAPIs into the central data folder, and grouped them into folders by com...
February 16, 2018
Insecurity Around Providing Algorithmic Transparency And Observability Using
I’m working on a ranking API for my partner Streamdata.io to help quantify the efficiencies they bring to the table when you proxy an existing JSON web API using their service. I’m evolving an alg...
February 16, 2018
The Importance of the API Path Summary, Description, and Tags in an OpenAPI Definition
I am creating a lot of OpenAPI definitions right now. Streamdata.io is investing in me pushing forward my API Stack work, where I profile API using OpenAPI, and index their operations using APIs.j...
A Really Nice API Application Showcase Over At The Intrinio Market Data API
I am profiling financial market data APIs currently, and as I’m doing my work profiling APIs, I’m always on the hunt for interesting elements of their API operations that I can showcase for my read...
How Big Or Small Is An API?
I am working to build out the API Gallery for Streamdata.io, profiling a wide variety of APIs for inclusion in the directory, adding to the wealth of APIs that could be streamed using the service....
Some Common Features Of An API Application Review Process
I received a tweet from my friend Kelly Taylor with USDS, asking for any information regarding establishing an “approve access to production data” for developers. He is working on an OAuth + FHIR ...
The Importance of the API Path Summary, Description, and Tags in an OpenAPI
I am creating a lot of OpenAPI definitions right now. Streamdata.io is investing in me pushing forward my API Stack work, where I profile API using OpenAPI, and index their operations using APIs.j...
February 15, 2018
Code Generation Of OpenAPI (fka Swagger) Still The Prevailing Approach
Over 50% of the projects I consult on still generate OpenAPI (fka Swagger) from code, rather then the other way around. When I first begin working with any API development group as an advisor, str...
The Growing Importance of Github Topics For Your API SEO
When you are operating an API, you are always looking for new ways to be discovered. I study this aspect of operating APIs from the flip-side–how do I find new APIs, and stay in tune with what API...
A Summary Of AWS API Gateway As An API Deployment and Management Solution
I was providing an overview of Kong, AWS API Gateway, and other solutions for a team I’m advising a couple weeks back. I was just looking to distill down some of the key features, and provide an o...
Your Microservices Effort Will Fail Because You Will Never Decouple Your Business
I’m regularly surprised by companies who are doing microservices which are failing to see the need the change organizational culture, and that microservices will be some magic voodoo to fix all th...
Your Microservices Effort Will Fail Because You Will Never Decouple Your
I’m regularly surprised by companies who are doing microservices which are failing to see the need the change organizational culture, and that microservices will be some magic voodoo to fix all th...
February 14, 2018
Code Generation Of OpenAPI (fka Swagger) Still The Prevailing Approach
Over 50% of the projects I consult on still generate OpenAPI (fka Swagger) from code, rather then the other way around. When I first begin working with any API development group as an advisor, str...
February 14, 2018
A Summary Of AWS API Gateway As An API Deployment and Management Solution
I was providing an overview of Kong, AWS API Gateway, and other solutions for a team I’m advising a couple weeks back. I was just looking to distill down some of the key features, and provide an o...
February 14, 2018
A Summary Of Kong As An API Management Solution
I was breaking down what the API management solution Kong delivers for a customer of mine, and I figured I’d take what I shared via the team portal, and publish here on the blog. It is an easy way...
Aggregating Multiple Github Account RSS Feeds Into Single JSON API Feed
Github is the number one signal in my API world. The activity that occurs via Github is more important than anything I find across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social channels. Commits t...
Having A Developer.[YourDomain] Is Clear Differentiator In The API Game
I am profiling US, UK, French, and German banks as part of some research I am doing for Streamdata.io. I am profiling how far along in the API journey these banks are, and one clear differentiator...
Streaming And Event-Driven Architecture Represents Maturity In The API Journey
Working with Streamdata.io has forced a shift in how I see the API landscape. When I started working with their proxy I simply saw it about doing API in real time. I was hesitant because not every...
Streaming And Event-Driven Architecture Represents Maturity In The API Journey
Working with Streamdata.io has forced a shift in how I see the API landscape. When I started working with their proxy I simply saw it about doing API in real time. I was hesitant because not every...
February 13, 2018
A Summary Of Kong As An API Management Solution
I was breaking down what the API management solution Kong delivers for a customer of mine, and I figured I’d take what I shared via the team portal, and publish here on the blog. It is an easy way...
February 13, 2018
More Outputs Are Better When It Comes To Establishing An API Observability Ranking
I’ve been evolving an observability ranking for the APIs I track on for a couple years now. I’ve bene using the phrase to describe my API profiling and measurement approach since I first learned a...
Labeling Your High Usage APIs and Externalizing API Metrics Within Your API Documentation
I am profiling a number of market data APIs as part of my research with Streamdata.io. As I work my way through the process of profiling APIs I am always looking for other interesting ideas for st...
Be Clear About Your API Pricing
I’m profiling a large number of APIs right now, and I am ranking APIs based upon how easy or difficult they are to access. Whether or not an API provide has a business model is part of the ranking...
A Dedicated Guest Blogger Program For Your API
I get endless waves of people wanting to “guest post” on API Evangelist. It isn’t something I’m interested in because of the nature of API Evangelist, and that it really is just my own stream of c...
More Outputs Are Better When It Comes To Establishing An API Observability
I’ve been evolving an observability ranking for the APIs I track on for a couple years now. I’ve bene using the phrase to describe my API profiling and measurement approach since I first learned a...
February 12, 2018
Labeling Your High Usage APIs and Externalizing API Metrics Within Your API
I am profiling a number of market data APIs as part of my research with Streamdata.io. As I work my way through the process of profiling APIs I am always looking for other interesting ideas for st...
February 12, 2018
You Have to Know Where All Your APIs Are Before You Can Deliver On API Governance
I wrote an earlier article that basic API design guidelines are your first step towards API governance, but I wanted to introduce another first step you should be taking even before basic API desi...
Riot Games Regional API Endpoints
I’m slowly categorizing all the APIs I find who are offering up some sort regional availability as part of their operations. With the easy of deployment using leading cloud services, it is somethi...
Consistency in Branding Across API Portals
I recently watched a BBC documentary about the history of the branding used as part of the London Underground. I’m pretty absorbed lately with using public transit as an analogy for complex API im...
Keeping API Schema Simple For Wider Adoption
One aspect of my talk at APIDays Paris this last week, included a slide about considering to allow API consumers to negotiate CSV responses from our API. Something that would probably NEVER occur ...
Riot Games Regional API Endpoints
I’m slowly categorizing all the APIs I find who are offering up some sort regional availability as part of their operations. With the easy of deployment using leading cloud services, it is somethi...
February 6, 2018
Consistency in Branding Across API Portals
I recently watched a BBC documentary about the history of the branding used as part of the London Underground. I’m pretty absorbed lately with using public transit as an analogy for complex API im...
February 6, 2018
API Quota API, Webhooks, and Server-Sent Events (SSE)
I am profiling market data APIs as part of my partnership with Streamdata.io. It is a process I enjoy, because it provides me with a number of interesting stories I can tell here on API Evangelist...
The More We Know About You The More API Access You Get
I’ve been trash talking APIs that identify me as part of some sort of sales funnel, and automate the decision around whether or not I get access to their API. My beef isn’t with API providers prof...
Learning About The Headers Used for gRPC over HTTP/2
I am learning more about gRPC and HTTP/2, as part of the recent expansion of my API toolbox. I’m not a huge fan of Protocol Buffers, however I do get the performance gain they introduce, but I am ...
I Appreciate The Request To Jump On Phone But I Have Other APIs To Test Drive
Streamdata.io is investing in my API Stack work as we build out their API Gallery of valuable data streaming APIs. I’m powering through hundreds of APIs and using my approach to profiling APIs tha...
The More We Know About You The More API Access You Get
I’ve been trash talking APIs that identify me as part of some sort of sales funnel, and automate the decision around whether or not I get access to their API. My beef isn’t with API providers prof...
February 5, 2018
Learning About The Headers Used for gRPC over HTTP/2
I am learning more about gRPC and HTTP/2, as part of the recent expansion of my API toolbox. I’m not a huge fan of Protocol Buffers, however I do get the performance gain they introduce, but I am ...
February 5, 2018
I Appreciate The Request To Jump On Phone But I Have Other APIs To Test Drive
Streamdata.io is investing in my API Stack work as we build out their API Gallery of valuable data streaming APIs. I’m powering through hundreds of APIs and using my approach to profiling APIs tha...
February 5, 2018
API Is Not Just REST
This is one of my talks from APIDays Paris 2018. Here is the abstract: The modern API toolbox includes a variety of standards and methodologies, which centers around REST, but also includes Hyper...
A Regulatory Subway Map For PSD2
This is one of my talks from APIDays Paris 2018. Here is the abstract: Understanding the PSD2 regulations unfolding for the banking industry is a daunting challenge for banks, aggregators, and reg...
Shifting Gears Between the Technology and Politics of APIs
I’ve been working on two talks for API Days in Paris next week. These talks are at two opposite ends of the API spectrum for me. The first one, API Is Not Just REST, is rooted in the technology of...
Where Am I In The Sales Funnel For Your API?
I’m signing up for a large number of new APIs lately as part of a project I am working on. It is pretty normal for me to sign up for a couple new APIs a week, or 10-20 within a month, but right no...
Helping Define Stream(Line)Data.io As More Than Just Real Time Streaming
One aspect of my partnership with Streamdata.io is about helping define what it is that Streamdata.io does–internally, and externally. When I use any API technology I always immerse myself in what...
I Want to Be Able to POST and PUT and Receive Credits on My API Bill
I’ve been thinking about the potential for measuring value exchange at the API management level a lot more lately, and while I’m working on a project to profile banks that are needing to comply wi...
Helping Define Stream(Line)Data.io As More Than Just Real Time Streaming
One aspect of my partnership with Streamdata.io is about helping define what it is that Streamdata.io does–internally, and externally. When I use any API technology I always immerse myself in what...
January 24, 2018
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The Role of European Banking Authority (EBA) When It Comes To PSD2
As part of my continued effort to break down the Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) in Europe, and develop my awareness of how the regulations are intended, as well as the reality on the ground w...
The Role of European Banking Authority (EBA) When It Comes To PSD2
As part of my continued effort to break down the Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) in Europe, and develop my awareness of how the regulations are intended, as well as the reality on the ground w...
January 23, 2018
Key Points From The Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2)
I’m immersed in studying the Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) in Europe, which includes an API definition to help enable the interoperability they are looking to achieve as part of the regulati...
AWS API Gateway OpenAPI Vendor Extensions
I was doing some work on the AWS API Gateway, and as I was going through their API documentation I found some of the OpenAPI vendor extensions they use as part of operations. These vendor extensio...
A Health Check Response Format for HTTP APIs
My friend Irakli Nadareishvili, has published a new health check response format for HTTP APIs that I wanted to make sure was documented as part of my research. The way I do this is write a blog p...
Developing a Microservice to Orchestrate Long Running Background Server-Sent Events
I am working to understand the value that Streamdata.io brings to the table, and one of the tools I am developing is a set of APIs to help me measure the difference in data received for normal API...
Developing a Microservice to Orchestrate Long Running Background Server-Sent
I am working to understand the value that Streamdata.io brings to the table, and one of the tools I am developing is a set of APIs to help me measure the difference in data received for normal API...
January 19, 2018
Docker Engine API Has OpenAPI Download At Top Of Their API Docs
I am a big fan API providers taking ownership of their OpenAPI definition, which enables API consumers to download a complete OpenAPI then import into any client tooling like Postman, using it to ...
Five APIs to Guide You on Your Way to the Data Dark Side
I was integrating with the Clearbit API, doing some enrichment of the API providers I track on, and I found their API stack pretty interesting. I’m just using the enrichment API, which allows me t...
API Management and the Measurement of Value Exchanged
The concept of API management has been around for a decade now, and is something that is now part of the fabric of the cloud with services like AWS API Gateway. API management is about requiring a...
API Transit Basics: Deprecation
This is a series of stories I’m doing as part of my API Transit work, trying to map out a simple journey that some of my clients can take to rethink some of the basics of their API strategy. I’m ...
January 17, 2018
#Deprecation
Breaking Down The Value Of Real Time APIs
I am working to evolve an algorithm for Streamdata.io that helps measure the benefits of their streaming service. There are a couple layers to what they offer as a company, but as I dive into this...
API Management and the Measurement of Value Exchanged
The concept of API management has been around for a decade now, and is something that is now part of the fabric of the cloud with services like AWS API Gateway. API management is about requiring a...
January 17, 2018
API Transit Basics: Training
This is a series of stories I’m doing as part of my API Transit work, trying to map out a simple journey that some of my clients can take to rethink some of the basics of their API strategy. I’m ...
January 16, 2018
#Training
Transit Authorities Need to Understand that API Management Means More Control and Revenue
As I look through the developer, data, and API portals of transit authorities in cities around the United States, one thing is clear–they are all underfunded, understaffed, and not a priority. Thi...
The Value of Historical Transit Data When it Comes to Machine Learning
I’m working through the different ways that transit authorities can generate more revenue from their data using APIs as part of my work with Streamdata.io. Making data streaming and truly more rea...
Moving Beyond A Single API Developer Portal
I am working with a number of different groups who are using developer portals in some very different ways once they have moved beyond the concept that API developer portals are just for use in th...
January 16, 2018
#Portals
API Transit Basics: Support
This is a series of stories I’m doing as part of my API Transit work, trying to map out a simple journey that some of my clients can take to rethink some of the basics of their API strategy. I’m ...
January 16, 2018
#Support
Providing a Guest API Key
I’m spending time immersed in the world of transit data and APIs lately, and found a simple, yet useful approach to helping onboard developers over at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Auth...
Transit Authorities Need to Understand that API Management Means More Control
As I look through the developer, data, and API portals of transit authorities in cities around the United States, one thing is clear–they are all underfunded, understaffed, and not a priority. Thi...
January 16, 2018
API Transit Basics: Communication
This is a series of stories I’m doing as part of my API Transit work, trying to map out a simple journey that some of my clients can take to rethink some of the basics of their API strategy. I’m ...
January 15, 2018
#Communications
Can I Resell Your API?
Everyone wants their API to be used. We all suffer from “if we build it, they will come” syndrome in the world of APIs. If we craft a simple, useful API, developers will flock to it and integrate ...
API Transit Basics: Security
This is a series of stories I’m doing as part of my API Transit work, trying to map out a simple journey that some of my clients can take to rethink some of the basics of their API strategy. I’m ...
January 15, 2018
#Security
An Organized Approach to OpenAPI Vendor Extensions Across API Teams
One of aspects of a project I’ve been assisting with recently involves helping define, implement, and organize the usage of OpenAPI vendor extensions across a distributed microservice development ...
January 15, 2018
#Definitions
Orchestrating API Integration, Consumption, and Collaboration with the Postman API
You hear me say it all the time–if you are selling services and tooling to the API sector, you should have an API. In support of this way of thinking I like to highlight the API service providers ...
API Life Cycle Basics: Testing
Every API should be tested to ensure it delivers what is expected of it. All code being deployed should meet required unit and code tests, but increasingly API testing is adding another layer of a...
January 12, 2018
#Testing
API Transit Basics: SDKs
Software Development Kits (SDKs), and code libraries in a variety of programming languages have always been a hallmark of API operations. Some API pundits feel that SDKs aren’t worth the effort to...
January 12, 2018
#SDK
AWS Has Head Start Helping Navigate Regulatory Compliance In The Cloud
I’m providing API guidance on a project being delivered to a government agency, as part of my Skylight partnership, and found myself spending more time looking around the AWS compliance department...
Orchestrating API Integration, Consumption, and Collaboration with the Postman
You hear me say it all the time–if you are selling services and tooling to the API sector, you should have an API. In support of this way of thinking I like to highlight the API service providers ...
January 12, 2018
"API Transit Basics: SDKs\t"
Software Development Kits (SDKs), and code libraries in a variety of programming languages have always been a hallmark of API operations. Some API pundits feel that SDKs aren’t worth the effort to...
January 12, 2018
API Life Cycle Basics: Clients
I broke this area of my research into a separate stops a couple years back, as I saw several new types of service providers emerging to provide a new type of web-based API client. These new tools ...
January 11, 2018
#Clients
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Bus Time API Supports Service Interface for Real Time Information (SIRI)
The General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) format for providing access to transit data has dominated the landscape for most of the time I have been researching transit data and APIs over the la...
API Life Cycle Basics: Documentation
API documentation is the number one pain point for developers trying to understand what is going on with an API, as they work to get up and running consuming the resources they possess. From many ...
January 11, 2018
#Documentation
Working With General Transit Feed Specification(GTFS) Realtime Data
I’ve been diving into the world of transit data, and learning more about GTFS and GTFS Realtime, two of the leading specifications for providing access to static and real time transit data. I’ve b...
OpenAPI Will Help You Get Your API House In Order
I wrote a piece previously about Consul not supporting Swagger documentation at this time, and the API provider and consumer impact of this decision. I’m going to continue picking on Consul with a...
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Bus Time API Supports Service
The General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) format for providing access to transit data has dominated the landscape for most of the time I have been researching transit data and APIs over the la...
January 11, 2018
How Do We Keep Teams From Being Defensive With Resources When Doing APIs?
I was talking with the IRS about their internal API strategy before Christmas, reviewing the teams current proposal before they pitched in across teams. One of the topics that came up, which I tho...
Building An API Partner Program For Streamdata.io
I am working with Streamdata.io on a number of fronts when it comes to our partnership in 2018. One of the areas I’m helping them build, is the partner program around their API service. I’m taking...
API Life Cycle Basics: Portal
A coherent strategy to delivering and operating API portals is something that gets lost in a number of the API operations I am asked to review. It is also one of the more interesting aspects of th...
January 10, 2018
#Portal
API Life Cycle Basics: DNS
DNS is one of those shadowy things that tends to be managed by a select few wizards, and the rest of an organization doesn’t have much knowledge, awareness, or access at this level. APIs has shift...
January 10, 2018
#DNS
Some Of The Thinking Behind The Protocols Used By Kafka
I’ve been studying the overall Apache Stack a lot lately, with an emphasis on Kafka. I’m trying to understand what the future of APIs will hold, and where the leading edge of real time, event-driv...
We Are Not Supporting OpenAPI (fka Swagger) As We Already Published Our Docs
I was looking for an OpenAPI for the Consul API to use in a project I’m working on. I have a few tricks for finding OpenAPI out in the wild, which always starts with looking over at APIs.guru, the...
We Are Not Supporting OpenAPI (fka Swagger) As We Already Published Our Docs
I was looking for an OpenAPI for the Consul API to use in a project I’m working on. I have a few tricks for finding OpenAPI out in the wild, which always starts with looking over at APIs.guru, the...
January 10, 2018
How Do We Keep Teams From Being Defensive With Resources When Doing APIs?
I was talking with the IRS about their internal API strategy before Christmas, reviewing the teams current proposal before they pitched in across teams. One of the topics that came up, which I tho...
January 10, 2018
Building An API Partner Program For Streamdata.io
I am working with Streamdata.io on a number of fronts when it comes to our partnership in 2018. One of the areas I’m helping them build, is the partner program around their API service. I’m taking...
January 10, 2018
API Life Cycle Basics: Portal
A coherent strategy to delivering and operating API portals is something that gets lost in a number of the API operations I am asked to review. It is also one of the more interesting aspects of th...
January 10, 2018
API Life Cycle Basics: API Logging
Logging has always been in the background of other stops along the API lifecycle, most notably the API management layer. However increasingly I am recommending pulling logging out of API managemen...
January 9, 2018
#Logging
A Blueprint For An Augmented Transit API
I’m working through research on the world of transit APIs as part of my partnership with Streamdata.io. From what I’ve gathered so far, the world of transit data and APIs is quite a mess, and ther...
API Life Cycle Basics: API Management
The need to manage APIs is one of the older aspects of doing business with web APIs. Beginning around 2006, then maturing, and being baked into the cloud and markets by 2016. Whether it is through...
January 9, 2018
#Management
The Data Behind The Washington Post Story On Police Shootings in 2017
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...
Generating Revenue From The Support Of Public Data Using APIs
I’m exploring the different ways that public data access via APIs can be invested in, even with the opportunity for generating revenue, but without charging access to the data itself. I want publi...
The Child Welfare Digital Services (CWDS) Certification, Approval, and Licensing Services (CALS) API
My partner Chris Cairns(@cscairns) over at Skylight sent me a link to the Child Welfare Digital Services (CWDS) Certification, Approval, and Licensing Services (CALS) API on Github the other day. ...
The Child Welfare Digital Services (CWDS) Certification, Approval, and
My partner Chris Cairns(@cscairns) over at Skylight sent me a link to the Child Welfare Digital Services (CWDS) Certification, Approval, and Licensing Services (CALS) API on Github the other day. ...
January 9, 2018
Seeing Reflections From The Past Rippling In The API Pool When I Translated WSDL To OpenAPI
I was looking for the API definition and schema for the Service Interface for Real Time Information (SIRI) standard, but all they have were WSDL and XSDs. I am working with the Metropolitan Transi...
API Life Cycle Basics: Gateway
API gateways have long played a role in providing access to backend resources via web services and APIs. This is how web services have historically been deployed, but it is also how modern web API...
Looking For THE Answer Instead Of Developing An Understanding Of Good API Design
I recently worked with a large team on a microservices and API governance training a couple months back, where I saw a repeating pattern that I’ve experienced with other large enterprise groups. T...
January 8, 2018
#Design
API Life Cycle Basics: Deployment
There are many ways to deploy an API, making this another confusing stop along the API life cycle for some of my readers. My goal in having this be a separate stop from design, or possibly managem...
January 8, 2018
#Deployment
I Created An OpenAPI For The Hashicorp Consul API
I was needing an OpenAPI (fka Swagger) definition for the Hashicorp Consul API, so that I could use in a federal government project I’m advising on. We are using the solution for the microservices...
Understanding Events Across Your API Platform In Real Time
I spend a lot of time trying to understand and define what is API. With my new partnership with Streamdata.io I’m pushing that work into understanding APIs in real time, and as part of event-drive...
Seeing Reflections From The Past Rippling In The API Pool When I Translated
I was looking for the API definition and schema for the Service Interface for Real Time Information (SIRI) standard, but all they have were WSDL and XSDs. I am working with the Metropolitan Transi...
January 8, 2018
Looking For THE Answer Instead Of Developing An Understanding Of Good API
I recently worked with a large team on a microservices and API governance training a couple months back, where I saw a repeating pattern that I’ve experienced with other large enterprise groups. T...
January 8, 2018
API Discovery Is Mostly About You Sharing Stories About The APIs You Use
I do a lot of thinking about API discovery, and how I can help people find the APIs they need. As part of this thinking I’m always curious why API discovery hasn’t evolved much in the last decade....
API Transit Basics: Mocking
This is a series of stories I’m doing as part of my API Transit work, trying to map out a simple journey that some of my clients can take to rethink some of the basics of their API strategy. I’m ...
Keeping Things In The Club By Drowning Everyone In API Complexity
After seven years of doing API Evangelist I have learned a lot about the realities of the technology sector, versus my own beliefs. One of the things that attracted me to web APIs in the first pla...
January 4, 2018
#Politics of APIs
Keeping Things In The Club By Drowning Everyone In API Complexity
After seven years of doing API Evangelist I have learned a lot about the realities of the technology sector, versus my own beliefs. One of the things that attracted me to web APIs in the first pla...
January 4, 2018
API Transit Basics: Mocking
This is a series of stories I’m doing as part of my API Transit work, trying to map out a simple journey that some of my clients can take to rethink some of the basics of their API strategy. I’m ...
January 4, 2018
API Discovery Is Mostly About You Sharing Stories About The APIs You Use
I do a lot of thinking about API discovery, and how I can help people find the APIs they need. As part of this thinking I’m always curious why API discovery hasn’t evolved much in the last decade....
January 4, 2018
API Life Cycle Basics: Database
This is a series of stories I’m doing as part of my API Transit work, trying to map out a simple journey that some of my clients can take to rethink some of the basics of their API strategy. I’m ...
January 3, 2018
#Database
API Life Cycle Basics: Database
This is a series of stories I’m doing as part of my API Transit work, trying to map out a simple journey that some of my clients can take to rethink some of the basics of their API strategy. I’m ...
January 3, 2018
#Database
API Transit Basics: API Design
This is a series of stories I’m doing as part of my API Transit work, trying to map out a simple journey that some of my clients can take to rethink some of the basics of their API strategy. I’m ...
The Transit Feed API Is A Nice Blueprint For Your Home Grown API Project
I look at a lot of APIs. When I land on the home page of an API portal, more often than not I am lost, confused, and unsure of what I need to do to get started. Us developers are very good at comp...
Alexa Voice Skills Are The Poster Child For Your Enterprise API Efforts
I was sitting in an IT architectural planning meeting for a large enterprise organization the other day, and one of the presentation from one of the executives contained a complex diagram of their...
API Transit Basics: API Definitions
This is a series of stories I’m doing as part of my API Transit work, trying to map out a simple journey that some of my clients can take to rethink some of the basics of their API strategy. I’m ...
API Transit Basics: API Design
This is a series of stories I’m doing as part of my API Transit work, trying to map out a simple journey that some of my clients can take to rethink some of the basics of their API strategy. I’m ...
January 3, 2018
API Transit Basics: API Definitions
This is a series of stories I’m doing as part of my API Transit work, trying to map out a simple journey that some of my clients can take to rethink some of the basics of their API strategy. I’m ...
January 3, 2018
Alexa Voice Skills Are The Poster Child For Your Enterprise API Efforts
I was sitting in an IT architectural planning meeting for a large enterprise organization the other day, and one of the presentation from one of the executives contained a complex diagram of their...
January 3, 2018
My Evolving Definition Of A Robust And Diverse API Toolbox
It is always telling when folks assume I mean REST when I say API. While the web dominates my definition of API, and REST is definitely a leading architectural style, these assumptions always defin...
Treating All APIs Like They Are Public
I was talking with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) about their internal API strategy the week before Christmas, sharing my thoughts on the strategy that they were pitching internally when it co...
The National Transit Database (NTD) Needs To Be An API
I’ve been looking for sources of transit data as part of some research I’m doing with Streamdata.io. Like most industries I study as part of my API research, it is a mess. There is no single sourc...
API Transit - The Basics
I have been evolving my approach to mapping out all the stops along my API research, using a subway map approach lately. It has been something I’ve been working on since 2014, and had developed as...
API Discovery Will Be About Finding Companies Who Do What You Need And API Is Assumed
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...
December 20, 2017
#Discovery
Basic API Design Guidelines Are Your First Step Towards API Governance
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...
I Am Now Realizing That Streamdata.io Is Not Just For API Providers
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...
Understanding Server-Sent Events (SSE) As Part Of The API Landscape
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 ...
Basic API Design Guidelines Are Your First Step Towards API Governance
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...
December 20, 2017
API Discovery Will Be About Finding Companies Who Do What You Need And API Is
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...
December 20, 2017
JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Patch
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...
From CI/CD To A Continuous Everything (CE) Workflow
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...
No More Scraping Of Banking Data In Europe According to PSD2, Only APIs
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...
Robust Public Storytelling Around Your API Process Is Sign Of Maturity
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...
Robust Public Storytelling Around Your API Process Is Sign Of Maturity
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...
December 19, 2017
No More Scraping Of Banking Data In Europe According to PSD2, Only APIs
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...
December 19, 2017
From CI/CD To A Continuous Everything (CE) Workflow
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...
December 19, 2017
Definition-Driven API Lifecycle Instead Of Code-Driven API Deployment
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...
What You Can Expect As A Client From SOAP To gRPC
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 ...
Reducing Polling Of Your Existing API Using Streamdata.io
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...
Streaming Data From The Google Sheet JSON API And Streamdata.io
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 ...
What You Can Expect As A Client From SOAP To gRPC
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 ...
December 18, 2017
Definition-Driven API Lifecycle Instead Of Code-Driven API Deployment
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...
December 18, 2017
Cost Saving Analysis For Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) Data APIs
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...
API Evangelist And Streamdata.io
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 ...
December 11, 2017
#Partners
Warming Up API Providers We Are Targeting For Using Streamdata.io With Storytelling
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...
Warming Up API Providers We Are Targeting For Using Streamdata.io With
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...
December 11, 2017
Cost Saving Analysis For Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
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...
December 11, 2017
Will APIs Still Be Relevant?
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. ...
December 6, 2017
#Politics of APIs
The Shifting API Landscape
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...
What Is More Important? Having An API? Or Having A Well-Designed API?
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...
The Picture We Paint With The Stories We Tell Around Each API Version Release
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...
API Deployment Templates As Part Of A Wider API Governance Strategy
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...
The Picture We Paint With The Stories We Tell Around Each API Version Release
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...
December 5, 2017
Narrowing In On My API Governance Strategy Using API Transit To Map Out PSD2
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...
Being Able To See Your Database In XML, JSON, and CSV
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...
Facebook Quietly Deprecates The Audience Insight API Used To Automate Targeting During The Election
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...
December 4, 2017
#Social
#Advertising
#Politics of APIs
#Business of APIs
#Elections
#Russia
#Targeting
Narrowing In On My API Governance Strategy Using API Transit To Map Out PSD2
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...
December 4, 2017
Facebook Quietly Deprecates The Audience Insight API Used To Automate
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...
December 4, 2017
The Conversational Interface Appetite For Data Via APIs
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...
How Do You Ask Questions Of Data Using APIs?
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...
How To Say You Might Charge For API Access In The Future Without Being A Jerk
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...
How To Say You Might Charge For API Access In The Future Without Being A Jerk
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...
December 1, 2017
SQL Statement Pass-Through Using Web APIs
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...
The Average Person Will Never Care About APIs Until It Does Something Meaningful
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...
Troubling Terms of Service Changes From Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) Data APIs
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....
Troubling Terms of Service Changes From Washington Metropolitan Area Transit
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....
November 30, 2017
The Average Person Will Never Care About APIs Until It Does Something
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...
November 30, 2017
Sorry Your API Effort Falls A Little Short For The APIs I Cover
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...
AsyncAPI Is A Specification Format For Message-Driven APIs
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...
API Deployment Is About Publishing Them Wherever They Are Needed
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...
Sorry Your API Effort Falls A Little Short For The APIs I Cover
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...
November 29, 2017
Making Your API Pricing Page Accessible To Everyone
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...
The OpenAPI-Powered Mock API Server From Stripe
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...
Getting A Handle On Our Database Schema Using APIs
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...
The OpenAPI-Powered Mock API Server From Stripe
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...
November 28, 2017
Multi-Region APIs Using AWS API Gateway
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...
Hints of Banking API Regulations From CFPB With Consumer Authorized Financial Data Sharing And Aggregation Rules
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 (...
Making Sure You Operate In The Cloud Marketplaces As An API Service Provider
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...
The Defensive Database Administrator And The Eager Blockchain Believer
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...
When You Believe Everything In Tech Is New And Nothing Repeats Itself
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!...
November 21, 2017
#Politics of APIs
Day 2,638: APIs Are Dumb
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...
Generating Operational Revenue From Public Data Access Using API Management
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...
November 20, 2017
#City Government
#State Government
#Federal Government
#Data
#Monetization
#Plans
#Management
The Many Meanings Of "Do Not Make The Same Mistake As Twitter Did With Their API"
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...
API Management Is About Awareness And Control Over Our Digital Resources
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...
We Love What You Do In The API Space But Could You Do It Our Way
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...
My Basic YAML For Starter API Plans
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...
We Love What You Do In The API Space But Could You Do It Our Way
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...
November 17, 2017
The Many Meanings Of "Do Not Make The Same Mistake As Twitter Did With Their
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...
November 17, 2017
My Basic YAML For Starter API Plans
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...
November 17, 2017
Three Stripe OpenAPI Vendor Extensions
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...
The Information You Get When Allowing Developers To Sign Up For An API Using Github
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...
You Thinking I Mean REST When I Say API Is About Your Limited Views, Not Mine
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...
November 16, 2017
#Politics of APIs
Stripe Elements And How We Organize Our API Embeddables
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...
You Thinking I Mean REST When I Say API Is About Your Limited Views, Not Mine
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...
November 16, 2017
Three Stripe OpenAPI Vendor Extensions
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...
November 16, 2017
The Information You Get When Allowing Developers To Sign Up For An API Using
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...
November 16, 2017
Form Posts As Gateway For Showing People They Can Program The Web Using APIs
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...
Deploy Low Hanging Fruit Rogue API Portals For Those Who Are Behind The Curve
<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...
Headless CMS And The API Evolution Beyond WordPress
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...
Twitter Finally Begins To Monetize Their APIs
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...
Headless CMS And The API Evolution Beyond WordPress
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...
November 15, 2017
The SEO Benefits Of Publishing Your API Operations To Github
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 ...
Glitch Is Where You Will Learn The Essential Human Side Of Operating Your API
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...
Could I Please Get An API Discovery Tool That Evaluates An OpenAPI Diff
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 Added A Simple Bulk API For My Human Services Data API
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 Added A Simple Bulk API For My Human Services Data API
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...
November 14, 2017
Could I Please Get An API Discovery Tool That Evaluates An OpenAPI Diff
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...
November 14, 2017
I Added A Taxonomy API To Support The Human Services Data API (HSDA)
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 Added A Taxonomy API To Support The Human Services Data API (HSDA)
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...
Stripes OpenAPI Is Available On Github In Version 3.0
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...
Locking Up Any Open Data Taxonomy Is Short Sighted In Todays Online Environment
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 Finally Have A Weekly Email Newsletter Roundup Of API Evangelist Posts
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...
Locking Up Any Open Data Taxonomy Is Short Sighted In Todays Online
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...
November 12, 2017
I Can Keep Evangelizing The Same API Stories For The Next Decade In Government
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...
Admitting There Is So Much I Do Not Understand Makes Be Better At APIs
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...
November 10, 2017
#Politics of APIs
Are People Ready For An Online API-Driven World That Is Programmable?
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...
You Can Lead A Horse To Water But You Cannot Make Them Drink--The API Edition
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 Can Keep Evangelizing The Same API Stories For The Next Decade In Government
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...
November 10, 2017
Are People Ready For An Online API-Driven World That Is Programmable?
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...
November 10, 2017
Admitting There Is So Much I Do Not Understand Makes Be Better At APIs
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...
November 10, 2017
The Impact Of API Management On API Security
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...
Using APIs To Manage My APIs
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...
Learning To Play Nicely With Others Using APIs
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 ...
The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) And API Security
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...
November 9, 2017
#Security
Using APIs To Manage My APIs
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...
November 9, 2017
APIs And Other Ways Of Serving Up Machine Learning Models
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...
The API Evangelist API Security Industry Guide
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 ...
November 8, 2017
#Security
I Appreciate This API Walk Through From Fannie Mae But Just Give Me The API!
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 ...
Additional Call Pricing Info Are The Pressure Relief Valves For API Plans
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 Appreciate This API Walk Through From Fannie Mae But Just Give Me The API!
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 ...
November 8, 2017
APIs And Other Ways Of Serving Up Machine Learning Models
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...
November 8, 2017
Additional Call Pricing Info Are The Pressure Relief Valves For API Plans
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...
November 8, 2017
When We Are Told That API Security Investments Will Affect Profitability
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...
Hiding APIs In Plain Sight
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...
Postman As A Live Coding Environment In Presentations At APIStrat
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...
Developing A Talent Pool Within Your API Community
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...
Developing A Talent Pool Within Your API Community
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...
November 7, 2017
A Simple API Using AWS RDS, Lambda, and API Gateway
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 ...
November 6, 2017
API Security Beginning To Outweigh My Vendor Lock-In Concerns
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...
An Example Of How Every API Provider Should Be Using OpenAPI Out Of The Slack Platform
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...
An Example Of How Every API Provider Should Be Using OpenAPI Out Of The Slack
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...
November 6, 2017
I Like The Scope Of The AWS SDK for JavaScript
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 Like The Scope Of The AWS SDK for JavaScript
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...
My Response On The Department Of Veterans Affairs (VA) RFI For The Lighthouse API Management Platform
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...
My Response On The Department Of Veterans Affairs (VA) RFI For The Lighthouse
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...
October 26, 2017
We Are All Using APIs
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...
I Am Talking About Jekyll As A Hypermedia Client At APIStrat in Portland OR Next Week
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...
Helping Business Users Get Over Perceived Technical Gaps When It Comes To API Design
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...
A Suite Of Human Services API Definitions Using OpenAPI
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...
I Am Talking About Jekyll As A Hypermedia Client At APIStrat in Portland OR
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...
October 25, 2017
Helping Business Users Get Over Perceived Technical Gaps When It Comes To API
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...
October 25, 2017
Some New API Evangelist Art
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...
The API Portal Outline For A Project I Am Working On
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 ...
AWS API Gateway Export In OpenAPI and Postman Formats
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...
Your API Road Map Helps Others Tell Stories About Your API
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 ...
Your API Road Map Helps Others Tell Stories About Your API
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 ...
October 24, 2017
AWS API Gateway Export In OpenAPI and Postman Formats
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...
October 24, 2017
APIs Reduce Everything To A Transaction
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 ...
Budget API Management Using Github
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...
A Simple API With AWS DynamoDB, Lambda, and API Gateway
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...
API Monetization Framework As Introduced By AWS Marketplace
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...
API Monetization Framework As Introduced By AWS Marketplace
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...
October 23, 2017
API Management Dashboard: The Provider View
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...
October 20, 2017
#Management
Selling Your AWS API Gateway Driven API Through The AWS Marketplace
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...
API Management Dashboard: The Consumer View
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...
October 20, 2017
#Management
API Developer Account Usage Basics
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...
API Developer Account Basics
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...
Selling Your AWS API Gateway Driven API Through The AWS Marketplace
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...
October 20, 2017
API Management Dashboard: The Consumer View
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...
October 20, 2017
The Tractor Beam Of The Database In An API World
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...
Adding Ping Events To My Webhooks And API Research
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...
Using APIs To Enrich The Data You Have In Spreadsheets
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...
Importing OpenAPI Definition To Create An API With AWS API Gateway
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...
Importing OpenAPI Definition To Create An API With AWS API Gateway
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...
October 19, 2017
Most API Developers Will Not Care As Much As You Do
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 Maturity At Capital One
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...
AdWords API Release and Sunset Schedule For 2018
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 Your API Portal Using Github
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...
The Basics Of API Management
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...
October 16, 2017
#Management
Bots, Voice, And Conversational APIs Are Your Next Generation Of API Clients
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...
Air, An Asthma API
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...
Everything Is Headless In A Decoupled API World
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...
Obfuscating The Evolving Code Behind My API
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...
Provide An Open Source Threat Information Database And API Then Sell Premium Data Subscriptions
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...
Their Security Practices Are Questionable But Their Communication Is Unacceptable
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 ...
The gRPC Meetup Kit
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...
The API Coaches At Capital One
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...
Their Security Practices Are Questionable But Their Communication Is
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 ...
October 11, 2017
The gRPC Meetup Kit
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...
October 11, 2017
Provide An Open Source Threat Information Database And API Then Sell Premium
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...
October 11, 2017
Explore, Download, API, And Share 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 ...
Connecting Service Level Agreements To API Monitoring
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...
Algorithmic Observability Should Work Like Machine Readable Food Labels
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...
A Guest Blogger Program To Create Unique Content For Your API
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...
Connecting Service Level Agreements To API Monitoring
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...
October 10, 2017
A Guest Blogger Program To Create Unique Content For Your API
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...
October 10, 2017
Treating Your APIs Like They Are Infrastructure
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...
Learning About API Governance From Capital One DevExchange
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...
Publishing Your API Road Map Using Trello
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...
Communication Strategy Filler Using Sections Of Your API Documentation
</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 ...
Learning About API Governance From Capital One DevExchange
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...
October 9, 2017
Communication Strategy Filler Using Sections Of Your API Documentation
</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 ...
October 9, 2017
Publish, Share, Monetize Machine Learning APIs
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 ...
Thinking About Why We Rate Limit Our APIs
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...
The API Management Landscape Has Shifted More Than I Anticipated
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...
October 6, 2017
#Management
A Couple More Questions For The Equifax CEO About Their Breach
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...
The API Management Landscape Has Shifted More Than I Anticipated
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...
October 6, 2017
Teaching My Client Three Approaches To Modular UI Design Using Their APIs
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 ...
How API Evangelist Works
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...
Show The API Call Behind Each Dashboard Visualization
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 ...
Big Data Is Not About Access Using Web APIs
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...
Show The API Call Behind Each Dashboard Visualization
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 ...
October 5, 2017
Big Data Is Not About Access Using Web APIs
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...
October 5, 2017
APIs Used To Give Us Access To Resources That Were Out Of Our Reach
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...
API Providers Should Provide Observability Into Government Developer Accounts
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...
Letting Go In An API World Is Hard To Do
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...
Sharing Top Sections From Your API Documentation As Part Of Your Communications Strategy
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...
Sharing Top Sections From Your API Documentation As Part Of Your
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...
October 4, 2017
APIs Used To Give Us Access To Resources That Were Out Of Our Reach
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...
October 4, 2017
Clearly Designate API Bot Automation Accounts
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...
Looking At The 37 Apache Data Projects
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...
Temporal Logic of Actions For APIs
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...
Database To Database Then API, Instead Of Directly To API
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...
Looking At The 37 Apache Data Projects
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...
October 3, 2017
The Waves Of API Driven Bots Invading Our Shores
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...
The CA Acquisition Of Runscope
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 ...
October 2, 2017
#Acquisitions
Learning About API Design With Resources That Matter To You
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...
OpenAPI Definitions For Entire Schema.org Vocabulary (Do Not Reinvent Wheel)
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...
OpenAPI Definitions For Entire Schema.org Vocabulary (Do Not Reinvent Wheel)
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...
October 2, 2017
The API Stack For Disrupting The World
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...
Developing The Ability To Repeat The Same API Stories Over And Over
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...
Tyk Is Conducting API Surgery Meetups
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...
API Design Industry Guide: GraphQL, A Query Language For APIs
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, ...
The API Stack For Disrupting The World
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...
September 29, 2017
Developing The Ability To Repeat The Same API Stories Over And Over
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...
September 29, 2017
API Design Industry Guide: gRPC, Open Source RPC Framework
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, ...
How Do We Help Folks Understand That APIs Are A Journey?
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...
API Design Industry Guide: The Restlet Platform Story
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, ...
APIStrat And The OpenAPI Initiative
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...
Thinking Beyond Just Distributed API Scale Towards Federated API Scale
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...
September 27, 2017
#Scale
#Politics of APis
#City Government
#County Government
#State Government
#Federal Government
API Design Industry Guide: Application-Level Profile Semantics (ALPS)
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, ...
A Reminder To Always Have A Plan B For Our API Related Github Infrastructure
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...
The Value of API Driven Events
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...
Caching For Your API Is Easier Than You Think And Something You Should Invest In
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...
Thinking Beyond Just Distributed API Scale Towards Federated API Scale
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...
September 27, 2017
Caching For Your API Is Easier Than You Think And Something You Should Invest
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...
September 27, 2017
API Design Industry Guide: API Stylebook
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, ...
September 26, 2017
#Design
Keeping The Web API Layer In Kafka With A REST Proxy
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...
Why Does AWS Charge By Usage And Other APIs Still Use Plans?
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...
APIs Are Not Just About Mobile, Make Sure You Are Considering The Bigger Picture
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...
Concerns Around Working With The API Evangelist At Large Organizations
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 ...
Keeping The Web API Layer In Kafka With A REST Proxy
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...
September 26, 2017
Concerns Around Working With The API Evangelist At Large Organizations
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 ...
September 26, 2017
APIs Are Not Just About Mobile, Make Sure You Are Considering The Bigger Picture
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...
September 26, 2017
Latest Copy Of The API Evangelist API Design Industry Guide
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...
September 25, 2017
#Design
Considering The Future Of The OpenAPI Initiative
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’...
September 25, 2017
#Definitions
Data Streaming In The API Landscape
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...
Talking With More Federal Agencies About API Micro Consulting
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...
Providing Embeddable API Integrations For Non-Developers With Zapier
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...
Providing Embeddable API Integrations For Non-Developers With Zapier
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...
September 25, 2017
Not Everyone Needs API Scale, Some Just Need API
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...
I Am A Professional In My Industry, Where Should I Begin With APIs?
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....
That Point Where API Session Management Become API Surveillance
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...
The Concept Of API Management Has Expanded So Much the Concept Should Be Retired
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 Not A Card Carrying Restafarian I Just Believe In The Web
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...
Getting Beyond OpenAPI Being About API Documentation
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...
The Concept Of API Management Has Expanded So Much the Concept Should Be
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...
September 21, 2017
That Point Where API Session Management Become API Surveillance
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...
September 21, 2017
Using Jekyll As A Hypermedia Client
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 “...
Looking To 2024, What Do APIs Look Like?
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...
What Were The Main API Developments In 2017
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...
September 20, 2017
#Business of APIs
What Are The Unsolved Problems In The API Space?
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...
What Are The Unsolved Problems In The API Space?
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...
September 20, 2017
Using Jekyll As A Hypermedia Client
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 “...
September 20, 2017
What APIs Excite Me And Fuels My Research And Writing
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...
Who Are The Most Influential People And Companies To Keep An Eye On In API Space
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...
September 19, 2017
#Evangelism
What Is The Biggest Challenge For Big Companies Doing APIs?
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...
September 19, 2017
#Politics of APIs
What Has Been The Biggest Change In The Industry Since I Started API Evangelist
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...
September 19, 2017
#Business of APIs
Who Are The Most Influential People And Companies To Keep An Eye On In API
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...
September 19, 2017
What Has Been The Biggest Change In The Industry Since I Started API
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...
September 19, 2017
What APIs Excite Me And Fuels My Research And Writing
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...
September 19, 2017
Why Did We Need The API Evangelist?
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...
September 18, 2017
#Evangelism
What Is The Role Of An Influencer In The API Industry?
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...
September 18, 2017
#Evangelism
Why Was My Week of API Rants So Well Received?
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...
September 18, 2017
#Politics of APIs
What It Was About Web APIs That First Captured My Attention?
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...
Why Was My Week of API Rants So Well Received?
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...
September 18, 2017
Regulations Creeping In On AI, ML, Cognitive, And Other Fronts
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...
September 15, 2017
#Regulations
Sensibly Thinking About Where Technology Ends And The Human Part Begins With APIs
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...
I Do Not Fear AI, I Fear The People Doing AI
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...
September 15, 2017
#Artificial Intelligence
#Machine Learning
#Observability
#Transparency
#Algorithms
I Will See You At APIStrat In Portland This November
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 ...
Sensibly Thinking About Where Technology Ends And The Human Part Begins With
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...
September 15, 2017
I Will See You At APIStrat In Portland This November
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 ...
September 15, 2017
Using 3rd Party APIs To Break You Out Of Your Enterprise Bubble
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...
Lost In API Transit
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...
A Sample OpenAPI 3.0 File To Get Started
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...
September 13, 2017
#Definitions
Kubernetes JSON Schema Extracted From OpenAPI
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...
VersionEye SDK Security Notifications
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...
Webhook Delivery Headers From Github API
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...
Machine Readable Definitions For All Things API, Including Your Bots
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...
OpenAPI 3.0 Tooling Discovery On Github And Social Media
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 ...
My Favorite Part Of OpenAPI 3.0 Is The Components Object
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 US Postal Service Wakes Up To The API Management Opportunity In New Audit
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 US Postal Service Wakes Up To The API Management Opportunity In New Audit
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...
September 12, 2017
Machine Readable Definitions For All Things API, Including Your Bots
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...
September 12, 2017
Always Being Prepared For An API Future That May Not Come
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...
API Education Is Needed But Rarely Prioritized In The Current Environment
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...
Making Sure Definitions In OpenAPI Are Robust For Use In Schema Validation
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...
Version 1.2 Draft Of The Human Services Data API
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 ...
Version 1.2 Draft Of The Human Services Data API
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 ...
September 11, 2017
API Education Is Needed But Rarely Prioritized In The Current Environment
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...
September 11, 2017
When I Look At The Landscape Of API Services & Tooling I See The Future Of Technical Debt
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 ...
I Wish I Had Time To Tell That API Story
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...
Responding To A Webhook
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...
September 8, 2017
#Webhooks
Cloud Marketplace Becoming The New Wholesale API Discovery Platform
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 ...
When I Look At The Landscape Of API Services & Tooling I See The Future Of
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 ...
September 8, 2017
I Wish I Had Time To Tell That API Story
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...
September 8, 2017
Automatically Generating OpenAPI From A YAML Dataset Using Jekyll
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...
Why I Like A Service Mindset Over A Resource Focus When It Comes To APIs
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...
All Federal Government Public API Projects Should Begin With A Github Repo
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...
An OpenAPI Contract For The Freedom Of Information
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, ...
Why I Like A Service Mindset Over A Resource Focus When It Comes To APIs
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...
September 7, 2017
All Federal Government Public API Projects Should Begin With A Github Repo
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...
September 7, 2017
When To Build Or Depend On An API Service Provider
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 ...
Github OAuth Applications As A Blueprint
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. ...
Azure Matching AWS When It Comes To Serverless Storytelling
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 ...
Keeping Things One Dimensional To Go From API To Spreadsheet In One Step
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...
"Keeping Things One Dimensional To Go From API To Spreadsheet In One Step"
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...
September 6, 2017
Azure Matching AWS When It Comes To Serverless Storytelling
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 ...
September 6, 2017
Just Waiting The GraphQL Assault Out
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...
A New Minimum Viable Documentation(MVD) Jekyll Template For APIs
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...
API Evangelist Is A Performance
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...
Acknowledging The Good In The API Space
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...
September 5, 2017
#Politics of APIs
A New Minimum Viable Documentation(MVD) Jekyll Template For APIs
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...
September 5, 2017
The Why (And End) Of The Unhinged (Decoupled) API Evangelist Rant Week
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...
September 1, 2017
#Politics of APIs
The Fact That You Do Not Know Who I Am Shows You Live In A Silo
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 Think You Are So Smart You Did Not Conduct Any Due Diligence Before Launching Your API
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...
You Have No API Imagination, Creativity, Or Sensibility
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 Think You Are So Smart You Did Not Conduct Any Due Diligence Before Launching
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...
September 1, 2017
You Have No API Imagination, Creativity, Or Sensibility
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 ...
September 1, 2017
The Why (And End) Of The Unhinged (Decoupled) API Evangelist Rant Week
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...
September 1, 2017
The Fact That You Do Not Know Who I Am Shows You Live In A Silo
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...
September 1, 2017
Your Lack Of Investment In API Education Will Be The End Of Your API Service
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...
Admit It You Do Not Respect Your API Consumers And End Users
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...
The API Space Is In The Tractor Beam Of The Cloud Giants Now
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...
APIs Will Just Get More Unreliable As Funding Becomes More Volatile
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...
Admit It You Do Not Respect Your API Consumers And End Users
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...
August 31, 2017
Your APIs Are An Invasive Species
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...
You Like What I Do As The API Evangelist? Sure, I Will Do More Work For Free!
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 ...
Sorry The Stock Options For Your API Startup Do Me More Harm Than Good
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 Realize That This Is A Hit On Your API Budget, But It Is My Rent For This Month
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...
Holding Little Guys More Accountable Than We Do VCs And Bigcos
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 Like What I Do As The API Evangelist? Sure, I Will Do More Work For Free!
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 ...
August 30, 2017
I Realize That This Is A Hit On Your API Budget, But It Is My Rent For This
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...
August 30, 2017
Holding Little Guys More Accountable Than We Do VCs And Bigcos
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...
August 30, 2017
Your Microservices Effort Will Fail Just Like Your API And SOA Initiatives
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...
The Reason For Your API Security Breach: You Did Nothing
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...
Extract As Much Value As You Can From Your API Community And Give Nothing Back
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...
The Reason Your API Sucks Is There Are No Women And People Of Color On Your Team
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....
The Reason Your API Sucks Is There Are No Women And People Of Color On Your
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....
August 29, 2017
The Reason For Your API Security Breach: You Did Nothing
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...
August 29, 2017
Your Internal Dysfunction Is Not My API Problem
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...
API Rants vs. API Research
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...
August 28, 2017
#Politics of APIs
Disaster API Rate Limit Considerations
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...
This Weeks Troubling API Patent
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...
Disaster API Rate Limit Considerations
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...
August 28, 2017
API Rants vs. API Research
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...
August 28, 2017
County Level Marijuana Regulation In California Using APIs
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...
Looking At Facebook Blueprint As I Study API Training Programs
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...
August 22, 2017
#Training
Considering How Machine Learning APIs Might Violate Privacy and Security
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...
Thank You Tony
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...
The First Question When Starting An API Is Always: Should We Be Doing This?
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...
August 21, 2017
#Definitions
Making Sense Of API Activity With Webhook Events
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 ...
API Foraging And Wildcraft
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 ...
API Deployment Comes In Many Shapes And Sizes
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...
August 21, 2017
#Deployment
HTTP Status Codes And The Politics Of APIs
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...
The Patent Application Information Retrieval Bulk Data API
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 ...
Testing Out The Concept Of API Transit Instead Of API Lifecycle
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...
Where Are All The API Focused Agencies?
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...
August 17, 2017
#Agencies
Where Are All The API Focused Agencies?
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...
August 17, 2017
The 85 Stops Along The API Lifecycle That I Track On
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 ...
August 16, 2017
#Lifecycle
Wildcard Webhook Events
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...
August 16, 2017
#Webhooks
The Importance Of API Stories
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...
API Kindergarten For Business And IT Leaders
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...
The 85 Stops Along The API Lifecycle That I Track On
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 ...
August 16, 2017
API Kindergarten For Business And IT Leaders
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...
August 16, 2017
Which Platforms Have Control Over The Conversation Around Their Bots
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...
The ElasticSearch Security APIs
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...
Where To Begin With Webhooks For The Human Services Data API
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...
Addressing Bulk API Operations As Separate Set Of Services
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...
Which Platforms Have Control Over The Conversation Around Their Bots
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...
August 15, 2017
The ElasticSearch Security APIs
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...
August 15, 2017
Some Microservice Thoughts Around My Human Services API Work
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 ...
Decoupling The Business Of My Human Services Microservice
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...
API Platform FAQ And QA Responsibility
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...
Investing The Time To Learn API Best Practices So You Do Not Reinvent The Wheel
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 ...
Investing The Time To Learn API Best Practices So You Do Not Reinvent The
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 ...
August 14, 2017
API Platform FAQ And QA Responsibility
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...
August 14, 2017
Link Relation Types for APIs
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 ...
About api.data.gov
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...
Embeddable API Tooling Discovery With JSON Home
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...
A Hack Day Event To Help The Link-SF App Speak Human Services Data Specification (HSDS)
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...
A Hack Day Event To Help The Link-SF App Speak Human Services Data
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...
August 11, 2017
Image Logging With Amazon S3 API
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...
Patent Number 9325732: Computer Security Threat Sharing
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,...
My Focus On Public APIs Also Applies Internally
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...
Observability In Botnet Takedown By Government On Private Infrastructure
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...
My Focus On Public APIs Also Applies Internally
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...
August 10, 2017
Continuous Integration And Deployment For Government Procurement
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...
August 9, 2017
#Regions
An Open Source API Security Intelligence Gathering, Processing, And Distribution Framework
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 ...
Open Sourcing Your API Like VersionEye
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...
A Fresh Look At The Embeddable Tools Built On The Twitter API
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...
Continuous Integration And Deployment For Government Procurement
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...
August 9, 2017
An Open Source API Security Intelligence Gathering, Processing, And
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 ...
August 9, 2017
Patent #9397835, Web of trust management in a distributed system
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...
August 8, 2017
#Patents
HTTP as a Substrate
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 ...
API Message Integrity with JSON Web Token (JWT)
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...
Reducing Developers To A Transaction With APIs, Microservices, Serverless, Devops, and the Blockchain
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...
My URL Shortener Is Just An API With Postman As My Client
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 ...
Reducing Developers To A Transaction With APIs, Microservices, Serverless,
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...
August 8, 2017
Patent #9397835, Web of trust management in a distributed system
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...
August 8, 2017
My URL Shortener Is Just An API With Postman As My Client
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 ...
August 8, 2017
HTTP as a Substrate
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 ...
August 8, 2017
API Message Integrity with JSON Web Token (JWT)
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...
August 8, 2017
The Subtle Ways In Which Power Asserts Itself In Face Of API Engagements
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...
Slow Moving Ransomware As The New Business Model
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...
API Industry Standards Negotiation By Media Type
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...
Providing Code Citations In Machine Learning APIs
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...
Slow Moving Ransomware As The New Business Model
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...
August 7, 2017
When You See API Rate Limiting As Security
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 ...
Including API Dependencies Within Your API Definition
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...
Understanding The Words We Use To Describe Machine Learning APIs
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...
Understanding The Words We Use To Describe Machine Learning APIs
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...
August 4, 2017
Including API Dependencies Within Your API Definition
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...
August 4, 2017
Plugin Infrastructure For Every Stop Along The API Lifecycle
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 ...
When Describing Your Machine Learning APIs Work Extra Hard To Keep Things Simple
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...
Plugin Infrastructure For Every Stop Along The API Lifecycle
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 ...
API Discovery Using JSON Home
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, ...
Different Search Engines For API Discovery
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...
Microservice Discovery Using Pivio
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...
When Describing Your Machine Learning APIs Work Extra Hard To Keep Things
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...
August 3, 2017
Understanding Global API Performance At The Multi-Cloud Level
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...
Learning About Real-Time Advertising Bidding Transparency Using Ads.txt
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...
When Cities Use A Common API Definition To Report Non-Emergency Issues
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...
Making Sure Your API Service Connects To Other Stops Along The API Lifecycle
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,...
Making Sure Your API Service Connects To Other Stops Along The API Lifecycle
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,...
August 2, 2017
Craft An OpenAPI For An Existing Threat Intelligence Sharing API Specification
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...
U.S. Energy Information Administration Excel Add-In and Google Add-On
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...
API SDK Licensing Notifications Using VersionEye
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...
The Trusted Automated Exchange of Intelligence Information (TAXII)
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...
The Trusted Automated Exchange of Intelligence Information (TAXII)
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...
August 1, 2017
Professional API Deployment Templates
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 ...
July 31, 2017
#Deployment
Making The Business Of APIs More Modular Before You Do The Tech
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...
You See Duplicate Work While I See Common Patterns
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...
July 31, 2017
#Definitions
Balancing Domain Expertise With The Disruptive Power Of Upstarts Who Do APIs
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...
Balancing Domain Expertise With The Disruptive Power Of Upstarts Who Do APIs
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...
July 31, 2017
State of APIs In The Federal Government
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 ...
July 27, 2017
#Federal Government
We Have A Hostile CEO Which Requires A Shift In Our API Strategy
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 ...
A Lack Of Communication Around Federal Government APIs
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...
API Management Across All Government Agencies
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...
Adding Vulnerability Disclosure To My API Building Block Recommendations
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...
July 25, 2017
#Vulnerabilities
I Am Speaking On State Of APIs In Federal Government Thursday In DC
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...
Federal Government APIs In A Trump Administration
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...
July 24, 2017
#Federal Government
The Hack Education Gates Foundation Grant Data Has An API
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...
Finding Things I Want To Write About When APIs Are Dumb
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...
First Handful Of Lessons Using My Google Sheet Github Approach
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 ...
Structured Threat Information Expression (STIX)
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...
July 21, 2017
#Security
Requiring ALL Platform Partners Use The API So There Is A Registered Application
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...
Misconceptions About What OpenAPI Is(nt) Still Slowing Conversations
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...
Structured Threat Information Expression (STIX)
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...
July 21, 2017
Requiring ALL Platform Partners Use The API So There Is A Registered
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...
July 21, 2017
Misconceptions About What OpenAPI Is(nt) Still Slowing Conversations
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...
July 21, 2017
Charles Proxy Generated HAR To OpenAPI Using API Transformer
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...
100K View Of Bot Space From The API Evangelist Perspective
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...
Managing Platform Terms of Service In A Site Policy Repository
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?...
The Plivo Support Portal And Knowledge Base
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...
July 20, 2017
#Support
The Plivo Support Portal And Knowledge Base
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...
July 20, 2017
More Investment In API Security
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...
July 19, 2017
#Security
The Most Important Aspect Of The API Discussion Is Learning To Think Outside Our Boxes
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...
Does Your Platform Have An Integrations Page?
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 ...
Containerized Microservices Monitoring Driving API Infrastructure Visualizations
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...
The Most Important Aspect Of The API Discussion Is Learning To Think Outside
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...
July 19, 2017
Containerized Microservices Monitoring Driving API Infrastructure
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...
July 19, 2017
One API Development Partner Every API Provider Should Have
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...
Specialized Collections Of Machine Learning APIs Could Be Interesting
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 ...
Diagramming The Components Of API Observability
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 ...
HTTP Status Codes Are An Essential Part Of API Design And Deployment
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...
Writing API Stories That Speak To But Also Influences Their View Of Technology
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...
July 17, 2017
#Communications
Bot Observability For Every Platform
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...
Making All Sub-Resources Available Within The Core Set Of Human Service APIs
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 ...
Writing API Stories That Speak To But Also Influences Their View Of Technology
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...
July 17, 2017
Learning More About Amazon Alexas Approach to APIs And Skills Development
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 ...
Learning More About Amazon Alexas Approach to APIs And Skills Development
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 ...
Quantifying The Difference Between Human Services Data Specification (HSDS) And Its API
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...
Moving The Human Services API Specification From Version 1.1 to 1.2
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...
Quantifying The Difference Between Human Services Data Specification (HSDS)
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...
July 13, 2017
Challenges When Aggregating Data Published Across Many Years
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...
20K, 40K, 60K, and 80K Foot Levels Of Industry API Design Guidance
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...
Providing Solid Examples That API Consumers Can Learn From Like Slack App Blueprints
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...
A Zapier Advocate And Dedicated API Resources Page For Your Company
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...
Providing Solid Examples That API Consumers Can Learn From Like Slack App
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...
July 12, 2017
Challenges When Aggregating Data Published Across Many Years
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...
July 12, 2017
Each Airtable Datastore Comes With Complete API and Developer Portal
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 Publish A Google Sheet To The Web It Also Becomes An API
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 ...
Either You Own The Conversation Around Your APIs Or Someone Else Will
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 ...
Locking Down Drones And IoT Devices By Manufacturers
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 Publish A Google Sheet To The Web It Also Becomes An API
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 ...
July 11, 2017
Github Serverless
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...
Having The Right Communications Pipeline For Your API Platform
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...
Being First With Any Technology Trend Is Hard
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...
Opportunity To Develop A Threat Intelligence Aggregation API
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...
Opportunity To Develop A Threat Intelligence Aggregation API
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...
July 10, 2017
Having The Right Communications Pipeline For Your API Platform
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...
July 10, 2017
When JSON Schema Is Seen As Power
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...
The Essential API Elements In My World
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...
OpenAPI Leading The Open Banking API Conversation
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...
Does Your API Sandbox Have Malicious Users?
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...
Standardizing and Templatizing API Design Editor Validation Tips
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...
OpenAPI Leading The Open Banking API Conversation
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...
July 6, 2017
Enhancing Your API SEO
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...
A Bot That Actually Does Useful Things For Me
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...
An API Change Log And Road Map Visualization
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...
Bringing The API Deployment Landscape Into Focus
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...
A Bot That Actually Does Useful Things For Me
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...
July 5, 2017
The Growing Importance of Geographic Regions In API Operations
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...
Electronic Submission of Injury and Illness Records to OSHA
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 ...
Electronic Submission of Injury and Illness Records to OSHA
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 ...
Making An Account Activity API The Default
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 ...
Shared Publishing Of Data and API Projects, Portals, and Dashboards Using Github
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...
Shared Publishing Of Data and API Projects, Portals, and Dashboards Using Github
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...
The Growing Importance of Geographic Regions In API Operations
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...
June 29, 2017
Algorithmic Observability In Predictive Policing
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 ...
Continue To Explore Restaurant Menu as an Analogy for API Copyright and Patents
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...
June 28, 2017
#Copyright
API Preparation At The Bureau For The 2020 Census
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...
I Have Two APIs I Am Interested In And I Am Not A Developer--What Do I Do?
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...
I Have Two APIs I Am Interested In And I Am Not A Developer--What Do I Do?
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...
June 28, 2017
Continue To Explore Restaurant Menu as an Analogy for API Copyright and
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...
June 28, 2017
Algorithmic Observability In Predictive Policing
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 ...
June 28, 2017
The Open Service Broker API
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...
API Environment Portability
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 ...
Patent #US 20170153932: Adapting Legacy Endpoints To Modern APIs
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...
June 27, 2017
#Patents
I Published 60K Patents To Github As Part Of My API Patent Research
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...
Patent #US 20170153932: Adapting Legacy Endpoints To Modern APIs
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...
June 27, 2017
API Environment Portability
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 ...
June 27, 2017
Three New API Industry Groups On The Horizon
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...
Healthcare API Interoperability At HL7 FHIR Dev Days In Amsterdam
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...
Budget Transparency At The County Level With Open Data And APIs
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...
The Competitive Advantage Of API Agility Over Any Secret Sauce
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...
The Competitive Advantage Of API Agility Over Any Secret Sauce
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...
June 26, 2017
I Would Love To Reference Github Data Across Repos With [org].data.[object]
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...
June 22, 2017
#Github
API Plans Are Not Sustainable For My Small Business
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 ...
API Plans Are Not Sustainable For My Small Business
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 ...
June 22, 2017
Patent US9639404: API Matchmaking Using Feature Models
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...
Validating My API Schema As Part of My API Security Practices
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,...
Making Machine Learning Accessible To Spreadsheet Power Users
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...
June 21, 2017
#Machine Learning
I Am Working With Elastic Beam To Help Define API Security
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,...
June 21, 2017
#Security
Validating My API Schema As Part of My API Security Practices
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,...
June 21, 2017
Patent US9639404: API Matchmaking Using Feature Models
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...
June 21, 2017
Making Machine Learning Accessible To Spreadsheet Power Users
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...
June 21, 2017
Internet As Example Of Markets Working Things Out
Is this writing? Rural Broadband Mobile Not worth investing Left behind Vote in people who make it worst.
June 20, 2017
API Wrappers To Help Bring Machine Learning Into Focus
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...
Tightly Coupled To Our Mobile Phones
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...
The Unknown Unknowns Of API Security
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...
June 20, 2017
#Security
The General Services Administration API Strategy Considers How To Generate Revenue
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...
IDK Is Always The First Step To API Integration
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 ...
Tightly Coupled To Our Mobile Phones
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...
June 20, 2017
The Unknown Unknowns Of API Security
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...
June 20, 2017
API Wrappers To Help Bring Machine Learning Into Focus
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...
June 20, 2017
The Six Dimensions Of API Patents I Dwell On
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 ...
Three Rules Of My API Communication Strategy
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...
June 19, 2017
#Communications
I Would Like To See More API Test Drives
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 ...
The Unknown Unknowns Of API Security
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...
June 19, 2017
#Security
IDK Is Always The First Step To API Integration
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...
IDK Is Always The First Step To API Integration
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...
June 19, 2017
Data Access and API Strategy in the European Union
http://dret.typepad.com/dretblog/2017/06/data-access-and-api-strategy-in-the-european-union.html
June 17, 2017
Publishing Your API In The AWS Marketplace
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 Blueprints For Your API
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 Helping Set The Bar For Your API Community Code Standards
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...
Publishing Your API In The AWS Marketplace
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...
June 16, 2017
Zooming Out To The 100K Level Then Back To API Sea Level With OpenAPI And APIs.json
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, ...
A Community Approval Dimension When Adding, Updating, And Deleting Via API
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...
My API Communication Stack For The Human Services API Specification
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...
Zooming Out To The 100K Level Then Back To API Sea Level With OpenAPI And APIs.json
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, ...
June 15, 2017
The GSA API Standards With A Working Prototype API And Portal
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 ...
The Yes I Would Like To Talk Button When Signing Up For An API Platform
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...
The Successes And (Mostly) Failures Of A Developer Evangelist
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...
June 14, 2017
#Evangelism
Proprietary Views Of Your Taxonomy
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...
The Yes I Would Like To Talk Button When Signing Up For An API Platform
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...
June 14, 2017
The GSA API Standards With A Working Prototype API And Portal
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 ...
June 14, 2017
Weekly Roundups vs Short Stories
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...
June 13, 2017
#Communications
Setting The Rules For API Automation
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 Wish USA Facts Had A More Sophisticated API Embeddable And Sharing Strategy
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 ...
More Evangelism Will Be Needed To Move Banking API Conversation Forward
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...
More Evangelism Will Be Needed To Move Banking API Conversation Forward
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...
June 13, 2017
I Wish USA Facts Had A More Sophisticated API Embeddable And Sharing Strategy
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 ...
June 13, 2017
Revisiting GraphQL As Part Of My API Toolbox
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...
Recent API Paths
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...
June 12, 2017
#Design
Tweeting Out Your API Forum Conversations
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...
If Oracle Wants To Be Taken Seriously With Its API Campaign It Needs To Drop API Copyright Case
<,/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...
Tweeting Out Your API Forum Conversations
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...
June 12, 2017
If Oracle Wants To Be Taken Seriously With Its API Campaign It Needs To Drop
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...
June 12, 2017
I Like The Apicurio Road Map
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...
June 9, 2017
#Road Map
The APIs.json For Trade.gov
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....
The APIs.json For Trade.gov
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....
June 9, 2017
I Like The Apicurio Road Map
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...
June 9, 2017
Temporary Interaction Limits
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 ...
KDL: A Graphical Notation for Kubernetes API Objects
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...
Patents As A Measure Of Individual Success
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...
The Support Elements Of Your API Service Level Agreement
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...
Patent US 8954988: Automated Assessment of Terms of Service in an API Marketplace
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...
Patent US 8954988: Automated Assessment of Terms of Service in an API Marketplace
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...
June 8, 2017
APIs For Monitoring The Performance Of Your APIs
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...
A Conference Focused On Machine Learning APIs
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 ...
Transparency Around Every Company Who Has Access To Our Social Data Via An API
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 ...
Examples Of The OpenAPI Specification Used For Government APIs
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...
Examples Of The OpenAPI Specification Used For Government APIs
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...
June 7, 2017
The Effect of Visual Design and Information Content on Readers’ Assessments of API Reference Topics
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...
Patent US 8997069: API Descriptions
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...
Expanding On The API Acronym
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...
June 6, 2017
#101
APIs Are How Our Digital Selves are Learning To Speak With Each Other
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...
The Effect of Visual Design and Information Content on Readers’ Assessments
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...
June 6, 2017
Patent US 8997069: API Descriptions
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...
June 6, 2017
Expanding On The API Acronym
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...
June 6, 2017
Extending Your Apps Using Embeddable Serverless Webhooks
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...
Algorithmia Invests More Resources Into Machine Learning APIs For Working With Video
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...
Patent US9462011: Determining trustworthiness of API requests
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...
An API You Should Consider Emulating When Crafting Your SaaS / API Business
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...
Patent US9462011: Determining trustworthiness of API requests
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...
June 5, 2017
An API You Should Consider Emulating When Crafting Your SaaS / API Business
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...
June 5, 2017
Algorithmia Invests More Resources Into Machine Learning APIs For Working With
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...
June 5, 2017
The Depth And Dimensions Of Monitoring API Operations
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...
API Documentation From SDK Bridge
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...
The Github Repo Stripe Uses To Manage Their OpenAPI
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 (@...
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services API for Quality Payment Program Measures
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, ...
The Github Repo Stripe Uses To Manage Their OpenAPI
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 (@...
June 2, 2017
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services API for Quality Payment Program Measures
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, ...
June 2, 2017
When You Praise Good People In Government
They do good. When you tell them they suck. They suck. http://papyri.info/
June 1, 2017
Data Visualization And Storytelling Around Museum Collections Using APIs
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...
Heavier Investment In API Training Will Be Necessary
</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 ...
Managing Your Postman Collection Using Github
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...
Adding Three APIMATIC OpenAPI Extensions To The OpenAPI Toolbox
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...
An Example Of API Ethics Out Of Cambridge University
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...
A Perception Of Patent And Copyright Overlapping When It Comes To APIs
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...
API Providers Localizing Compute For Developers Using Serverless
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...
Exploring The Possibilities With My Drone Prototype API
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...
Apicurio Is The Open Source Visual API Design Editor I Was Looking For
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...
Apicurio Is The Open Source Visual API Design Editor I Was Looking For
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...
May 30, 2017
Every API Should Begin With A Github Repository
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...
Craft Your API Design Guide So You Can Move To Other Areas of The Lifecycle
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...
Craft Your API Design Guide So You Can Move To Other Areas of The Lifecycle
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...
May 25, 2017
Spreadsheet To Github For Sample Data CI
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...
How Twitter Handles Sorting For Their API
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...
Considering Using HTTP Prefer Header Instead Of Field Filtering For This API
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...
My API Design Checklist For This Version Of The Human Services Data API
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...
Considering Using HTTP Prefer Header Instead Of Field Filtering For This API
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...
May 24, 2017
Thinking About The Privacy And Security Of Public Data Using API Management
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...
Some Thoughts On OpenAPI Not Being The Solution
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...
Thinking About The Privacy And Security Of Public Data Using API Management
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...
May 23, 2017
Some Thoughts On OpenAPI Not Being The Solution
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...
May 23, 2017
Keen IO Pushing Forward The Data Schema Conversation
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 Goes All In On OpenAPI
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...
Keen IO Pushing Forward The Data Schema Conversation
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...
May 22, 2017
Evolving API SDKs at Google With Storage, Logging and Analytics
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...
Its Not Just The Technology: API Monitoring Means You Care
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...
On Device Machine Learning API Stack
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...
Its Not Just The Technology: API Monitoring Means You Care
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...
May 19, 2017
My Google Sheet Driven Product API And Web Page
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...
15 Topics To Help Folks See The Business Potential Of APIs
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...
The Parrot Sequoia API Is Nice And Simple For IoT
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...
15 Topics To Help Folks See The Business Potential Of APIs
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...
May 18, 2017
Focusing On What You Do Best While Leveraging APIs To Not Reinvent The Wheel
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...
May 17, 2017
#Analysis
Studying How Providers Are Supporting Batch API Requests
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...
JSON Schema For OpenAPI Version 3.0
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...
JSON Schema For OpenAPI Version 3.0
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...
May 17, 2017
Key Factors Determining Who Succeeds In The API and ML Marketplace Game
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...
The Human Services Schema Defines The Storage And The API Defines Access
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...
An OpenAPI Generator For Publishing To Github
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’...
The Human Services Schema Defines The Storage And The API Defines Access
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...
May 16, 2017
Google Spanner Is A Database With An API Core
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...
Generating Revenue From The Remarketing Tags On API Evangelist
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 ...
One Layer Of An API Ranking System Will Need To Be Domain Scoring
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...
One Layer Of An API Ranking System Will Need To Be Domain Scoring
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...
May 15, 2017
My New CMS For Manging My Network Of Github Sites
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...
May 15, 2017
My New CMS For Managing My Network Of Github Sites
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...
Helping Standardize How We Communicate About The API Integration Possibilities
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...
May 12, 2017
#Integration
API Integration Service Providers
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...
A New Look For API Evangelist
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...
May 12, 2017
#Evangelist
Using Public Lands As An Analogy When Talking About Public Data APIs
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...
My Challenges When Taking Money From Startups As The API Evangelist
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...
A HandFul Of Microsoft Flow OpenAPI Extensions
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...
Simple APIs With Jekyll And Github With Data Managed Via Google Spreadsheets
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...
In Search Of Some Funding For My Machine Learning API Research
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...
Adding An Extensions Category To The OpenAPI Toolbox
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 ...
The List Of API Signals I Track On In My API Stack Research
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...
May 9, 2017
#Research
Public And Private Sector Hybrid Data Marketplaces
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....
Pricing Tiers Works For SaaS But Not Really For APIs
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...
May 9, 2017
#Pricing
Regional Availability When It Comes To API Access
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...
Participating In The OpenAPI Feedback Loop
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...
OpenAPI-Driven Documentation For Your API With ReDoc
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...
The Value Of Operational Level API Exhaust Systems
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...
Taxation On Public Data Via The API Management Layer
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...
Quantifying The Data A Company Possesses Using APIs
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...
May 5, 2017
#Data
I Pushed 1173 API Definitions To The API Stack
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...
May 4, 2017
#Definitions
Open Discussions About Funding API Startups
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...
My New API Vendor Evaluation Checklist
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...
May 2, 2017
Defining The Surface Area Of The Facebook API
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 ...
May 2, 2017
#Facebook
Quantifying The API Landscape Across Amazon, Google, and Microsoft
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 ...
Expressing What An API Does As Well As What Is Possible Using OpenAPI
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 ...
Communication With Consumers Through The Design Of Our APIs
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...
Where Do I Start With APIs? Your Website!
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...
April 28, 2017
#Web
Where Do I Start With APIs? Your Existing Software Usage!
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...
April 28, 2017
#Usage
A View Of The API LIfecycle From James Higginbotham
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...
Wearing My Tech Vendor Hat When It Comes To Public Data
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...
SDK Generation, API Validation And Transformation Using The APIMATIC CLI
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...
API Definitions Should Be Done By The API Provider
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...
April 27, 2017
#Definitions
Zapier Was Pretty Savvy In Their Approach To Launching Their Partner API
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...
Simple API Design Interface Features
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...
My Concerns As A Public Data Steward
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...
Your Wholesale API For Sale In The Major API Marketplaces
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 ...
Google And AWS APIs Available In Visual Studio And Eclipse IDEs
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...
API Rate Limiting At The DNS Layer
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...
THe Concern Around Availability And Reliability Of Government APIs
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...
Separating The Licensing Layers Of Your Valuable Data Using APIs
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...
A Ranking Score to Determine If Your API Was SLA Compliant
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 ...
The SLA Is Becoming Standard Across Google APIs
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...
April 21, 2017
#SLA
How I Can Help Make Sure Your API Is Ready For Use
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...
Developing Internal API Curriculum And Workshops For Your Organization
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...
Continuous Integration Conversational Interfaces
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 ...
Stories Are The Best Way To Keep The Door Open
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...
Human Service APIs On AWS, Azure, Google, and Heroku
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...
Continous Integration Platform As A Service At The Command Line
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...
Protecting Our Valuable Data With APIs
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...
April 19, 2017
#Data
Google Partner API As A Blueprint For Other APIs
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 ...
April 19, 2017
#Blueprint
Google Needs To Get Their API Icon Set In Order
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...
YAML Templates For API Operations
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...
Log Files Are Only For When Things Go Wrong
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 Nice API Explorer
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...
Your API Should Reflect A Business Objective Not A Backend System
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...
More API Evangelists And Storytellers Please
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...
April 17, 2017
#Evangelist
Add An API To The Web For Sharing Text, URLs And Images
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...
The Evolution Of The API Strategy And Practice Conference
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...
April 14, 2017
#Strategy
Gearing Up For Enterprise Sales With An API Service Level Agreement
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...
From CRUD To An API Design Conversation With Human Services
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...
Tooling For Converting Your OpenAPI Definitions From 2.0 to 3.0
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...
Tooling For Converting Your OpenAPI Definitions From 2.0 to 3.0
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...
Playing With Different Views For An OpenAPI Diff Tool
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...
Six API Embeddables To Consider For Your API
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...
Open Source Drag And Drop API Lifecycle Design Tooling
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 ...
Exploring Github Curated Galleries
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...
April 12, 2017
#Github
What Questions Would You Ask Across 50K API Definitions?
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...
April 11, 2017
#Definitions
OpenAPI As An API Literacy Tool
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...
Getting Feedback From Your API Community When Developing APIs
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 ...
The Paradox Of API Evangelist
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...
April 10, 2017
#Evangelist
My Oxford Dictionaries Talk About The World Of APIs
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....
April 10, 2017
An Introduction To Github For API Providers
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 ...
Taking A Look At The Stoplight API Spec Editor
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...
March 31, 2017
#Editor
REST, Linked Data, Hypermedia, GraphQL, and gRPC
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...
Using Google Sheet Templates For Defining API Tests
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...
March 30, 2017
#Templates
Complimentary APIs For The Oxford Dictionaries API
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...
March 30, 2017
An Opportunity To Emulate Slack Buttons
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...
Learning To Use Our Words Better When Defining Our APIs
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...
March 29, 2017
#Learning
Helping Your Customers Operate Throughout The API LIfe Cycle
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 ...
March 29, 2017
#Customers
All API Startups Should Be More Like Glitch
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...
March 29, 2017
#Startups
I Think The Parse Twitter Page Sums It Up Pretty Well
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...
March 28, 2017
#Twitter
Being Able See An API Request In Browser Is Important
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...
API Definition: API Transformer
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...
March 28, 2017
#Definitions
I Predict A Future Flooded With Google Prediction Galleries
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...
API Definition: U.S. Data Federation
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...
API Definition: U.S. Data Federation
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...
A Looser More Evolvable API Contract With Hypermedia
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...
Uber Is Painting Bigger Picture Of Their Drivers With Driver API Partnerships
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...
Moving APIs Out Of The Partner Realm And Making Them More Public
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...
March 24, 2017
API Definition: WebConcepts.info
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...
API Definition: WebConcepts.info
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...
Sharing API Data Validation Examples
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...
Deploying Your APIs Exactly Where You Need Them
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...
March 23, 2017
API Definition: Open API Specification 3.0.0-RC0
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...
API Definition: Open API Specification 3.0.0-RC0
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...
Opportunity For Push Button API Deployment With Google Cloud Launcher
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...
API Icon Vocabulary
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...
March 22, 2017
#Vocabulary
API Definition: Human Services API Specification
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...
With Each API We Increase The Attack Surface Area
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...
Reminding Myself Of Why I Do API Evangelist
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...
March 21, 2017
#Evangelist
Considering Standards In Our API Design Over Being A Special Snowflake
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...
The OpenAPI Toolbox And My API Definition Research
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...
API Evangelist Industry Guide To API Definitions
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...
Google Support Buttons
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...
API Evangelist Industry Guide To API Definitions
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...
A Community Strategy For My API Definition Guide
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...
What Will It Take To Evolve OpenAPI Tooling to Version 3.0
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...
What Will It Take To Evolve OpenAPI Tooling to Version 3.0
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...
The Ability To Deploy APIs In AWS, Google, or Microsoft Clouds
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...
API Environment Variable Autocomplete And Tooltips In Postman
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...
Tracking On Licensing For The Solutions In My OpenAPI Toolbox
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,...
Thinking About Schema.org's Relationship To API Discovery
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...
Thinking About Schema.org's Relationship To API Discovery
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...
The Relationship Between Dev Relations And Support
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...
March 15, 2017
#Support
Getting Our Schema In Order With Postman's New Data Editor
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...
Azure and Office APIs in Visual Studio
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...
March 15, 2017
#Azure
A Tighter API Contract With gRPC
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...
Thinking About Schema.org's Relationship To API Discovery
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...
Getting Our Schema In Order With Postman's New Data Editor
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...
Getting Our Schema In Order With Postman's New Data Editor
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...
A Tighter API Contract With gRPC
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...
Lots Of Talk About Machine Learning Marketplaces
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...
Greyballing Is Embedded In API's DNA
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...
March 13, 2017
#DNA
Greyballing Is Embedded In API's DNA
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...
March 13, 2017
#DNA
Airmap's API Enabled Digital Notice And Awareness System
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...
Airmap's API Enabled Digital Notice And Awareness System
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...
Telling A More Complete Story With Hypermedia
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 ...
March 10, 2017
#Hypermedia
Focus On Having A Robust And Diverse API Toolbox
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...
March 10, 2017
#Toolbox
API Definitions Covering Both REST and gRPC APIs
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...
The Three Layers Of API Hype
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 ...
Guidance On Versioning Your API From Google
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...
From Awareness, Observability, To API Ratings
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...
People Doing Interesting Things With APIs
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...
March 8, 2017
#People
A Framework For Our All Day API Discussion
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 More To This Than Just Having An API
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...
The Tyk Wordpress API Portal
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...
March 7, 2017
#Portal
I Am Learning About gRPC APIs From Google
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 ...
Thinking About OpenAPI Provenance
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...
Please Develop An Embeddable Open Source Visual API Editor
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...
Do You have An API Design Guide For Your Operations?
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 Want To Just POST Information Directly To Your API Platform
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 Shares Their API Design Guide
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...
March 3, 2017
#Design
Deploy A Grape Doorkeeper Driven API To Heroku With A Click Of A Button
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...
My Developer Portal Checklist For A Human Services API
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 ...
Getting Back To Work On My OpenAPI Toolbox
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...
Dreaming Of A More Modular Event Driven API Monetization
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...
New York Times Manages Their OpenAPI Using Github
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...
Mapping Github Topics To My API Evangelist Research
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...
A Machine Readable Definition For Your AWS API Plan
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 ...
Will The Experian API Focus On The People Being Ranked?
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...
February 28, 2017
#People
The AWS Serverless API Portal
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 ...
A Checklist For API Observability
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...
February 28, 2017
#Observability
The API Definition For The Tyk API Gateway
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 Need Your Help With My API Definition Industry Guide
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...
An Example Of An API Service Provider Using Hypermedia
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...
February 27, 2017
#Hypermedia
A Well Thought Out API Platform
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 ...
February 20, 2017
#Platform
API Definitions Influencing API Design
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...
Trying To Define API Awareness
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 ...
API Lifecycle Service Providers Instead Of Walled Gardens
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...
Box's Seamless Approach To API Documentation
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...
February 14, 2017
#Documentation
Box's Seamless Approach To API Documentation
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...
February 14, 2017
#Documentation
API Life(middleware)Cycle API
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...
A CKAN OpenAPI Spec
.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...
Using Github As An API Index And Data Store
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...
The Reasons Why We Pull Back The Curtain On Technology
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...
Where Are The Interesting API Bookmarklet Examples?
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...
February 10, 2017
#Examples
What Do You Get When You Search For The Schema.org Logo?
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...
What Do You Get When You Search For The Schema.org Logo?
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...
Having A Program For Researchers Baked Into Your API Operations
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...
API Management Is Getting More Modular And Composable
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...
API Evangelist Joins The Open API Initiative (OAI)
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, ...
The Unlimited Possibilities When You Become API Definition Fluent
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...
February 8, 2017
#Definitions
Sharing Compute Costs For Open Data And API Consumers Using The Cloud
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...
API Embeddables In A Conversational Interface World
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 ...
Maintaining On Premise Capacity As Well As Cloud Expertise
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...
Helping Carry The Load When It Comes To Public Data And APIs
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...
Dedicated Space For Telling The Stories Of Your API Consumers
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...
What I Would Like To See From API Providers When It Comes To Public Analytics
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 ...
Application: The Action of Putting Something Into Operation
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...
API Definitions, Documentation And Hypermedia
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...
The Amazon Console Came After The API And CLI
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...
Preparing For Conversations About Schema, Definitions And Scopes
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...
Including End Users In the Conversation About Their Bits Being Sold
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...
Amazon Dash: Ok Idea. Dumb Implementations
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...
February 1, 2017
#Amazon
Amazon Dash: Ok Idea. Dumb Implementations
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...
February 1, 2017
#Amazon
A Limited Medium API Means I Do Not Always Curate What Is Published There
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...
The Importance Of APIs In Journalism Right Now
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...
January 31, 2017
#Journalism
If You Are Doing Interesting Things With APIs Please Tell The Story
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...
January 27, 2017
I Got A Response Regarding My Facebook Threat API Access
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...
Funding The Development Of An API Ranking Solution
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...
January 27, 2017
#Ranking
What Is At Stake With API Definitions At The Moment
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 ...
January 25, 2017
#Definitions
The OpenAPI Specification Version 3.0 Highlights
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...
The OpenAPI Specification Version 3.0 Highlights
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...
Pull The Social Media Accounts For Gov Using The US Digital Registry API
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...
Making Your API Portal Speak To The Widest Possible Audience
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...
Loss Of Primary and Foreign Keys Translating From Data Package to OpenAPI Spec
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...
Amazon Alexa Uses HTTP/2
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 ...
No Database Behind An API and Just Using Files Stored on Github
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 ...
Considering the Logging and Observability Layer for Amazon Alexa Enablement
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...
Adding The Webhose,io Search API To Stack Of APIs I Depend On
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...
Reducing Our Hard Work To A Transaction With APIs and Serverless
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...
January 20, 2017
#Serverless
The State of California Drinking Water Program Repository
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...
January 19, 2017
#Repository
Oracle Acquiring Apiary
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...
January 19, 2017
#Oracle
Focusing On Common API Definitions, Schema, Scopes and Specifications
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...
When We Lose Trust In The Reporting Numbers Our Providers Feed Us
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 ...
Patent #20150363171: Generating Virtualized API From Narrative API Documentation
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...
January 17, 2017
#Documentation
What Are The Goals Behind Launching An API Portal?
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...
Profiling Facebook ThreatExchange API
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...
No Innovation Around Terms of Service Reveals True Motives
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...
Requiring SSL For API All Calls
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...
IFTTT vs Zapier vs DataFire
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...
A Missed Opportunity With The Medium API
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...
Why I Still Believe In APIs--The 2017 Edition
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...
January 12, 2017
Using An OpenAPI Spec As Central Truth In Stakeholder Discussions
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...
The Google Baseline For A User Account Area
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,...
Your State Issued ID Is Required To Signup For This Online Service
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 ...
Intercom Providing Docker Images Of Their SDKs
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...
Evernote: Reaffirming Our Commitment to Your Privacy
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...
January 11, 2017
#Privacy
The Design Process Helping Me Think Through My Data And Content
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...
Patent US9300759 B1: API Calls With Dependencies
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....
January 10, 2017
#Dependencies
Hoping Schema Becomes Just As Important As API Definitions in 2017
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...
The API Driven Marketplace That Is My Digital Self
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...
Service Level Agreements for Researchers Who Depend On APIs
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...
Evaluating A New Channel For Publishing My Bits
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...
January 9, 2017
#Publishing
Algorithmia's Multi-Platform Data Storage Solution For Machine Learning Workflows
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...
Algorithmia's Multi-Platform Data Storage Solution For Machine Learning Workflows
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...
What I Learned Crafting API Definitions For 66 Of The Amazon Web Services
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...
Explaining To Normals Why Every API Is Different
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...
API Calls as Opposed to API Traffic
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...
A Glimpse At Minimum Bar For Business API Operations in 2017
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...
Thinking About The Monetization Layer For Public Data
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...
Learning About Machine Learning APIs With My Algorithmic Rotoscope Work
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...
Exploring The Economics of Wholesale and Retail Algorithmic APIs
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...
Pandora vs Target When Considering How Public To Be With Your API Operations
I am reworking the API Evangelist developer area, and shifting most of my content to be available as YAML and JSON data on the Github repositories that drive my network of sites. I’m doing this par...
November 16, 2016
#Operations
Focusing On A Single Example Of What An API Is When On-Boarding Folks
Talking to people, and telling stories on a regular basis always pushes me to evolve my understanding of how people see (or don’t see) APIs, and pushes me to keep shifting the way I tell stories. I...
November 16, 2016
#On-Boarding
The Taiwanese Government Posts An APIs.json Index
My friend and partner in crime Nicolas Grenié (@picsoung), and operator of our open source API search engine APIs.io, just let me know that the Taiwanese government just added an APIs.json file for...
The API Evangelist Mission Continues
I tried to get back to normal last week on API Evangelist – I failed. The previous week was @APIStrat in Boston, which was a success. It was the Presidential election that caused me to swerve and p...
November 14, 2016
#Evangelist
Daisy Chaining Multiple API Paths Using Stoplight Scenarios
There aren’t too many startups doing interesting things in the API space right now. One of the exceptions is Stoplight.io. I am working really hard to find some of the good things in the API space ...
November 14, 2016
#ai
Maintaining The API Community At Scale #APIStrat
The 7th edition of API Strategy & Practice wrapped up last week. It has been difficult to gather my thoughts with the election going on, but I wanted to shift my attention back to the API commu...
How Do You Work Towards A More Diverse Inclusive Tech Conference?
The 7th edition of API Strategy & Practice Conference happened last week. While I wasn’t fully engaged throughout the planning process for this edition, due to my summer being disrupted, I want...
Drone Recovery In The Attention Economy
**Difficult To Keep My Attention **When I was young I was always curious when it came to technology. I set up the entire computer lab for my 7th-grade math teacher back in 1983. I programmed comput...
November 4, 2016
#Economy
We Will Need Machine Readable Transparency Report Info Via APIs
I was reading the latest Yahoo transparency report, as well as the Tumblr. When a company releases their latest version of this data, it tends to prompt me to take a look at some of the other provi...
October 28, 2016
#Transparency
A Drone Law API For Use In Planning And At Flight Time
Photo: Drones and Society I went down to the police department in Hermosa Beach and filed my application for a drone permit. It’s been two weeks and I haven’t heard back. When I get done with @...
Why upgrade to a paid plan?
I thought the microservices platform Nanoscale.io have an interesting argument for why you would upgrade to a paid plan. On their pricing page, after they break down each of the pricing plans they ...
October 27, 2016
#ai
Tooling To Help Aggregate DNS Across Multiple Service Providers
Adrian Cockroft (@adrianco) turned me on to a DNS aggregation solution the other day while I was working on updating the API definitions for the API providers that are included in my API DS researc...
Allowing For Relationships Between API Developers At The App Level
Managing developers access to an API is API management 101. Managing the relationships between developers, and allowing for multiple users associated with an API application isn’t something I have ...
October 27, 2016
#Developers
Transparent Data Transfer Control APIs At The IoT Device Level
I am diving deep into the DJi drone developer platform, and one of the elements of the DJi Drone Guidance API that caught my attention was the data transfer control methods. In this situation, the ...
October 26, 2016
#Data
Potential For APIs To Target Us Online By Adding More Context
Many folks see me simply as a cheerleader for APIs when in reality I am more of an evangelist for the bad that can happen with APIs. I believe that sharing of data, content, and algorithms using we...
Learning The Dimensions Of The DJI Drone SDKs And APIs
I am going through the DJi DJI drone developer area which has three distinct SDKs, which allow us to leverage a variety of APIs that make the drone magic happen. I’m still wrapping my head around t...
Asynchonous Conversational Interfaces For Us Anti Social Folks
I get why people are interested in voice-enabled solutions like Alexa and Siri. I’m personally not a fan of speaking to get what I want, but I get the attraction for others. Similarly, I get why pe...
October 26, 2016
#Social
#Conversational Interfaces
#Conversational
#Conversational Interface
#Interfaces
APIs Helping Drones Generate Alpha Used In High Frequency Trading
One of the things I love about my world as the API Evangelist is the time I get diving into rabbit holes and learning about different areas where technology is being applied. I do not always agree ...
October 26, 2016
#Drones
With Mobile We Are The Product -- With IoT Lets Get A Piece Of The Action
Internet-connected devices generate data. The most recent wave of mobile devices has opened up an unprecedented world of data generation and harvesting from the network, device, and application lay...
Thinking About An API Observability Stack
I am learning about observability from reading Stripes post on Veneur, a high performance and global aggregation for Datadog. While the math of it all is over my head, the definition makes a lot of...
October 25, 2016
#Observability
Looking At The Latest API Related Certification Stories
As I curate the interesting news from across the API space each week I tag things to put them into different buckets. At the end of each week, I look through each bucket, deciding which area(s) I w...
API Technology Does Not Have To Mindlessly March Forward
I am seeing more people asking that we put on the brakes when it comes to technology, looking to slow the adoption of new technology, in favor of mastery of the existing, and getting our house in o...
October 25, 2016
#Technology
Adding New Dimension By Including Patents In My DNS API Research
I have been tracking on API related patents for some time. I regularly pull XML dumps from the US Patent Office, a process in which I am getting more refined, so that I am able to easily tag, and o...
The API Behind Every Feature In The User Interface
I have blogged about this topic in the last 60 days, but I predict it is an area you will hear from me about regularly until I see it baked into more software solutions. CloudFlare, one of my favor...
October 24, 2016
#User Interface
Prototype API Design Guide Builder Developed On Top Of API Stylebook
I was pretty happy when my friend Arnaud Lauret (@arno_di_loreto) developed API Stylebook. I want to see his work expand and grow into someday containing hundreds or thousands of API design guides....
Preserving The Twitter API Field Guide
I’m a fan of the human elements of this technological shift that is going on in our world. We tend to focus on the technology, and the dudes who do the technologies (the cyber is HUGE), but what wi...
October 24, 2016
#Twitter
Amazon Groups Should Share More API Design Patterns
The sharing of common API design patterns is something we are really bad at in the API space. I’m not a believer that there is one API design pattern to rule them all, but I am a believer in learni...
Icons To Describe Each Of Your API Resources Like AWS
Amazon Web Service teams sure have been rocking their architectural icons across their storytelling lately. They standardized a set of icons for each of their cloud services and published in a vari...
Does Your Business Model Reflect Where Your API Deployment Is Going
I’ve been thinking about the concept of a wholesale API for some time. Going beyond how we technically deploy our APIs, and focusing more on how we can provide a wholesale version of the same API r...
An API Discovery API For Your API With Tyk
If you are selling services to the API space you should have an API, it is just how this game works (if you are savvy). I was going through Tyk’s API for their open source API management solution a...
October 21, 2016
#Discovery
What Is More Important? Helping New Users Be Aware Of APIs Or Pushing Concept Forward?
This is a topic that has come up in several discussions lately and is a topic I struggle with on a regular basis. What is more important, helping new users, both developer and non-developer be more...
October 20, 2016
What Are Your Intentions With My API?
While it can be easy to bash on API providers for being tight with their API resources, it can be very difficult to be an API provider operating in today’s online environment. Some developers are j...
October 20, 2016
The Potential Of The OpenAPI Spec Parameters Object
I enjoy learning from the OpenAPI Specs of the API providers I track on. Just having an OpenAPI Spec present tells a lot about an API provider in my book, but the level of detail some providers put...
The Open Guide to Amazon Web Services
I keep an eye on things that are trending daily and weekly on Github because it is a great way to discover new companies and individuals doing interesting things with APIs. While looking at this ea...
Reducing Friction For API Developers With Enums In API Definitions
I am going through the Oxford Dictionaries API, learning about this valuable resource. Their onboarding process for registration, and learning about what the API does using interactive documentatio...
We Want To Do APIs -- You Already Are, It Is Just Not In An Organized Way
I have a number of folks at companies, organizations, institutions, and government agencies come to me saying that they want to do APIs, and they need some help. In many of these discussions, the f...
October 19, 2016
OpenAPI Spec Google Spreadsheet to Github Jekyll Hosted YAML
I have been playing around with different ways of using Google Spreadsheet to drive YAML and JSON data to Jekyll data projects hosted as Github repositories. It is an approach I started playing aro...
How Do We Keep The Fire Alive In API Space?
It is tough to keep a sustained fire burning in the world of technology, at the individual, organizational, and community level. I have been doing API Evangelist full time for six years, and it is ...
The Twitter Branding Page Provides Minimum Bar For API Providers
API branding is an area that I find to be contradictory in the space, with the loss of brand control being in the top concerns for companies when doing APIs, while simultaneously one of the most de...
Learning About APIs Has To Be Relevant And Interesting
I am working on a project with a 16-year-old young lady to extract and tell a story using the YouTube API. I’m pretty excited about the project because the young lady happens to be my daughter Kaia...
October 18, 2016
#Learning
Are API Docs & Definition Formats A Single Thing Or Separate?
I was reading a virtual panel: document and description formats for web APIs, and thought the conversation was very productive when it comes to helping bring the world of API documentation and defi...
Are API Docs & Definition Formats A Single Thing Or Separate?
I was reading a virtual panel: document and description formats for web APIs, and thought the conversation was very productive when it comes to helping bring the world of API documentation and defi...
All The Right Channel Icons In Support Of Your API Platform
I look at a lot of websites for companies who are providing APIs and selling services to the API space. When I find a new company, I can spend upwards of 10 minutes looking for all the relevant inf...
A More Honest And Flexible API Contract Using Hypermedia
One of the reasons I write so much on API Evangelist is to refine how I tell stories about APIs and hopefully make a bigger impact by being more precise in what I’m saying. I feel like one of the r...
Thinking More About API Driven Conversational Interfaces
I am spending a lot of time thinking about conversational interfaces, and how APIs are driving the voice and bot layers of the space. While I am probably not as excited about Siri, Alexa and the wa...
People Do Not Know What Your API Does If You Do Not Showcase It
With a lot of my storytelling, I feel like captain obvious, but I also recognize the importance of simple, and sometimes repetitive storytelling to help reach my audience of time and resource-strap...
Discovering New APIs Through Security Alerts
I tune into a number of different channels looking for signs of individuals, companies, organizations, institutions, and government agencies doing APIs. I find APIs using Google Alerts, monitoring ...
Defining OAuth Scope Inline Within The API Documentation
I am working on a project using the Youtube API, and came across their inline OAut 2.0 scopes, allowing you to explore what the API does as you are browsing the API docs. I am a huge fan of what in...
Convert OpenAPI Spec to Slate / Shins Markdown API Docs
Someone turned me on to an OpenAPI Spec to Slate / Shins compatible markdown converter on Github this last week. I have been an advocate for making sure we are still using machine readable API defi...
Transparency In Police Access To Social Platforms Using OAuth And APIs
I was learning about Geofeedia providing law enforcement access to social media data from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram via their API(s) this week. Geofeedia was making money by selling surveill...
The Monitoring Layer Of The DevOps Aggregation API Platform
While spending some time going through my API monitoring research I found myself creating an OpenAPI spec and APIs.json index for the DataDog API, and had the realization that this is the beginning...
Taking A Fresh Look At The Twitter API
I am working on profiling the Twitter API again, and I thought their stack of APIs have evolved significantly beyond what we tend to think of as the Twitter API, and was worth taking another look a...
October 14, 2016
#Twitter
Slack Shares Their View On Bot Advertising
I was reading the hard questions on bot ethics from Slack, and their thoughts on bot advertising grabbed my attention. Trying to understand how bots will be monetizing things has been something I’m...
Including The Twitter Object Nest API As A File Upload API Example
One request I get from folks on a regular basis, is an example of file upload APIs. Each time I get one of these requests I regret that I do not have more file upload and storage APIs profiled, all...
October 14, 2016
#Twitter
The Open Skills API From Dept of Labor & University of Chicago
We like to talk about the API economy in this space. It is kind of the grand dream of API obsessed, that helps us articulate how big of a deal we think APIs are going to be. We know APIs are going ...
The Open Skills API From Dept of Labor & University of Chicago
We like to talk about the API economy in this space. It is kind of the grand dream of API obsessed, that helps us articulate how big of a deal we think APIs are going to be. We know APIs are going ...
Saving and Versioning API Definitions In Editor Using Github Gists
My friend Jordan Walsh (@jordwalsh) just released a new take on the Swagger editor, that inches closer to my vision of a dream API sketchbook and portfolio. His swagger-gist.io tool allows you to o...
Preserving The Sunlight On Github
I’m following along as the Sunlight Foundation winds down their operations and gathering any lessons along the way, that can help us open data and transparency folks can learn from as we do our wor...
October 13, 2016
#Github
Preserving The Sunlight On Github
I’m following along as the Sunlight Foundation winds down their operations and gathering any lessons along the way, that can help us open data and transparency folks can learn from as we do our wor...
October 13, 2016
#Github
Keeping API Communications In Shape With Workbench Blogging
I consider about 75% of the content I create on my network of sites to be workbench blogging--where I tell the story of what I am working on each day. You can see this approach in action with my fr...
Drones And Other Devices Having Their Own Software Defined Networks
I was learning about Verizon starting to sell wireless data plans for drones in the Wall Street Journal, as part of my research on what could be a drone API stack. As an Internet of Things (IoT) co...
We Understimated The Time It Would Take For Hypermedia To Be Absorbed
While I still see a steady uptick in the number of hypermedia APIs out there in the wild, as well as conversations around the different media types that are available, I think we severely underesti...
The White House Wants Our Thoughts On Data Portability
The White House is looking for our thoughts on data portability. While it is the U.S. federal government asking for our thoughts, something that could apply to our tax returns, veterans records, or...
October 12, 2016
#Data
Some Key IoT Security Considerations
I am continuing to learn from folks studying the recent DDOS attack on Krebs on Security. While not a straightforward API story, it overlaps with the API world in several ways, from the technical a...
October 12, 2016
#Security
Do You Have Agencies Ready To Develop With Your API?
I was doing some research on how API providers are providing certification of their developers. I want to better understand how leading API providers are developing curriculum for certifying that d...
October 12, 2016
#Agencies
APIs Driving Augmented Reality For Drones
Now that I have API Evangelist fired back up I am spending more time with my drones, working to understand the role APIs can play in the booming industry. I have been studying how companies like Ai...
Some API Embeddable Best Practices Out Of Yelp
Yelp has shared some of the wisdom behind how they design, deploy, and operate their embeddable reviews. I like it when leading API providers share the story behind their tooling like this. This ty...
iPaaS In Your Browser With Push By Zapier
Zapier is up to more good things with the launch of Push by Zapier, allowing you to trigger API driven events from your browser. The new Chrome browser extension lets anyone, even non-developers to...
I Am Stuck On The Datadog Integration Page
I wrote about having an integrations page for your API service the other day, and as I’m continuing to study the approach of other providers I find myself stuck on b DataDog’s integration page. Dat...
Expanding On The 3rd Party Analysis Of Security Threats
I was learning from the Splunk’s analysis of the Mirai Botnet, which was behind the massive attack against Krebs on Security, implemented via common Internet of Things devices like security cameras...
API Embeddables With Skills and Intent
I am seeing some renewed interest and discussion around API driven embeddable(s)--an area of my API research that has been going on for years, focusing on buttons, badges, and widgets, but is somet...
The Internet of Things Shows Us How Regulatory Beasts Are Created
I am watching the world of Internet of Things (IoT) unfold, not because I’m a big fan of it, but more because I’m concerned that it is happening, and often worried that much of it is happening with...
October 10, 2016
#Internet of Things
Opportunity For Someone To Help Organize Auto Industry Data
There is a lot of data coming out of the automobile industry. I was just reading about Udacity open sources an additional 183GB of driving data and the global public registry of electric vehicle ch...
Google Shares Insight On How To Improve Upon The API Experience
We all like it when the API providers we depend on make using their APIs easier to put to work. I also like it when API providers also share the story behind how they are making their APIs easier t...
October 10, 2016
#Experience
Embrace, Extend, and Exterminate In The World Of APIs
I am regularly reminded in my world as the API Evangelist that things are rarely ever what they seem on the surface. Meaning that what a company actually does, and what a company says it does are r...
October 10, 2016
The Anatomy Of API Call Failure
I have been spending time thinking about how we can build in fault tolerance, and change resiliency into our API SDKs, and client code. I want to better understand what is necessary to develop the ...
October 7, 2016
#ai
Regulatory API Monitoring For Validating Algorithmic Assertions
As I was learning about behavior driven development (BDD) and test driven development (TDD) this week, I quickly found myself applying this way of thought to my existing API regulation, and algorit...
Harmonizing API Definitions Across Government With The U.S. Data Federation
Sharing of API definitions is critical to any industry or public sector where APIs are being put to work. If the API sector is going to scale effectively, it needs to be reusing common patterns, so...
Harmonizing API Definitions Across Government With The U.S. Data Federation
Sharing of API definitions is critical to any industry or public sector where APIs are being put to work. If the API sector is going to scale effectively, it needs to be reusing common patterns, so...
Hacking on Amazon Alexa with AWS Lambda and APIs At @APIStrat
I’m neck deep in studying how Amazon is operating their Alexa platform, so I’m pretty excited about the chance to listen and learn from the Alexa team at APIStrat in Boston. Even if you aren’t buil...
Amazon Launches Their Own QA Solution Called AWS Answers
Amazon launched their own questions and answers site called simply called AWS Answers. Amazon is definitely in a class of their own, but I thought the move reflects illnesses in the wider QA space ...
Your Southwest Airlines Flight Has An API
A friend of mine messaged me this photo of the Southwest Airlines flight API on Facebook the other day. After doing a little homework I found that every flight has this available on the planes loca...
Providing Inline API Documentation Within Your SaaS User Interface
The common approach to discovering that a SaaS provider has an API is through a single, external link in the footer of a website, simply labeled API or developers. Whenever I can I’m on the lookout...
An Auditing API For Checking In On API Client Activity
Google just released a mobile audit solution for their Google Apps Unlimited users looking to monitor activity across iOS and Android devices. At first look, the concept didn’t strike me as anythin...
October 6, 2016
#Client
Adding Behavior-Driven Development Assertions To My API Research
I was going through Chai, a behavior, and test driven assertion library, and spending some time learning about behavior driven development, or BDD, as it applies to APIs today. This is one of the t...
A Machine Readable Jekyll Jig For Each Area Of My API Research
I have over 70 areas of research occurring right now as part of my API lifecycle work--these are areas that I feel directly impact how APIs are provided and consumed today. Each of these areas live...
Where Is The WordPress For APIs?
I feel like I have said this before, but probably is something that is worth refreshing–where is the WordPress for APIs? First, I know WordPress has an API, that isn’t what I’m talking about. Secon...
October 5, 2016
#WordPress
The Web Evolved Under Different Environment Than Web APIs Are
I get the argument from hypermedia and linked data practitioners that we need to model our web API behavior on the web. It makes sense, and I agree that we need to be baking hypermedia into our API...
Github As The API Life Cycle Engine
I am playing around with some new features from the SDK generation as a service provider APIMATIC, including the ability to deploy my SDKs to Github. This is just many of the ways Github, and more ...
Evolving The API SDK With APIMATIC DX Kits
I’ve been a big supporter of APIMATIC since they started, so I’m happy to see them continuing to evolve their approach to delivering SDKs using machine readable API definitions. I got a walkthrough...
October 5, 2016
#SDK
Considering A Web API Ecosystem Through Feature-Based Reuse
I recently carved out some time to read A Web API ecosystem through feature-based reuse by Ruben Verborgh (@RubenVerborgh) and Michel Dumontier. It is a lengthy, very academic proposal on how we ca...
Please Share Your OpenAPI Specs So I Can Use Across The API Life Cycle
I was profiling the New Relic API, and while I was pleased to find OpenAPI Specs behind their explorer, I was less than pleased to have to reverse engineer their docs to get at their API definition...
Making Data Serve Humans Through API Design
APIs can help make technology better serve us humans when you execute them thoughtfully. This is one of the main reasons I kicked off API Evangelist in 2010. I know that many of my technologist fri...
Increased Analytics At The API Client And SDK Level
I am seeing more examples of analytics at the API client and SDK level, providing more access to what is going on at this layer of the API stack. I’m seeing API providers build them into the analyt...
An Integrations Page For Your API Solution
A new way that I am discovering the new tech services that the cool kids are using is from the dedicated integrations pages of API service providers I track on. Showcasing the services your platfor...
Amazon Alexa As An Example When It Comes To API Communications
I’m always looking for specific API providers to showcase as examples we can follow when crafting different portions of our API strategies. The Amazon Alexa team is doing a pretty kick ass job at b...
The Different Reasons Behind Why We Craft API Definitions
I wrote a post about the emails I get from folks telling me the API definitions contained within my API stack research, something that has helped me better see why it is I do API definitions. I go ...
Running Synthetic Data And Content Through Your APIs
I was profiling the New Relic API and came across their Synthetics service,which is a testing and monitoring solution that lets you ”send calls to your APIs to make sure each output and system resp...
APIs Can Give An Honest View Of What A Company Does
One of the reasons I enjoy profiling APIs is that they give an honest view of what a company does, absent of all the marketing fluff, and the promises that I see from each wave of startups. If desi...
October 3, 2016
A Service Level Agreement API For API Service Providers
I am spending some time profiling the companies who are part of my API monitoring research, specifically learning about the APIs they offer as part of their solutions. I do this work so that I can ...
A Dedicated Security Page For Your API Portal
One area I am keeping an eye on while profiling APIs, and API service providers, are any security-related practices that I can add to my research. While looking through DataDog I came across their ...
You Can't Say AI Benefits Outweigh Risk Without Some Algorithmic Transparency
I am increasingly hearing the phrase, “the benefits outweigh the risks” applied when talking about AI, machine learning, and the increasing number of algorithmic decisions that are being made in al...
You Can't Say AI Benefits Outweigh Risk Without Some Algorithmic Transparency
I am increasingly hearing the phrase, “the benefits outweigh the risks” applied when talking about AI, machine learning, and the increasing number of algorithmic decisions that are being made in al...
If You Have An API For Your Platform You Are A Stage For Cybersecurity.Theater
Adding to the many reasons you would want, or not want APIs these days, is the escalating cyber war playing out on the web around the world. APIs aren’t playing a role in the cyber security realm i...
If You Have An API For Your Platform You Are A Stage For Cybersecurity.Theater
Adding to the many reasons you would want, or not want APIs these days, is the escalating cyber war playing out on the web around the world. APIs aren’t playing a role in the cyber security realm i...
Defining A Conversational Layer On Top Of APIs
As I am exploring, and writing about Meya’s Bot Flow Markup Language (BFML), I came across the announcement from Google about their acquisition of API.AI, titled “Making Conversational Interfaces ...
September 30, 2016
#Conversational
API SDKs Getting More Specialized
I have been doing a lot of thinking about the client and SDK areas of my research lately, considering how these areas overlap with the world of bots, as well as with voice, and iPaaS. I’m thinking ...
A Plan B API Switch
I’ve had an idea for a bot-related service I call “plan b”, which would act as a secondary action for any sort of bot request / response to an API. When developers are providing common bot response...
SchemaHub's Usage Of Github To Launch Their API Service Is A Nice Approach
I’m looking through a new API definition focused service provider called SchemaHub today, and I found their approach to using Github as a base of operations was interesting and provided a nice blue...
SchemaHub's Usage Of Github To Launch Their API Service Is A Nice Approach
I'm looking through a new API definition focused service provider called SchemaHub today, and I found their approach to using Github as a base of operations was interesting and provided a nice blue...
September 29, 2016
Flow Abstraction And Intent Layer On Top Of APIs To Feed The Bots
I was reading an interesting post on developing bots from Meya, a bot platform provider, which I think describes the abstraction layer between what we are calling bots, and what we know as APIs. I ...
September 29, 2016
#Bots
Code Resiliency Lessons In How Twitter Deploys Their Embeddables
I am learning about how Twitter deploys their widgets. Extracting some insight for my research around how we can build change resiliency into our client code. As I’m doing my regular monitoring of ...
Beyond Mobile: API Ready For iPaaS, Voice, and Bots
I enjoy being able to switch gears between all the different areas of my API research. It helps me find the interesting areas of overlap and potentially synchronicity in how APIs are being put to w...
An Opportunity For A RESTful API Layer On Top Of New TensorFlow Models
I was looking the open source models available for execution via the machine learning platform TensorFlow, and couldn’t help but think there is a pretty big opportunity for a web API layer on top o...
September 29, 2016
#REST
We Focus On Interacting With The API Developer Community Where They Live
Another story I harvested fro a story by Gordon Wintrob (@gwintrob) about how Twilio’s distributed team solves developer evangelism, was about how they invest in having a distributed team, providin...
September 28, 2016
#Community
Thinking About How I Can Build Change Resilience Into My API Integrations
After I wrote a piece on guidance from the USGS around writing fault-resistant code when putting their API to use, my friend Darrel Miller expanding on this by suggesting I include “change resilien...
The Bot Platform That Operates Like Alexa Will Win
I’m going through Amazon’s approach to their Alexa voice services, and it is making me think how bot platforms out there should be following their lead when it comes crafting their own playbook. I ...
September 28, 2016
#Platform
Learning About OPC, The Interoperability Standard For Industrial Automation
I am spending a portion of my time each week learning about how APIs are being applied at the industrial level. An example of this can be found over at Opto 22, with their approach to using REST ac...
Every Government Agency Should Have An FAQ API Like The DOL
I wrote about my feelings that all government agencies should have a forms API like the Department of Labor (DOL), and I wanted to separately showcase their FAQ API, and say same thing–ALL governme...
Thanks For Reaching Out About Your API
I get a number of folks emailing me about their API and API-focused services. When I have the bandwidth I spend time in my inbox and respond to these emails. To help me do this a little more effici...
Github Needs Client OAuth Proxy For More Complete Client-Side Apps On Pages
I’m building what I am calling “micro tools”, that run 100% on Github. To push my work forward I developed a base template I can use for deploying apps that run 100% on Github, using Github Pages, ...
Every Government Agency Should Have A Forms API Like DOL Does
I was taking another look at the API efforts out of the Department of Labor (DOL), to help refresh my awareness of what they are serving up, and I came across the DOL Forms API. The API does what i...
API Design Is Not Requirement For All Devs But A Little Empathy Should Be
My friend Matthew Reinbold wrote a great post on his blog asking “what if developers aren’t meant to do API design”? I think he is touching on an important aspect of why DevOps might not work every...
September 27, 2016
#Design
API Access To Your Account By Default But Requires Permission To See Others
I wrote about SoundCloud beginning to require approval before developers get access to any API resources yesterday, a concept that I want to keep exploring. I’m going to be going through the APIs t...
September 27, 2016
#Access
Taking Another Look At The Department Of Labor API Efforts
Someone asked me about the current state of the Department of Labors (DOL) API efforts the other day, and since I hadn’t actually taken a look in a few months I wanted to spend some time in there s...
September 26, 2016
#Labor
My API Definitions Are Incomplete But You Do Not Want To Contribute
I am perpetually working to publish all of my API definitions my API Stack Github repository, with the front available as the API Stack. I regularly push the latest copies of all of my OpenAPI Spec...
September 26, 2016
#Definitions
Helping Validate Data And Algorithmic Sovereignty At The API Layer
I have showcased examples of API providers allowing you to deploy your API into various regions around the world like Algolia does, but it is a topic that I think will keep gaining traction as data...
September 26, 2016
#Data
Doing Away With Self-Service API Access Without Approval Like SoundCloud
SoundCloud recently made changes to the signup process for their API and are now requiring approval before any 3rd party developer can get an API key and access the API. While I encourage API provi...
API Service Providers Please Have A Logos Page Like dreamfactory
I was adding dreamfactory as one of my sponsors today. I have them in my in my API monitoring system already, so I have a logo for them, but whenever there is a significant event involving one of t...
The Sharing Of Data Via APIs Will Be Key To Viability Of Every Industry
As I’m processing some guidelines around the importance of sharing data in the cybersecurity.theater a story on NPR came on the radio about the importance of data sharing when it comes to the emerg...
Learning From The Sunlight Foundation Situation And Baking Transparency Into Projects
As I work through the APIs, and Github repositories of soon to be gone Sunlight Foundation, I wanted to take some more time to help open data and API efforts realize the important of real-time tran...
Identifying The Important Work From The @SunlightFoundation I Would Like To See Live On
I am saddened to hear the news of the Sunlight Foundation dimming the lights on their important work around government transparency. They have provided me a constant spotlight on government activit...
How To Discover No Name And Description Twitter Accounts For Folks In The Enterprise
I am always fascinated by the online fence sitting persona that is the enterprise tech industry employee. I know many them are there, but few ever retweet my work, respond to my posts via comments,...
Decoupling The Solution Provided From The Product In Your Storytelling
I come across a number of really useful stories about APIs in my regular monitoring of the space that can’t seem to separate the solution their product delivers from the product itself. I get that ...
The Why Behind The Github GraphQL API
I wrote a skeptical piece the other day about GraphQL, which I followed up with another post saying I would keep an open mind. I’ve added GraphQL to my regular monitoring of the space, but I don’t ...
Syndicating API Evangelist Posts To Medium Using Their API
Now that I have API Evangelist up to regular levels of operation after a summer break, I’m working to expand where I publish my content, and next up on the list is Medium. Like many other popular d...
September 22, 2016
#Evangelist
Providing Branding And Attribution Assets With Each API Response
I am tracking on the approaches of API providers who have branding world together when it comes to platform operations. I’m always surprised at how few API providers actually have anything regardin...
September 22, 2016
#Branding
Google Spreadsheets As An Engine For API Goodness
I was watching my partner in crime Audrey Watters (@audreywatters) build the weaponized edu Twitter bot using a Google Spreadsheet as an engine. Something she learned from Zach Whalen, a professor ...
API Branding Embeddables That Can Boost My API Rate Limits
I’m expanding on my API branding research, putting some thought into how we might be able to include branding and attribution in API responses. Next, I’d like to brainstorm ways to incentivize both...
What I Mean When I Say API
People love to tell me the limitations of my usage of the acronym API. They like to point out they were around before the web, that they are used in hardware, or are not an API unless it is REST. T...
The PSA Peugeot Citroën’s APIs
I was turned on to the API program out of Groupe PSA, the French multinational manufacturer of automobiles and motorcycles sold under the Peugeot, Citroën and DS Automobiles brands from a friend o...
September 21, 2016
Be Part Of Your Community, Do Not Just Sell To It
A recent story from Gordon Wintrob (@gwintrob) about how Twilio’s distributed team solves developerevangelism has given me a variety of seeds for stories on API Evangelist this week. I love that in...
September 21, 2016
#Community
A New API Programming Language SDK Icon Set
I was working on a forkable definition of my API portal and I wanted to evolve the icons that I usually use as part of my API storytelling. I primarily use the Noun Project API, to associate simple...
September 21, 2016
#SDK
Why Would You Build A Business On APIs? They Are Unreliable!
People love to tell me how unreliable APIs are, while also echoing this sentiment across the tech blogosphere. I always find it challenging to reconcile how the entrenreurs who spread these tales c...
September 20, 2016
#Business
Standards Evangelism
As the API Evangelist, I spend a lot of time thinking about evangelism (*your mind is blown*). TFrom what I’m seeing, the world of technology evangelism has been expanding, where database, containe...
I Am Feeling The Same About YAML As I Did With JSON A Decade Ago
I have been slowly evolving the data core of each of my research projects from JSON to YAML. I’m still providing JSON, and even XML, Atom, CSV, and other machine-readable representations as part of...
D3.js Visualizations Using YAML and Jekyll
I am increasingly using D3.js as part of my storytelling process. Since all my websites run using Jekyll, and published entirely using Github repositories wich are shared as Github Page sites, it m...
D3.js Visualizations Using YAML and Jekyll
I am increasingly using D3.js as part of my storytelling process. Since all my websites run using Jekyll, and published entirely using Github repositories wich are shared as Github Page sites, it m...
A Trusted Github Authentication Layer For API Management
I am reworking the management layer for my APIs. For the last couple of years, I had aspirations of running my APIs with a retail layer generating revenue for API Evangelist–something which require...
Putting The Concept Of The Public API To Rest As A Dominant Narrative
APIs come in all different shapes and sizes. I focus on a specific type of APIs that leverage web technology for making data, content, and algorithms available over the Internet. While these APIs a...
September 19, 2016
Providing YAML driven XML, JSON, and Atom using Jekyll And Github
The power of Jekyll on Github Pages as a data management solutions is not a very widely held concept. I’m always amazed at how technologists and programmers don’t understand Jekyll, let alone how i...
My Forkable Minimum API Portal Definition
I am updating my minimum API portal definition so I can apply to my own API infrastructure, and since I operate 100% on Github using Github Page and Jekyll, I have made it a forkable API portal def...
My Dream API Sketchbook And Portfolio
I have a vision of an API notebook in my head I desperately want to get out. First of all, I want to come up with another name for it, which is a journey that always starts with playing around with...
September 19, 2016
A Twilio Process To Emulate Within Your Own API Operations
Leading API providers do not always make me happy with they way they conduct themselves, but it always makes me smile that one of the top API providers consistently over the last five years, contin...
Standardizing API Documentation For Use Across The API Lifecycle
I’ve been pushing for better API design tooling for some time now, something that significantly overlaps with movements I would also like to see around API documentation as well. In my opinion, we ...
Learning From The Success Of Swagger UI
I feel like we haven’t really sat down and studied the success of Swagger UI. I’m not talking about the OpenAPI Spec (fka Swagger Spec), I am only talking about the interactive API documentation th...
A Look At The State Of API Documentation Solutions
A friend of mine was asking where he should get started with upgrading the documentation for an existing API, and was asking for assistance on what tools or services he should be considering. The s...
The Next API Lifecycle Opportunity Will Be In Design And Definitions
Looking through the numbers for my API Evangelist research, and tallying up what I’ve learned along the way, I feel like the next opportunity out there will be about API design and definitions. The...
Now Keeping An Eye On 66 Areas Of The API Lifecycle
As I was firing back up API Evangelist after a break this summer, I took the opportunity to add in a couple of new areas to my research, that I’ve had sitting on the backburner, bringing the number...
September 15, 2016
#Lifecycle
If You Have An Online Product Catalog You Should Have An API
Octopart is the products company that I regularly use as a reference for how product-focused companies should be doing APIs. Octopart’s is an electronic parts company who have a physical, product c...
September 15, 2016
#Product
Tracking On Where The Politics Of APIs Intersects With The Business of APis
While reviewing the details of Twilio’s new enterprise plan, the one thing that stood out for me was the strong emphasis of the security and legal elements within this level of business integration...
Sharing Some Basic Numbers For API Evangelist
I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about the website traffic numbers for API Evangelist. Once a week I’ll take a look at my Google Analytics or CloudFlare dashboards. I don’t write for page views...
Harvesting Companies Who Are Doing APIs From Press Releases
Press releases continue to be one of the best ways for me to discover companies who have embarked on their API journey. From what I can tell, even with the shrinkage around funding for startups, th...
September 14, 2016
#Harvesting
Building The Case For Redefining The Mortgage Industry Using APIs
I am trying to get better at showcasing the early stories I find about APIs making their moves into new industries. It helps to have a post to reference when I add an area as an official research p...
An API Data Retention Policy And Paying for Longer Storage
I was reading the rules of retention, and how long does Bronto save data. Their clarity around offering a data retention policy grabbed my attention, but I also found the ability to pay for longer ...
The General Bikeshare Feed Specification
I came across a story about Stage Intelligence Adds Support for the GBFS Open Data Standard in my regular monitoring, and wanted to add the specification to my API definition toolbox, and share her...
If An Algorithm Impacts Our Life It Should Be Opened Up With An API For Auditing
As I was reading artificial intelligence is hard to see by Kate Crawford (@katecrawford), my brain once again begins crunching the different ways APIs can be applied to help us “see” the algorithms...
September 13, 2016
#Open
Considering How APIs Are Influencing The Fundamentals of Software Engineering
I am preparing for my hangout with the #TC1019 Fundamentals of Software Engineering (3rd-semester course) out of the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Guadalajara. In my own style, I didn’t just wan...
API Providers Partnering To Provide A Developer Business Incubator
Building on my earlier coverage of how API providers are investing in their API community like Amazon and Slack, I wanted to document the incubator over at Box. Acknowledging that “the enterprise a...
API Infrastructure To Help Your 3rd Party Developers Be More Efficient
One of the popular narratives for why companies should be doing APIs emerged out of the last couple waves of startup investments, which encouraged investment in public APIs so that developers could...
Adding To The Available Branding Resources For API Developers
Spotify recently updated the available design resources and branding guidelines including their logos, icons and colors in their developer portal. I’m a big fan when any company has a dedicated pa...
Where Is The Deploy To AWS and Google Button?
I was playing around Prose.io’s Gatekeep solution, a proxy for enabling the client-side application dance OAuth with GitHub. I tend to use Oauth.io for all of my oAuth dancing, especially client-si...
September 12, 2016
#AWS
The New API Design And Deployment Solution Materia Is Pretty Slick
I was playing with a new API design and deployment solution, from some of my favorite developers out there this weekend called Materia, which bills itself as “a modern development environment to bu...
Google Acquired Apigee
The news came in late last week that Google was acquiring API management pioneer Apigee. The news caught me by surprise. I thought if there was still going to be an acquisition of Apigee that it wo...
Considering The Hypothesis API Approach When Expanding The API Life Cycle Discussion
I have been playing around with different ways to craft a web concepts and specification JavaScript library for API providers, and one of the approaches I’ve been considering is out of the annotati...
September 12, 2016
#Life Cycle
API Stylebook: A Collections Of Resources For API Designers
My friend Arnaud Lauret (@arno_di_loreto), the API Handyman, has released a very cool new project called the API Stylebook–a collections of resources for API designers. It is a brilliant aggregatio...
We Better Get To Work On Evolving An Open Emergency Response API Stack
As I listened to the news about flooding coming out of Louisiana, and the impending hurricane headed up the east coast, I’m momentarily distracted from my monitoring of the API space. As I switch b...
September 9, 2016
#Open
Regex Suggestion Discovery For Web Concepts And Specs During API Design Time
I am working on taking the JSON feed of web concepts and specs and developing a simple website JavaScript tooltip library that API providers can employ to inject web literacy into their API develop...
Providing Video Walk Throughs On Youtube For Your API or API Provider Services
I like Postman’s approach to using Youtube for providing walk-through’s for specific actions users will want to take in their API client service. All of their video walk-throughs are very simple, s...
Prepare For The More Boring And Very Business Age of APIs
I just went through all the APIs in my monitoring system looking for a diverse set of them to showcase in an API economy story I’m working on, and while I can point to some pretty exciting mileston...
September 9, 2016
#Business
Everything Is Fragile In The World Of APIs
I was working through some thoughts around programming language dependencies, looking through a service I came across called Bundler, and found myself thinking about API dependencies (go figure, ma...
September 9, 2016
When Working With Our API Make Sure You Build Fault-Resistance Into Your Code
As I was working my way through the USGS water services APIs, I came across their page for writing fault-resistant code. There are many things going on in the USGS developer portal I think are wort...
September 8, 2016
#Code
When The Latest Tech Bullshit Has Me Down I Will Work On Water APIs
I come across a lot of really bad ideas for startups and APIs, as well as many badly behaved companies with great API implementations. With so much money flowing around space, the incentives for be...
September 8, 2016
Defining API Surface Area By Converting HTML Forms To Open API Specs
I’m investing some time learning about the USGS Water Services. They have some pretty interesting APIs, providing access to a wealth of data about water table levels, river flows, and other key poi...
Are You Being Transparent With Your API Infrastructure To Attract Top Talent Like Netflix Is
I consider Netflix to be the most successful API failure ever. Even though their public is completely private, exclusively for internal and partner uses, they are still very transparent and open wi...
A Dictionary To Lookup Web Concepts And Specs For The JavaScript Tooltip
I am working on taking the JSON feed of web concepts and specs and developing a simple website JavaScript tooltip library that API providers can employ to inject web literacy into their API develop...
Using The Phrase Open API In Patents Shows How Broken Patents Are In A Digital World
I am spending a lot of time reviewing patents that mention application programming interface or API in their title, abstract, or in the detail of the patent. Many of the patents lightly reference p...
Using The Phrase Open API In Patents Shows How Broken Patents Are In A Digital World
I am spending a lot of time reviewing patents that mention application programming interface or API in their title, abstract, or in the detail of the patent. Many of the patents lightly reference p...
The Netflix Public API Was The Most Successful API Failure Ever
I have written about the continuing Netflix API story over the years, which despite shuttering their public API, is an API effort that just keeps giving to the public. It is an API story that bette...
September 7, 2016
#ai
The Burden On API Providers When It Comes To Web Literacy
I am working through the USGS water data services, which include some REST APIs, and investing some of my work hours to one of my passions and concerns–water data and APIs. There is a wealth of wat...
Just Because The Enterprise Will Never Get APIs Does Not Mean You Should Not Try
The response on Twitter and via email to my post about how the enterprise does not know(care) how big and destructive it is to APIs, is usual to this type of post, which I usually write about every...
September 7, 2016
#Enterprise
A Web Concepts And Specifications JavaScript Library For API Providers
One of the prototypes I am going to build on top of Erik Wilde’s (@dret) WebConcepts.info work, is a simple JavaScript library that you can embed on any API documentation page, and point at the bod...
Working Tips and Tricks Into Your Regular API Evangelism Efforts
I usually don’t have to look very far to find good examples of API evangelism in the field, because the best technology providers are usually pretty consistent and vocal about their practices–allow...
September 6, 2016
#Evangelism
Stoplight Displays API Definitions By Default With Their API Doc Service
I was doing some maintenance on my bots and APIs research, and processing the information for the bot analytics provider Botlytics, and as I was going through their API I noticed the prominent plac...
September 6, 2016
#Definitions
Imagine If Tim Berners Lee Or Roy Fielding Had Patented Their Work
I’m back wallowing through my API patent work, which I’m sure a portion of my readership is like, “oh gawd, hurry up and move on”, which is the same way I feel, but the shit is so deep in this area...
Connecting My API Logging With My API DNS Using CloudFlare Page Rules API
As I’m spending time learning more about what my DNS provider CloudFlare offers when it comes to securing my APIs. To facilitate this, I am playing around with how I can utilize my Apache log files...
A JSON Feed Of Critical Web Concepts To Integrate Into API Design Service And Tooling
I created a JSON feed of the web concepts and specs over at Erik Wilde’s (@dret) site WebConcepts.info, so that I could easily import the specs into my Twitter and LinkedIn scheduling tools. I want...
I Am Keeping My Mind Open And Looking Forward To Learning More About GraphQL
I wrote a post the other day sharing my thoughts around GraphQL seeming like we were avoiding the hard work of API design. Shortly after publishing Sashko Stubailo (@stubailo) from Apollo, a GraphQ...
Be Straight Up About Internal Challenges When Hiring Your API Talent
I see an increasing number of job postings on LinkedIn and other job websites from companies who are actively seeking an API rockstar, ninja, lead, owner, or product manager, and because of my conn...
API Patent Search As Way To Discover Companies Who Are Doing APIs
I have been pulling all the patent applications from the USPTO for a while now. As I work to fire API Evangelist back up, I’m working to be more regular about processing these files, and track on w...
After Looking Through 23414 API Patents I Think It Will Just Come Down To Who Litigates
After looking through the 23,414 API related patents from between 2005 and present day from 4,283 companies, it is clear that the API patent game will be all about which companies decide to litigat...
23K Patent Applications With API References Since 2005
I am working to organize the 23,414 API related patents from between 2005 and present day, submitted by 4,283 companies–present in my API patent research. Not all of these APIs are “web APIs”, but ...
Why Do Companies Who Ask Me To Update Their Logo Never Have Branding Page?
When processing the news for API.Report, and the over 150 areas of my API industry research, I spend a good deal of time looking for images to represent my stories, and the companies I’m covering. ...
The Sustained API Storytelling Assault On The Banking Industry
After monitoring the tech space, and specifically the API space for six years now I really have feel for how stories are used try incite change in a variety of industries. There are many different ...
Mapping Your Social Media Footprint As Part Of Your API Security Strategy
Profiling the social media footprint of API related companies is what I do for a living. If you are doing something mildly interesting with an API I will add your Twitter, and Github accounts to my...
Making Web Concepts and Specs Present As Real Time Help In API Design Tooling
.gist-data {max-height: 500px;} I took the Github repository for Erik Wilde’s (@dret) Web Concepts work and forked it, then generated some JSON which I could use to import into my API monitoring...
API Design Skills Required For Cyber Intelligence and Counter Intelligence
It is hard for me to track on everything in the API space as a one man show, but one thing I keep an eye on, but rarely add to my research (yet) are the increasing number of job postings I come acr...
Why APIs Are Just The Next Step Of The Web And Not The Latest Trend
I am always amazed at the amount of hype, rhetoric, and FUD that is stirred up by analysts, vendors, and the tech blogosphere when it comes to APIs. APIs are the next big wave in vendor solutions! ...
August 31, 2016
#Web
Treating New API Startups Like The Companies They Will Become
I get a number of eager new entrepreneurs contacting me, looking for wisdom and insight about the API space. I’ve always worked to make myself accessible to people who are looking for knowledge aro...
August 31, 2016
#Startups
The Internet of Things Is An Opportunity For API Deployment As Well As Consumption
Overall I am pretty underwhelmed by the Internet of Things. Most of the ways in which devices are being connected to the Internet are not very interesting, if not just a bad idea. Even with the ove...
Enterprise Does Not Know (Care) How Big And Destructive It Is To APIs
I feel like the enterprise has successfully rounded up the escaped experiment that is API, and got it under control. With its size and scope it didn’t really even notice APIs until 2012 or so, and ...
August 31, 2016
#Enterprise
Company X's Competitive Advantage Is That They Have An API
I have been thinking about the Twilio IPO a lot lately, as it seems to be well received by the market. I am trying to be realistic about this, and work to understand how much the API thing actually...
August 31, 2016
#tag
Company X's Competitive Advantage Is That They Have An API
I have been thinking about the Twilio IPO a lot lately, as it seems to be well received by the market. I am trying to be realistic about this, and work to understand how much the API thing actually...
August 31, 2016
#tag
Why I Added Cybersecurity To My API Monitoring Research
I recently added a new area of research to API Evangelist focused on cybersecurity. I added this area of research not because APIs are being used to hack systems, which does happen occasionally. I ...
The Ways That API Providers Are Using Twitter
I am using Twitter more like an RSS feed these days. I pull the Tweets of the companies I track on once a day, and I scan / read them (when I have time), and either curate them or mark as read. I’m...
Taking A Moment To Catch Up With APIs Before Moving To Next Big Thing
Maybe with the current funding priority shifts in the tech world, and some of the push back on the startup way of life, we could pause a little bit and just let everyone catch up with their API str...
August 30, 2016
Keep Publishing Your API Definitions To Github So We Can Find Them
I was just getting started evolving upon my API definition discovery tools before I left this summer, and is something I am just picking up again, now that I am back at it. Historically there are t...
GraphQL Seems Like We Do Not Want To Do The Hard Work Of API Design
We were talking about GraphQL in the API Evangelist Slack channel the other day, and the consensus seemed to be that GraphQL is a way to avoid the hard work involved with properly getting to know y...
The API Lightbulb Went On For Me When Amazon EC2 Launched A Decade Ago
It is the 10th anniversary of the launch of Amazon EC2 this month, and I think it is a good time to revisit what this has meant to the API space. If you have heard any of my keynote talks where I v...
August 29, 2016
#Amazon
Github Is Quickly Becoming My Most Important Discovery Source For API Space
I have monitored the Github accounts and organizations for individuals and companies doing interesting things with APIs for some time now. However, recently this channel is increasingly being the w...
Beyond Just API Discovery: The Technical, Business & Political Decisions Needed At Runtime
I was included in a conversation the other day on Twitter about runtime API discovery which reminded me of some thoughts I was processing before I walked away from work this summer, and before I di...
Beyond Just API Discovery: The Technical, Business & Political Decisions Needed At Runtime
I was included in a conversation the other day on Twitter about runtime API discovery which reminded me of some thoughts I was processing before I walked away from work this summer, and before I di...
APIs Are Not Just Meant For Killer Apps, They Can Also Be A Lifeline For Users
In the Silicon Valley rat race users often become collateral damage amidst the entrepreneurial quest to get rich building the next killer startup. I’ve heard many startups like Snapchat and Pintere...
August 29, 2016
Add A Prominent Icon Link To Your API Definition On Your Documentation Page
In an effort to help folks understand the many layers of just exactly what is an API and how people are using them, I’m going to emphasize (again) the importance of sharing your API definition publ...
Using Anchors In Your FAQ And Other API Support Pages
I was going through some of the Twitter feeds of the APIs that I track on and noticed Spotify’s team providing support to some of their API users with quick links / anchors to the answers in their ...
August 26, 2016
#Support
Is Your Sales Deal Size Just Too Big To Be Reading API Evangelist?
I am blessed to have people in the space who have supported what I do for the last six years. Companies like 3Scale, Restlet, WSO2, Cloud Elements, and others have consistently helped me make ends ...
I Am Digging Stripes New Interactive API Documentation Walkthrough
I am digging Stripes new documentation release, and specifically their interactive API documentation walkthrough. The new “try now” section of their documentation provides an evolve look at what is...
Going The Distance To Help API Consumers Find Their API Keys And Tokens
I am always amazed at how difficult it can be to obtain the API keys, or fire up an initial set of oAuth tokens when kicking the tires on a new API. I would also say that I am also regularly impres...
Watching Out For Your API Keys & Tokens On Open Internet
I was just learning about Auth0’s new password breach detection service, adding to the numerous reasons why you’d use their authentication service, instead of going at it on your own. It’s an impor...
Watching Out For Your API Keys & Tokens On Open Internet
I was just learning about Auth0’s new password breach detection service, adding to the numerous reasons why you’d use their authentication service, instead of going at it on your own. It’s an impor...
Providing A Dedicated Mobile SDK Page For Your API
Every API provider will have slightly different needs, but there are definitely some common patterns which providers should be considering as they are kicking off their API presence, or looking to ...
More Considerations When Providing An Anonymous App For Your API Service
I wrote a post the other day about Postman.io having a limited, anonymous version of their API modeling tool. I stumbled across it while I was trying to upgrade my Stoplight.io account. Shortly aft...
Managing The Apps Across All My API Accounts
I am going through all of my online accounts changing passwords, and one of the things I do along the way is check which applications have access to my digital self. Increasingly my accounts have t...
August 25, 2016
Adding An Atom Feed For The API Evangelist Blog
The API Evangelist platform is far from perfect, there are always portions of it that just aren’t finished yet (always work in progress). I am always thankful that people put up with my API Evangel...
You Can Make Money While Also Doing Important Work For The API Space
I see a lot of companies doing things with APIs, and I often find myself struggling to find companies who are doing important things that benefit the community, have a coherent business model, and ...
If You Use API Definitions There Is No Excuse For Not Having An API Sandbox
I have long been a proponent of using API definitions, not just because you can deploy interactive API documentation, but because they open up almost every other stop along the API life cycle. Mean...
CRX Extractor Wins For The Best Customer Quote Ever
Having quotes from your customers on your company website is a no-brainer. Finding the best examples of brands and companies putting your valuable service, or tool to work demonstrates it has value...
August 24, 2016
#Evangelism
An OpenAPI Spec For A Building Permits API
One of the reasons why crafting API definitions like OpenAPI Spec for our APIs, and openly sharing them on the web, is so that the pattern will get used, and reused by other API providers. That mig...
A Wicked (Good) Open Source API Deployment And Management Stack
I was introduced to a new open source, Dockerized API operations solution called Wicked, that was developed by the integrated cloud and desktop solutions provider, the Haufe Group. There are a numb...
Who Is Going To Do The DevOps Aggregation API Platform?
There are two distinct types of APIs I keep an eye on. One is what I call my life cycle APIs, which are the APIs of the service providers who are selling services and tools to API providers and dev...
The Expanding API Layers That Overlap Our Physical And Virtual Worlds
I wrote the other day about the interesting opportunity opening up within the satellite imagery API layer, and earlier about the similar opportunity that is being expanded within the fast growing d...
August 23, 2016
#Physical
Sharing Your API Platform Road Map And Telling The Story Like Readme.io
Sharing your platform’s road map with the public, and your community is an often overlooked aspect of API operations but is one that can go a long way to communicate your plans for the future with ...
Sharing Your API Platform Road Map And Telling The Story Like Readme.io
Sharing your platform’s road map with the public, and your community is an often overlooked aspect of API operations but is one that can go a long way to communicate your plans for the future with ...
Prioritizing Commonly Requested Information With Your API Deployment
I was reading the post from open data service provider Socrata about “putting citizens first“ when it comes to opening up city, county, state, and federal government data. One of the headlines they...
August 23, 2016
#Deployment
API Providers Could Add A Page To Showcase Their Bots
I am coming across more API providers who have carved off specific “skills” derived from their API, and offering up as part of the latest push to acquire new users on Slack or Facebook. Services li...
What Is A RESTful API And Why Does It Matter To IoT?
I’m pretty skeptical about many of the reasons behind why companies are connecting devices to the Internet using APIs–I am just not convinced this is the best idea when we already have so many secu...
August 22, 2016
#REST
Thinking In Terms of API Skills And Moving Beyond Just API Resources
The APIs which have seen the greatest adoption across the API space, always provide the functionality that developers are needed in their applications. It is either because the platform is already ...
The Racial Bias Being Baked Into Our Algorithms
My “fellow” Presidential Innovation Fellow Mollie Ruskin (@mollieruskin), was doing some work with veterans recently and stumbled across a pretty disturbing example of how racial bias is being bake...
The Expanding World of Technology Evangelism
Technology evangelists are nothing new, but are something I think is continuing to expand as the Internet continues to crack open more of the core areas of the tech sector. I specifically chose the...
Delivering API Docs Using OpenAPI Spec Driven Templates For Angular
I have been talking with Nick Houghton over at Sandbox about the state of OpenAPI Spec driven API documentation, and the lack of a machine-readable core when you deployed Slate driven documentation...
When Your API Consumption Influences The Acquisition Of Your Startup
I saw that the contact API solution FullContact recently purchased the professional network management solution Conspire. Thankfully FullContact is good about blogging about the move, and the detai...
August 19, 2016
#Consumption
Providing Multiple Types of API Sandboxes To Develop Against
I was going through the Cisco Devnet ecosystem and stumbled across their sandbox environment. I thought it was worth noting that they provided several different types of sandbox environments, with ...
Providing An Anonymous Layer To Your API Provider Service Like Stoplight.io
I was playing around with the free and the now paid layers of Stoplight.io, and wrote a previous piece about their lack of a public pricing page, and I noticed they provided an anonymous layer to t...
Providing An Anonymous Layer To Your API Provider Service Like Stoplight.io
I was playing around with the free and the now paid layers of Stoplight.io, and wrote a previous piece about their lack of a public pricing page, and I noticed they provided an anonymous layer to t...
I Know It Is Hard When You Are Just Getting Started, But Please Make Your Pricing Page Public
I received an email from Stoplight.io about their version updates, which included the phasing out of the free beta period–makes sense. I clicked on the “you can view pricing, and setup billing, on ...
Tweeting Out The iPaaS Opportunities That Are Available For Your API
I’ve been an advocating for API providers to embrace integration platform as a service provider (iPaaS) for three years now, encouraging them to make sure their API is accessible via popular platfo...
The Historic Newspaper API From The Library Of Congress
It always bums me out that the cool kid startup APIs always get the lion share of the attention when it comes to APIs in the tech news. Which I guess makes it my responsibility to show the ACTUAL c...
August 18, 2016
#News
Providing Additional Support Options For Your API In Your Twitter Bio
As I was writing up a story on Mailjet tweeting out the iPaaS opportunities around their email API, I noticed their Twitter bio. It is subtle, but having spent a great deal of time looking for the ...
Maybe A Save As JSON Option For Excel Wasn't Forward Thinking Enough
In September of 2015, I asked when are we going to get a save as JSON in our spreadsheets? I was doing a lot of work saving spreadsheets as CSV files, something I can easily do programmatically, bu...
August 18, 2016
#JSON
Maybe A Save As JSON Option For Excel Wasn't Forward Thinking Enough
In September of 2015, I asked when are we going to get a save as JSON in our spreadsheets? I was doing a lot of work saving spreadsheets as CSV files, something I can easily do programmatically, bu...
August 18, 2016
#JSON
Expanding My Awareness Of How APIs Are Being Used At The Network Level
I work as hard as I can to understand every sector being opened up using web APIs, and the network level is one that I need to push my awareness of, partially because I find it interesting, but mos...
Continuing My Struggle For Reciprocity As ETL Evolves Into The Cloud As iPaaS
Early on in 2013, I started a research project to keep an eye on a specific type of API driven service provider, like IFTTT and Zapier, who were enabling individuals and businesses to move data aro...
Zapier and The Excel API
I have been finding quite a few nuggets of wisdom out of the recent release of the Microsoft Excel API. This is what I enjoy doing as the API Evangelist, evaluate and gather any positive or negativ...
August 17, 2016
#Zapier
The Support Flow Over At The Microsoft Excel API
I am pretty impressed with the casual release of the Microsoft Excel API, which I think is a pretty significant milestone for the world of APIs. One of the subtle elements of their API release that...
Not Having RSS For Your Blog And Just Relying On Tweeting
I regularly come across organizations who have blogs without RSS feeds. Sometimes I will drop people a line and ask if they have one, or let them know it would be very useful to have an RSS feed ea...
August 16, 2016
#Blog
Not All APIs Are Created Equal So Make Sure You Set Expectations Properly
I’ve heard of numerous API providers shutting down their API programs after a couple months because they didn’t see the number of new users, and integrations they had hoped for. It is so easy for u...
August 16, 2016
Instead of Just Discussing Via Phone You Should Publish Your API Goings On To Your Blog
At any point in time, there are numerous emails in my inbox, LinkedIn messages, and DMS, asking me if I would “just jump on the phone to discuss the latest” about an API. I get a regular stream of ...
August 16, 2016
#Blog
Defining The Industrial Programmable Automation Controller (PAC) Strategy Using An API
I was learning more about the Programmable Automation Controller (PAC) API from Opto 22 and fouind myself intrigued by their usage of the word strategy to describe the role a web API can play when ...
API Definitions Are Slowly Becoming More Important Than Having SDKs
As the debate over whether you need an SDK for your API or not has rumbled over the last couple of years, API specification formats like OpenAPI Spec, Postman, and API Blueprint have been gaining t...
Putting The Industrial Into IoT With Programmable Automation Controllers (PAC) APIs
When you hear about the Internet of Things (IoT) you often hear about the hopeful consumer side of thing, like with Nest thermostat, and the next wave of Internet-connected devices that will change...
August 15, 2016
#Automation
Introducing Vendorless APIs and Microservices
I’m a big fan of the concept of serverless APIs and microservices, but not so much of the name. I get it, the space needs new concepts to rally around, and I’m the first to admit even the concept o...
API Service Composition Baked Into The Cloud With Usage Plans For Amazon API Gateway
Being able to provide different levels of access for a single API has been one of the telltale characteristics of any modern web API. Savvy API providers know they don’t just make their valuable AP...
Constant Contact Provides Good Blueprint For An API Getting Started Page
I was going through the getting started pages for the APIs that I keep an eye on, pulling together an outline of what I’d consider to be some of the best elements across all the API providers. Then...
The Release Of The Microsoft Excel API Is A Pretty Significant Milestone
I am all about marking down the important milestones that help define the API sector. It is what I’ve been working to define as my history of the web APIs for the last six years. An API has to make...
August 10, 2016
#Micro
Investing In Your API Community Like Amazon And Slack
The messaging platform Slack made waves when they launched their Slack Fund as part of their API release, putting up $80M to invest in developers who were interested in building cool things on the ...
Google For API Code Examples Just Like Your New Developers Will
I am always looking for simple advice I can give to API providers to make their developers and would-be developers integration as friction-less as possible. When it comes to making the code availab...
Will Your Approach To Technology Be More Like Siri Or Alexa?
I am still learning about the recent API release out of Apple, and working to keep up with the volume of resources coming out of the Amazon Alexa ecosystem, but one thing I know for sure is Amazon ...
August 9, 2016
#Technology
Where Is The Ethical Line When Defining And Securing The API Landscape?
I was reading a post from the Electronic Frontier Foundation asking some great questions about having a safety protocol for things like the DARPA’s Cyber Grand Challenge. It is good to see EFF lead...
August 9, 2016
#Landscape
Fascinated With The Algorithm
According to Wikipedia, in mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is a self-contained step-by-step set of operations to be performed. Algorithms perform a calculation, data processing, and/...
Doing More To Invest In Web Literacy Across The API Community
When I talk about how much I believe in APIs, all I am really saying is how much I believe in the web. The web is how humans are consuming and sharing data, content, and algorithms with each other ...
Overlay API Data On Satellite Imagery Then Make Available Again Via API
I wrote a story last week about how Airmap is positioning itself to be an API broker within the fast growing Drone industry. I also stumbled across the satellite imagery API out of Astro Digital, a...
Access To Satellite Imagery Via A Web API
In 2006 Amazon introduced me to the idea that you could deploy global infrastructure using web APIs. This was when web APIs went from the hobby level (ie. photos, social, links) workbench, and beca...
Reconciling How Reliable APIs Are While Also Embracing Tone Set By VC Investment
I have done a lot of reading in the last week, catching up on my monitoring of the API space. I have read a couple of posts about the reliability of APIs, and the overall viability of building appl...
I See A Number Of Incomplete API Efforts That Come Out Of Connected Device Providers
I’ve seen quite a few incomplete API efforts in my time as the API Evangelist. It is why I aggregate the most common building blocks I see across successful API providers like Twilio and organize t...
August 5, 2016
#Providers
Diff Tooling For JSON, YAML, And Markdown Versions Of API Definitions
As the number of available API definitions out there grows, I am increasingly coming across variations of APIs that I already have included in my API Stack. It can be tedious to try and sync these ...
Airmap Is Positioning Itself To Be A Critical API Broker For The Drone Industry
I first came across Airmap as I was learning about them acting as the middle man for DJI drone updates via the Department of Interior. After this story, I added them to my database of companies tha...
August 5, 2016
#Industry
Thinking About The Better Business Bureau API In Context Of The Overall API Economy
I was happy to stumble across the Better Business Bureau API the other day. I was working on a piece about “the API economy”, and looking for real world examples of how APIs could actually contribu...
Shaming People For Not Being Or Understanding REST Is Why We Have So Much Inconsistency In API Design
I was reading some of the blog posts, Reddit and Hacker News threads about Microsoft’s release of their API design guide. While many of the comments are technically correct, the tone in which they ...
Pushing For More Algorithmic Transparency Using APIs
I saw the potential for collaboration when it came to using web APIs back around 2004 and 2005. I was seeing innovative companies opening up their digital assets to the world using low-cost, effici...
August 4, 2016
#Transparency
IoT Extends Software Terms of Service And Licensing To Our Every Day Objects
I find myself thinking about what the terms of service we agree to for online services are doing to our lives. Whether we see the effects or not, they are guiding almost everything we do in our per...
Uses And Disclosures Of Protected Health Information (45 CFR 164.502)
I am working my way through Title 45, which is the principle set of rules and regulations issued by federal agencies of the United States regarding public welfare. I’ve made my way through the secu...
August 3, 2016
#4
Uses And Disclosures Of Protected Health Information (45 CFR 164.502)
I am working my way through Title 45, which is the principle set of rules and regulations issued by federal agencies of the United States regarding public welfare. I’ve made my way through the secu...
August 3, 2016
#4
Making Scientific Research More Real Time And Collaborative Using APIs
I had heard about the Zika virus research that was going on at the University of Wisconsin listening to an NPR episode this last spring. I finally had the time to dig into the topic a little more, ...
Certifying The Network And Storage Is In Country Before We Adopt Internet Connected Devices
I’ve been reading a number of stories about concerns within the Department of Interior about the usage of DJI drones as part of their UAV operations. Whether or not the federal agency actually issu...
All Facts And Statistics Should Have An Interactive Experience Like US Census Bureaus Quick Facts
I wish every time you came across facts and statistics in any news story, blog post, report, and beyond, there would be an interactive experience like you get with the US Census Bureau’s QuickFacts...
The Opportunity For API-Driven Algorithmic Transparency At The Mobile Data Plan Level
API Evangelist is focused on helping push for sensible API-driven transparency wherever I can get it. When done in sensible ways an API can crack open the often black box that is the algorithm, giv...
Direct Government Connection Into Internet of Things Devices Like We Are Seeing With Drones
I have been spending a lot of time this summer thinking about how devices are being connected to the Internet, specifically when it comes to drones. As I was traveling around the countryside flying...
Getting Back To API Evangelist
I am starting the process of getting back to work on API Evangelist, and wrapping up our Drone Recovery project. We will continue working on things throughout the summer, but I need to start lookin...
August 1, 2016
#Evangelist
The Community Has Spoken: API Evangelist Will Stay As It Is
I came out of the wilderness this week (literally, the Kalmiopsis Wilderness) to an inbox full of emails and a Twitter stream full of messages and DMs. I expected a little buzz from my exit, but no...
API Evangelist Is Up For Sale - Get Your Bids In By Friday
It has been six years since I started API Evangelist. A personal matter has come up which will require my attention for at least six months, probably upwards of a year. Which in the tech world can ...
May 23, 2016
#Evangelist
The API Evangelist API Management Guide
API management is the oldest area of my research. The area has been being defined since Mashery first opened its doors in 2006 and continues to be defined with the recent IPO by Apigee, and the ent...
The API Evangelist API Design Guide
In the last couple of years, I’ve seen the concept of API design go from being something the API elite discuss, to something that involves business users, and something that has spawned a whole eco...
Oracle vs Google: APIs Are Kind Of Hard To Understand
One of the things that stood out for me reading through the Oracle v Google trial coverage today was Sarah Jeong’s acknowledging how APIs are kind of hard to understand, and is something that is ca...
May 11, 2016
#Oracle
Enabling A Patients HIPPA Right To Access Their Personal Health Information (PHI) With APIs
I am reading through the API task force recommendations out of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), to help address privacy and security concerns around m...
Twitter Collection Of @SarahJeong, @Xor & @Swiftstories Oracle vs Google Coverage
The next round of the Oracle v Google Java API Copyright battle has kicked off again in San Francisco after being sent back to the lower court by the United States Supreme Court. This round is all ...
Twitter Collection Of @SarahJeong, @Xor & @Swiftstories Oracle vs Google Coverage
The next round of the Oracle v Google Java API Copyright battle has kicked off again in San Francisco after being sent back to the lower court by the United States Supreme Court. This round is all ...
The Concept of Patientdirected APIs
I am reading through the API task force recommendations out of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), to help address privacy and security concerns around m...
May 10, 2016
The API Evangelist API Definition Guide
How we define our APIs has dramatically changed in recent years. Since Swagger came onto the scene around five years ago, there has been a rapid growth in the number of open formats, tooling, and s...
Cutting Through The Smoke & MIrrors Of IT Discussions Using API Definitions
I get brought into a lot of API discussions with IT departments from companies, institutions, and government agencies, which are often coordinated by business groups who are interested in better me...
May 10, 2016
#Definitions
Cutting Through The Smoke & MIrrors Of IT Discussions Using API Definitions
I get brought into a lot of API discussions with IT departments from companies, institutions, and government agencies, which are often coordinated by business groups who are interested in better me...
May 10, 2016
#Definitions
A Healthy Stance On Privacy And Security When It Comes To Healthcare APIs
I am reading through the API task force recommendations out of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), to help address privacy and security concerns around m...
Providing A Set Of API Keys For Developers To Test Out Different API Outcomes
I wrote a post about Twilio using magic phone numbers that let their developers test out functionality without incurring any charges for deploying live phone numbers, making calls, and sending SMS....
APIs Will Wither On The Vine And Never Reach Their Full Potential
As I push out stories on the next round of the Oracle v Google API copyright case, considering how I will write about API deprecations and acquisitions I’m privy to, and document the continued marc...
May 9, 2016
Quality of Service API Endpoint For Your API Platform
I’m spending a lot of time in the Twilio API ecosystem this week, so you will hear multiple stories about what they are up to. This one is highlighting their Call Feedback API and the growing amoun...
An Acceptable Business Model Page For Your API Platform
One thing I look at closely when I review API platforms is how they approach the monetization of their API resources, and the resulting plans, pricing, and access tiers. How platforms think about, ...
Serverless Approaches To Deploying Code Will Help Unwind Some Of The Technical Debt We Have
I am sure there is some equation we could come up to describe the amount of ideology and / or dogma present alongside each bit and byte of code. Something that exponentially increases with each add...
Twilio Provides Test API Credentials With Magic Phone Numbers
I am always on the hunt for the little things that make API integration easier, and while working to certify my Twilio API definition, I noticed their test credentials. When you are playing with th...
May 7, 2016
#Twilio
I Am Seeing Significant Returns From Investing In Definitions Over Code When It Comes To My API Strategy
I am doing way more work on the creation of machine-readable OpenAPI Specs for APIs, indexed using machine-readable APIs.json files than I am the actual creation of APIs lately. About half of the A...
The API Evangelist API Deployment Guide
There are many different ways to actually deploy an API. If you are a larger, more established company, you probably have existing tools, services, and processes set forth by IT for deploying APIs....
APIs At Brigham Young University
I have been tracking on how APIs are used in higher education for some time now, keeping an eye on almost 50 campus API related efforts. I have my University API guide that I regularly update, but ...
May 3, 2016
Working To Establish A Complete OpenAPI Spec For Leading APIs
I am always working as hard as I can to develop as complete as possible OpenAPI Specs for the APIs that I monitor. I call this my API Stack research. When possible, in addition to mapping out API o...
Thinking About An API Proxy To Add Link Header To Each API Response
I was learning more about using the Link header for pagination yesterday, as part of my work on the Human Services Data Specification (HSDS), and this approach to putting hypermedia links in the he...
May 2, 2016
#Proxy
The JSON Schema Is Proving To Be As Valuable As The OpenAPI Spec
As my API Stack work gets more attention, folks are reaching out to me to see if I have done certain APIs, or see if I’d prioritize some of the ones already on the list. One thing I’m also noticing...
HTTP Header Awareness: Using The Link Header For Pagination
I was revisiting the concept of pagination for a specific project I am working, and after consulting my API research, I came up with a suitable approach using a Link Header. Beyond applying this in...
The Month At A Glance, Road Map, Support, And The Recent Posts For Your API Platform
I was playing with Microsoft’s API Catalog, a tool to visualize and analyze the API overlap between standards specifications and type systems within browsers, and their footer caught my eye. I am a...
What Are The Most Relevant API Topics To Discuss At @APIStrat in Boston This Fall?
We are picking up speed with the planning for @APIStrat in Boston this November, and with the event committee assembled, and the call for talks open, we are looking at what the possible topics are ...
More Patents Turning APIs Into An Invasive, Royalty Generating Virus
The relationship between API provider and consumer is a fragile one. As an API provider I am offering up my valuable digital asset, data, content, and digital resources. I would like you to take th...
April 28, 2016
#Patents
A Regular Reminder That Storytelling Is The Most Important Tool In Your API Toolbox
I was reminded by my friend Mike Amundsen of the importance of storytelling in our world. When I am asked by anyone doing APIs, what is the most important thing they should be doing, my answer is a...
The Wikimedia Unique Devices Data API
I came across the Wikimedia Unique Devices data set, which also is served up as an API endpoint, along with the other APIs the platform offers. The data set and API provides access to a list of uni...
Content That Lives On When You Invest In The Right API Stories, Training, and Guides
I am working with my partner Cloud Elements to build out a community of evangelists, who are interested in delivering on many of the essential building blocks I track on when it comes to API evange...
API Providers & Consumers Keeping In Touch Is How You Can Set The Right Tone For An API Community
One of the side effects of the recent bot craze, is that I’m getting to showcase the often very healthy API practices of Slack, as they grow, scale, and manage their developer ecosystem. Slack is b...
API Providers & Consumers Keeping In Touch Is How You Can Set The Right Tone For An API Community
One of the side effects of the recent bot craze, is that I’m getting to showcase the often very healthy API practices of Slack, as they grow, scale, and manage their developer ecosystem. Slack is b...
Vital Resources Like The Court Listener API Depend On Our Donations To Operate
Despite popular belief in Silicon Valley, there are many different ways to fund the design, development, deployment, and operation of valuable API resources. Not all APIs are destined to be the nex...
April 25, 2016
#Resources
Slack Meets The Minimum Viable API Platform Requirements
I am using my minimum viable API operations definition tool to continue profiling the API sector, this time to size up the Slack API community. Slack is kind of a darling of the API space, so it ki...
OpenAPI Specifications For 642 Of The Schema.org Types
I am gearing up for another wave of API definition work, so I am taking the opportunity to produce some more tooling that assists me in the process. One of the tools I want to build, is a simple so...
OpenAPI Specifications For 642 Of The Schema.org Types
I am gearing up for another wave of API definition work, so I am taking the opportunity to produce some more tooling that assists me in the process. One of the tools I want to build, is a simple so...
Using My APIs.json Annotation Tool To Drive An API Design Conversation Via Github Issues
I am working on one possible API definition for the Human Services Definition Specification (HSDS), and the next phase of this work involves bringing in a small group of technical, and non-technica...
Using My APIs.json Annotation Tool To Drive An API Design Conversation Via Github Issues
I am working on one possible API definition for the Human Services Definition Specification (HSDS), and the next phase of this work involves bringing in a small group of technical, and non-technica...
I Like Working With JSON On Github Because CORS Is Never An Issue
I tend to only work in environments where I have full control over the server, so Cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) is never really an issue for any of the APIs I have control over, but is a per...
I Am Working With @HitchHQ Team To Help API Providers Build Their Communities
I’m always on the hunt for like-minded folks who I can partner with, and bring needed products, services, and tools to the API space. If someone is selling something to the API space, its likely I ...
April 22, 2016
#Providers
I Am Working With @HitchHQ Team To Help API Providers Build Their Communities
I’m always on the hunt for like-minded folks who I can partner with, and bring needed products, services, and tools to the API space. If someone is selling something to the API space, its likely I ...
April 22, 2016
#Providers
Helping Folks Leave Their Platform and Language Baggage At Home Using API Definition Formats
I was just participating in an interesting conference call about multiple API implementations, which are putting the Human Services Definition Specification (HSDS) to use. The call was brought toge...
Empowering You To Make Informed Decisions Around Your Information Is What The Personal API Is About
My friend Tom Woodward is continuing his personal API journey on his blog, sharing more of his thoughts around taking control over his information, and sharing some of the conversational exhaust th...
April 22, 2016
#Personal
Sizing Up The i.Materialise 3D Printing API With My Minimum Viable API Operations Definition
I always have an inbox full of requests from companies asking me to take a look at their APIs, and provide any feedback that I can. I do conduct a more formal review for some companies, but I also ...
Sizing Up The i.Materialise 3D Printing API With My Minimum Viable API Operations Definition
I always have an inbox full of requests from companies asking me to take a look at their APIs, and provide any feedback that I can. I do conduct a more formal review for some companies, but I also ...
API, RSS, and The Ability To Look At Your Company Through An External Lens
A huge pet peeve for me is when a company has a blog, but not provide an RSS feed–it really grinds my gears! Although it is something that aggravates me, I understand many of the reasons behind it...
The Average Person Will Never Care About Their Digital Stuff Enough For Personal APIs To Be A Thing
I’ve heard the same thing for years–that the average person will never care about their digital stuff enough to ever want to learn about APIs, let alone for the concept of the personal API to ever ...
Competing Views Around The Value And Ownership Of Digital Resources Impacting API Security
I was reading a post about how having an unclear sense of ownership hurts API security, which showcases the different views on who owns security, when it comes to exposing corporate digital assets ...
The Pricing & Plans For 250 API Platforms
I track on the API operations of around 2000 companies. Honestly, most of the 10K+ APIs in the ProgrammableWeb API directory have long been gone, deprecated, acquired, and had the lights shut off. ...
The Pricing & Plans For 250 API Platforms
I track on the API operations of around 2000 companies. Honestly, most of the 10K+ APIs in the ProgrammableWeb API directory have long been gone, deprecated, acquired, and had the lights shut off. ...
Providing An Approved Developer Catalog For Your API
I was going through the Expedia Affiliate Network again yesterday, as part of my Travel Stack Network work. Having individual research projects that pop up on my radar, and force to me take a fresh...
Making The Right First Impression With Your API Developer Signup Email
I sign up for a lot of APIs, and I am always surprised at what I see, or don’t see, when I first signup for an API service. Personally I really enjoy the ones that have a simple, getting started fo...
Staying True To My API Core And Seeing Bots As Just One More Design Constraint
Over the last five years many of us have been pushing forward our API design skills to deliver valuable resources to mobile apps. The multi channel opportunity for delivering data, content, and oth...
Using Forms As An Introduction To World Of APIs For Normals
I am working to identify the low hanging fruit for deploying APIs at Davidson College. It is a process where I target the domain, at the request of someone on campus, then slowly spider the website...
April 13, 2016
#Forms
Some Of The Common Building Blocks Of API Deprecation
I spend my days mapping out the API life cycle, keeping track of what I consider to be the 50+ areas of a modern API life cycle, based upon the approach I am seeing from leading providers. One area...
April 13, 2016
#Deprecation
Formalizing My Approach To Identifying The Low Hanging API Fruit
I get approached by folks all the time who are looking to do APIs at their company, organization, institution, or government agency. The reasons behind these desires to do APIs vary widely. Some wa...
April 13, 2016
The API Purgatory Museum
While I am on the subject of API deprecation, showcasing some of the interesting ways folks deprecate their APIs, I want to actually send out a message to API operators, that if you are considering...
Developing API Tooling For The Average Business User Over At Form.io
When I am review API services and tooling, the majority of what I see is targeting the API elite, the most technical, and specialized of us in the API space. Rarely do I come across approaches that...
Developing API Tooling For The Average Business User Over At Form.io
When I am review API services and tooling, the majority of what I see is targeting the API elite, the most technical, and specialized of us in the API space. Rarely do I come across approaches that...
API Deprecation Art
I’m in the middle of a sprint, where I am going through 50 of my main API stacks, to see what has changed, and who is still home. I’m always fascinated by the number of APIs that just fade away int...
Do You Have All The Links To Pricing, TOS, And Other Critical Info For The APIs You Depend On?
I was going through the list of APIs that I depend on, auditing the services that I’m paying for, and trimming the budget where I can, a process that involves spending time on the pricing and plan ...
Using APIs To Provide Building Blocks For Still And Motion UAV Imagery Media Applications
I see a lot of APIs in my daily work. The diverse number of ways in which APIs are being used is one of the things that keeps my ADD brain interested in all things APIs. While the technical, busine...
April 10, 2016
#Applications
Providing Specialized Views Of An API Surface Area Dynamically With OpenAPI Spec And Liquid
I just published the OpenAPI Spec I just created for the Human Services Data Specification (HSDS) into one of my default portals, which once the OpenAPI Spec is indexed via the portals API.json, I ...
Playing With One Possible OpenAPI Spec For The Human Services Data Specification (HSDS)
As I was preparing for my talk with Dan from Open Referral, I published some of my thoughts on the organization, and the Human Services Data Specification (HSDS). One of the things I did as part of...
We Are All Responsible For Freemium Not Working
I had another conversation with an API service provider today about their freemium accounts not converting. I’ve been sharing my thoughts about these freemium service account conversations, as I wo...
The API Assertions We Make, Believe In, And Require For Our Business Contracts
I am spending time evaluating the evolution of the three applications offered by Restlet, as they work to bring the experience across API Spark, Restlet Studio, and DHC, into closer alignment. To d...
My API Life Cycle Research From Design To Deprecation
It always makes me smile, when I talk to someone about one or many areas of my API research, sharing how I conduct my work, and they are surprised to find how many areas I track on. My home page ha...
Example Of API Service Providers Making Onboarding With Services Easier Using API Definitions
API definitions like OpenAPI Spec, API Blueprint, and Postman, have been gaining in popularity over the last couple of years, mostly because of the their ability to deploy interactive documentation...
A Rogue Embeddable Button For Snapchat
I see quite a few rogue APIs, and often rogue SDKs, but this is the first time I’ve come across a rogue embeddable button. While browsing Product Hunt this morning I came across this rogue Snapchat...
Slack Nails The Reasons Why You Open Up And Share Your API Road Map
Many of the core areas of my API research, and the common building blocks of the API life cycle that I talk about regularly, often seem trivial to the technically inclined, or the purely business f...
That Thing You All Are Doing With Slack Integrations, @Blockspring Is Doing It With Spreadsheets
One common thing you hear from the growing number of integrations and bots that are leveraging the Slack API, is all about injecting some specific action into the platform and tooling, we are all a...
Some Very Different Views Of What API Are And What APIs Can Do
I am regularly reminded of the wide spectrum of what API means to any single person. What is API, and what APIs enable, are all in the eye of the beholder, with only a handful of common aspects sha...
April 7, 2016
#Diff
I Have An API, Now I Need Some Help to Identify What Is Needed To Manage My API Presence
It is pretty easy to design, define, and deploy APIs these days, and I get a number of folks who approach me with questions about how to get going with the operations and management side of things....
April 7, 2016
#Presence
I Have An API Deployed, And A Base Presence Established, What Can I Do To Help Me Get The Word Out?
To augment my last post about when you have an API, but you need some help to identify what is needed to manage your presence, I wanted to talk about some of what you can do once you’ve established...
April 7, 2016
#Presence
If Your API Is Worthy Of Mentioning In Your Press Release It Should Also Be Linked On Your Website
I process many press releases to feed the of API.Report beast. The primary reason I do this work each week, is to identify new APIs, being done in interesting business sectors. One common thing I s...
April 6, 2016
#Web
APIs Needs To Augment My World With A Tangible Benefit In Order To Achieve Relevance
I am spending time talking to more API providers, and API service providers, about the challenges they are facing, while reaching out to potential customers, thanks to the support of my partners Cl...
April 5, 2016
#Tangible
Who Is Working On The Twitter Cards For Slack Messages, Unfurl, and Attachments?
As I study the approach of bot, and messaging platform integrations like Current, I keep thinking about the potential for API injection at this layer of messaging. In this scenario I am thinking ab...
The API Integration Providers Who Have API Access to Actions Will Be Successful In Bot Environments
It has been acceptable for integration platform as a service providers (iPaaS) like IFTT and Zapier to focus on delivering the end-solutions that their consumers have needed, and requiring them to ...
API Integration Service Providers Should Have An API So That Their Actions Are Embeddable
During the latest IFTTT flareup, I realized how much I haven’t written about my feelings surrounding API integratio service providers, iPaas, or whatever else you call it. Something that always fru...
Hello Pinboard Customers, From Linden Tibbets, the CEO of IFTTT
Here is the email I received from the CEO of IFTTT, in response to the whole Pinboard kerfuffle, a few minutes ago. It looks like they’ve done a little soul searching, and wanted to apologize: Hel...
March 31, 2016
#Customers
Gathering My Thoughts About Open Referral And The Human Services API
I am working on several very rewarding API efforts lately, but one I’m particularly psyched about is Open Referral. I’m working with them to help apply the open API format in a handful of implement...
Where Do I Start With APIs? The Independent Liberal Arts College Edition
I’m engaging in another conversation with a higher education institution about where to start with APIs on campus. A new CIO has assumed a leadership position, and some very forward thinking folks ...
March 30, 2016
#Art
Managing Your API Terms of Service And Privacy Policies On Github Like Medium Does
I always dig it when API stories spin out of control, and I end up down story holes. I’m sure certain people waiting for other work from me do not appreciate it, but these are where some of the bes...
I Am Seeing More API Platforms Manage Their Blog Presence Using Medium
One thing that struck me as I wrote my post about Best Buy stopping issuing API keys to free email accounts, was the fact that Best Buy operates their developer blog on Medium--something I am seein...
Best Buy Will Not Issue API Keys To Free Email Accounts And Wants To Get To Know Your Company
Best Buy is one of the many of the recent responses I am seeing from public API providers, as they work to strike a healthy balance within their API community. In an attempt to incentivize the beha...
The Annotated Code Walk-Throughs and Tutorials Over At Twilio
I am always trying to identify the common building blocks employed by leading API providers, and Twilio is one of the usual suspects I showcase. This time it is focusing their annotated code walk-t...
The Lack Of An API And Healthy Partner Integrations Is An Early Warning System For Service Providers
I was disappointed to see the email in my inbox this morning from IFTTT about their Pinboard integration. I also helped amplify Pinboard when he was Tweet’n up a storm earlier, and I recommend you ...
Exploring A New Way To Fund API Life Cycle Tooling By Open Sourcing The API Garage
The news out of Runscope makes today a good day to kick off discussion around a project that I’ve been helping push forward with the API Garage team, assisting them find the healthiest path forward...
This Is How APIs Will Deliver The Change We Need
I recently caught a glimpse of how APIs are going to deliver the change we need in this world. It began while I was attending a gathering of indie ed-tech folks on the campus of Davidson College in...
March 27, 2016
#Change
Some Milestones From The Last 15 Years Of Web API History
History is everything. Understanding where we have come from is critical to knowing where we are going. While pushing forward with the latest technology, it is always healthy to pause and take a lo...
The Unintended Consequences Of API Patents
As I was reviewing patent #20160070605: Adaptable Application Programming Interfaces And Specification Of Same, from yet another person I know, after I pick my head up off the desk, I begin thinkin...
March 25, 2016
#Patents
The More I Gather OpenAPI Specs The More I Realize How We Obsess Over The Unecessary
I spend a lot of time gathering, creating, and organizing machine readable OpenAPI Specs, as part of my API Stack, and personal API stack work. I’m not insane enough to think I can create OpenAPI S...
FullContact But For OpenAPI Specifications
I get these regular updates from FullContact when there is new information available about the contacts I have added to my contact list of people I care about. Anytime there is a new photo, social ...
Deploying The API Service Providers That I Depend On Within My Own Infrastructure
I play with a lot of services that are looking to provide solutions to the API industry, and I’m always looking to better understand what leading API services providers are using to deploy their wa...
Exposing The Meaningful Skills Our APIs Possess For Use In The Next Gen Messaging And Voice Apps
As I’m working through my morning work monitoring the API space, I’m proccesing stories about the availability of valuable resources, like the House Rules Committee data being released in XML forma...
Your Microservices Effort Will Fail If You Only Focus On The Technical Details
I have self-censored stories about microservices, because I have felt the topic is as charged as linked data, REST, and some parts of the hypermedia discussion. Meaning there are many champions of ...
What I Am Seeing As A Minimum Viable Bot Presence
I have looked at way more Bots than I should have in the last couple days, and I’m beginning to see similar patterns emerging across bot implementations, in sync with what I shared as part of my a...
March 22, 2016
#Presence
Savvy API Providers Submit Pull Requests To Update Their OpenAPI Specs In My Github Repo
I’m constantly working to hand-craft, scrape-craft, and auto-generate OpenAPI Specs, and APIs.json files for as many of the top APIs I can. It is something Steve Willmott (@njyx), the CEO of 3Scale...
I Am Hearing A Lot More Talk About Restricting Free And Freemium Tiers Of API Access
I’m seeing a significant shift in the conversations around how SaaS, and API-first platforms are planning access to their APIs. I’m seeing a pretty significant back peddling around free, and freemi...
March 22, 2016
#Access
Sucked Into The World Of Bots And APIs
I am slowly getting sucked into the world of bots. I’ve been tagging stories related to Twitter bots for some time, but it was the growing buzz of Slack bots that has really grabbed my attention. I...
March 21, 2016
#Bots
Further Simplifying My API Docs And Providing API Samples
For some workshops preparation this week, I needed to isolate just the best of the API calls and documentation from handful of APIs I am trying to teach my intended audience about. I have almost tw...
March 17, 2016
#Docs
Personal APIs Are Not Just A Local Destination, They Are A Journey
I am preparing a project for the conversations, and a workshop I have on my schedule this week at Davidson College, called: Indie EdTech & The Personal API. I’ll be going on campus, talking to ...
Personal APIs Are Not Just A Local Destination, They Are A Journey
I am preparing a project for the conversations, and a workshop I have on my schedule this week at Davidson College, called: Indie EdTech & The Personal API. I’ll be going on campus, talking to ...
Do My APIs Have The Skills They Need To Compete In A Voice And Bot Enabled World?
I’m evaluating the Alexa Voice Service ecosystems alongside leading API messaging platforms like Telegram, and Slack, who are changing the way users engage and communicate, but also are evolving ho...
API Definition Driven UI Elements: Path, Verb, And Tag Autocomplete
I was experimenting with breaking apart API definitions over the weekend, and exploring different ways of assembling the moving parts into different types of tools, visualizations, and other goodie...
March 14, 2016
#Definitions
API Definition Driven Visualizations: Verb Tag Clouds
I am playing with different ways of exploring APIs, building on documentation solutions like Swagger UI, Lucybot Console, and Slate. I want to push the boundaries of how we document, tell stories, ...
When The Products We Own Use APIs To Order Their Own Replacement Parts (Or Service)
I was reading a post on Amazon’s new SMART(Surveillance Marketed As Revolution Techonology) water pitcher, which is more about Amazon’s new connected device partner commerce strategy, than it is ab...
Datensparsamkeit: Data Minimization
I am borrowing from the very prescient post from Martin Fowler, an older post, but is a topic that should be revisited regularly. Google translate tells me Datensparsamkeit means “data minimization...
March 10, 2016
#Data
An Imbalance In Investment Priorities That Will Continue To Slow API Growth And Adoption
One topic that has been present in numerous discussions lately is just how much work goes into designing, deploying, and managing APIs, as well as around the integration between the growing number ...
Adding A Dead Pool Page To Each API Research Area So We Remember The Past
When a startup goes away, either through acquisition, or any other reason, and I find the site dormant, with a friendly goodbye message, or just gone, I usually just remove the tag from them in my ...
Four Buckets To Organize My API Deployment Research Into
I was being interviewed by an IBM group the other day, and I scribbled some thoughts on a piece of paper as I was rambling, which I just picked up trying to make sense of what was going through my ...
While It Does Suck Parse Went Away, I Wish Every Service That Shutdown Left Behind The Same Page
It definitely sucks that Parse went away like they did, but you have to commend them on the page they left behind. Facebook put up the download link to an open source version of Parse Server, and a...
Playing With Concepts Around Simplifying The API Docs That Are Generated Using API Definitions
I am building on my conversation with Abhinav Asthana (@a85), the Co-founder and CEO of Postman, around how we can simplify the API documentation we are providing to our API consumers. As part of m...
New Icons For Helping Me Communicate How Open Or Closed An API Is
If you follow my blog at all you know I love Noun Project icons. I started using them with my last minimal website design, and is something I’ve carried over with the latest edition. I’ve been usin...
March 8, 2016
#Open
Thinking Through The Design Of Your Pricing API Would Help You Think Through Your API Plan
As I made my way through nine of the leading SMS providers, profiling the details of their API plans, trying to bring it all together into a single, machine readable definition, Messente’s pricing ...
The 70 Platforms With Job Postings For A Developer Evangelist Or Advocate Currently
I try to spend time each week evaluating what types of companies are looking for API / developer evangelist / advocates, to help keep my awareness in sync with what mainstream companies are needing...
My One Piece Of Advice To Next Generation of API Evangelists Is To Take Care Of Yourself
As I finish writing a piece on the 70 platforms who are looking for an API evangelist or developer advocate currently, sharing the wisdom of leading evangelist I follow in the space, I am also work...
It Would Be Nice To Have Some Simpler Interactive API Documentation In Addition To What We Have Now
I had an exchange with Abhinav Asthana (@a85), the Co-founder and CEO of Postman on Twitter today. He was tweeting about API documentation, and I chimed in with my support, about how we need to kee...
Numerous Challenges When It Comes To Comparing Even Similar API Plans
I was pushing forward my API plan research this weekend, building on some of the tooling I developed during the last round, and the machine readable API plan format I hammered out late last year to...
March 6, 2016
#Plans
Scraping Static Docs Is Often Better Than Proxy For Generating Machine Readable API Definitions
I was looking to create an APIs.json plus OpenAPI Spec(s) for the WordPress.org API, and the Instructure Canvas Learning Management System (LMS) API. I am pulling together a toolkit to support a wo...
Are 1000lb Gorillas Buying Startups To Look Pretty, Or Just So That Nobody Else Buys Them First?
As I’m thinking about the bigger picture of how startup acquisitions are impacting the world of APIs, I am also having several conversations with folks about their brand spank’n new API focused sta...
March 4, 2016
#Startups
A More Distilled Version of An API Getting Started Page On The Home Page Of A Developer Portal
As I look through API portals, profiling the building blocks of successful API platform, I’m always looking for bite-size stories for my readers. I was working to complete my Instagram API definiti...
My API Is Not The Business Driver I Hoped It Would Be
I have had several conversations with API providers lately who are somewhat frustrated with the way their API operations are going. While their APIs have brought in many new conversations, and supp...
March 1, 2016
#Business
Making API Terms Of Service And Privacy Policy Easy To Read And Understand
The NextWeb had a great story today that Google has redesigned its developer policies with clearer language and visual examples, and normally I don’t jsut parrot what the tech blogosphere publishes...
A Small Business API Strategy
I’ve been moving forward with my efforts to better on-board folks with the sometimes overwhelming amounts of research available via API Evangelist. I have several groups looking for guidance on whe...
A Simple Needs Assessment To Kick Off An API Integration And Automation Journey
I need some help with APIs! Ok, where can I help you? Well, I have multiple systems, that we use to operate our business on a daily basis, and when we do things in one system, we need the other sys...
Extracting As Much Value From Your API Developers As You Can, Then Screwing Them Over in The End
I often push back against API consumers when they complain about the deprecation of API platform, focusing on the fact that we cannot depend on APIs to be around forever. I also push back against A...
What Is APIs.json? And What Is Next For the API Discovery Format?
As part of a renewed focus on the API discovery definition format APIs.json, I wanted to revisit the propsed machine readable API discovery specification, and see what is going on. First, what is A...
What Is APIs.json? And What Is Next For the API Discovery Format?
As part of a renewed focus on the API discovery definition format APIs.json, I wanted to revisit the propsed machine readable API discovery specification, and see what is going on. First, what is A...
Adopta.Agency ClinicalTrials.gov Data And API
In the last six months I was fortunate enough to be able to push forward one of my side projects, with the help of a prototype grant from the Knight Foundation. The mission of the project, is to he...
Adopta.Agency ClinicalTrials.gov Data And API
In the last six months I was fortunate enough to be able to push forward one of my side projects, with the help of a prototype grant from the Knight Foundation. The mission of the project, is to he...
My Hangout With Wade Foster Of Zapier: Its About The Process
I had the pleasure of hanging out with Wade Foster (@wadefoster), co-founder and CEO of Zapier (How do you pronounce Zapier? It rhymes with happier :-) recently. As I travel less, I’m looking at do...
Exploring My thoughts Around API Injection Into Messaging, Voice, And Other Online Experiences
As I listen to my hangout with Wade Foster of Zapier, I’m considering the overlap between my API reciprocity, bots, virtualization, containerization, webhooks, and even voice research. At the same ...
The API Transparency Discussion Is Not Exclusively About Being Public Or Private
When I talk about companies using APIs to be more transparent, one of the immediate comments I receive from folks is that “not everyone can be public by default”. I agree with this situation, but I...
February 17, 2016
#Transparency
Some Of The Micro API Evangelist Tasks That I Get Asked To Help With Regularly
I have been working for a month or so on what some of the common tasks that developer advocates and evangelists would like to see occur around their API operations. These are small little tasks tha...
I Wish Everyone Broke Their API Pricing Page Down Like SendGrid Does
I was going through the SendGrid API and profiling their available plans and pricing, using my new API plan tracking format, and I just have to stop and say–I wish everyone would present their pric...
February 16, 2016
#Pricing
I Am Liking The Modular Services That Are Delivering In Specific Areas Of API Life Cycle Like API-Docs.io
I like my API service providers like I like my APIs, doing one thing and doing it well. Sure services can work together (using APIs), and companies can launch multiple services, but I prefer select...
I Am Liking The Modular Services That Are Delivering In Specific Areas Of API Life Cycle Like API-Docs.io
I like my API service providers like I like my APIs, doing one thing and doing it well. Sure services can work together (using APIs), and companies can launch multiple services, but I prefer select...
Generating OpenAPI Specs For The Mobile Apps You Depend On Just By Using Them
Stoplight.io is a very cool new API modeling and proxy tool. I just wrote a post about the overall features of the platform, but I wanted to zoom in on a specific benefit that Stoplight.io brings t...
Concern Around Mapping And Discussing Shadow Mobile APIs Shows Signs Of An Imbalance
After I’ve talked about my mapping of the public, and mobile APIs with various folks over the last couple of months, I can usually put folks into one of three camps 1) they do not understand what t...
Automagically Defining Your API Infrastructure As You Work Using Stoplight.io
I stayed up way too late playing with some of the new features in Stoplight.io. If you aren’t familiar with what the Stoplight team has been cooking up–they have been hard at work crafting a pretty...
February 16, 2016
#Infrastructure
Automagically Defining Your API Infrastructure As You Work Using Stoplight.io
I stayed up way too late playing with some of the new features in Stoplight.io. If you aren’t familiar with what the Stoplight team has been cooking up–they have been hard at work crafting a pretty...
February 16, 2016
#Infrastructure
As An API Service Provider, Should I Craft My Own API Definition Format, Or Just Reuse What Is Already Available
I have had multiple conversations with folks in the space who are building services and tooling for the API sector lately, where I was asked whether or not they should only be using existing API de...
The Essential Building Blocks For Integration, Automation, and Reciprocity
I’m spending some time going through v2 docs for the Zapier API, following the release of multi steps work flows, and code steps for calculating, converting, and manipulating data and content, last...
The Bit Size Resources We will Need For The Bot And Voice Evolution In The API Space
I just finished looking through the documentation for the Zapier API, and for the Alex Voice Service, trying to understand the approach these platforms are taking to incorporate API driven resource...
All This Information Is Great, But Where Do I Start With My API Strategy?
I shared a list of just the essential building blocks from across only 21 areas of my API areas of the API life cycle with a company I’m helping craft an API strategy for, and I got some very commo...
February 15, 2016
#Strategy
My Tooling And API For Gathering And Organizing The Details Of The Plans And Pricing For APIs
A couple of weeks ago I started playing with a machine readable way to describe the pricing, and plans available for an API. I spent a couple of days looking through over 50 APIs, and how they hand...
Considering The Obvious And Subtle Differences Between Similar API Providers
Evaluating exactly what is the “right” API can be very difficult. This is what I do full time, and its hard for me to understand the differences–I cannot image what it is like for people who have r...
Looking For Partners At Every Turn When Planning Your API Evangelism
One reason for having a well thought out, comprehensive API strategy, is that you are thinking about all the moving parts, and at ever turn you can weave things together, and potentially amplify th...
API Evangelist, Assistant, and Broker
I was in Philadelphia last week, hanging out with educational technology practitioners, and at one of the dinners I found myself talking to a young lady who was a digital learning assistant at a un...
February 10, 2016
#Evangelist
Importance Of Thinking Externally When Writing The Description For Your API
I look at a lot of APIs, and one characteristic I judge them by, is their ability to simply explain what their API does. The most import aspect to any individual or company when doing APIs, is the ...
February 8, 2016
#Writing
It Is All About No Limitations With The Enterprise API Plans
I am continuing to push forward my API plans research, where I look closely at the common building blocks of the service composition, pricing, and plans available for some of the leading API provid...
An Embeddable Run In Postman Button For Your API
The popular API client tool Postman just launched an embeddable “run in Postman” button, that you can use to fast track integration with your API(s). Shortly after I wrote a post about the importan...
Different API Rate Limits For Verified And Unverified Free Tiers Of Access
One of the approaches to API plans I was studying recently is from the data provider Factual, who provides access to places, products, and other valuable data-sets. I felt Factual had a pretty stra...
Automated Mapping Of The API Universe With Charles Proxy, Dropbox, OpenAPI Spec, And Some Custom APIs
I have been working hard for about a year now trying to craft machine readable API definitions for the leading APIs out there. I’ve written before about my use of Charles Proxy to generate OpenAPI ...
Offering A Monthly To Annual Toggle For Your API Pricing Page
I am continuing to work through notes from a recent push forward of my API monetization, and API plan research. Something that yielded a number of valuable nuggets that I think API providers shoul...
February 4, 2016
#Pricing
If You Are Proud Of Your API Patents Publish Your Portfolio And Showcase Them
I’m going to keep beating the patent API drumbeat, until I bring more awareness to the topic, and shine a light on what is going on. While I will still be my usual self and call out the worst behav...
Parse Shutting Down: Maybe We Should Lower Our Expectations Of Tech Just A Little Bit
The mobile backend as a service (MBaaS) platform Parse is shutting down. I started tracking on Parse as part of my BaaS research a couple years back, something that resulted in having all of the Ba...
My Vision For One Possible Future Of The API Life Cycle Present In A Real-Time Subway Map For Helsinki
If you caught my keynotes at @Defrag and @APIStrat last year, you know I’m working on using the subway map as a method for visualizing, understand, and eventually exploration of the API life cycle....
Breaking Out API Support Into A Separate Research Area
Supporting your community is not unique to the API space, but supporting API operations does have some unique needs, and approaches that are proven by leading platforms. Like other areas of my rese...
My Stance On APIs And Patents
My post the other day on the hypermedia API focused patents from ElasticPath, has resulted in some very interesting conversations, with folks trying to understand this world, to those who are paten...
January 27, 2016
#Patents
Embedding Your Language SDK(s) In Your Apiary Documentation Using APIMATIC
I’m seeing a resurgence in my embeddable API research lately, based upon signals I’m seeing across the space, and conversations I’m having with folks. The interesting part for me is that this wav...
API Definitions Are The Contract For Doing Business With APIs
I held a hangout with API Evangelist this morning, with Steve Willmot (@njyx) of @3scale, & Jakub Nesetril (@jakubnesetril) of @apiaryio today, where we discussed API definitions. Both Steve an...
Reverse Engineering APIs From The Common APIs Models We Know
As I work to complete more API definitions, with all API endpoints defined as an OpenAPI Spec, API Blueprint, and Postman Collection, with everything wrapped in a complete APIs.json index--I can’t ...
January 25, 2016
#Engineering
Moving Towards A Meaningful Set Of Icons For The API Community
There are many inconsistencies I struggle with in the API space, and the lack of meaningful icons to express myself is one of them. I was meeting with my friend Jerome Louvel of Restlet this last w...
January 25, 2016
#Community
Join @3Scale, @Apiary, And I For A Hangout On API Definitions This Wednesday
Join me, Steve Willmott(@njyx) of 3Scale, and Jakub Nesetril(@jakubnesetril) of Apiary, for a hangout on API definitions this week. I wanted to explore doing more hangouts under the APIStrat, as w...
A New Open Source Interactive API Documentation From Folks Over At Lucybot
I am happy to be showcasing a new open source, OpenAPI Spec driven, interactive API documentation, from the LucyBot team. The API definition driven documentation solution is one of the best impleme...
The New API Definition Abstraction Layer Over At Apiary
I was on the road last week, so I didn’t maintain my usual barrage of API analysis. As I go through my monitoring for the week, I’d say the biggest news of the week was Apiary’s support of the Open...
January 23, 2016
#Definitions
Taking A Snapshot Of Just The Essential API Building Blocks Across My Research
My API industry research is constantly moving forward, shifting, and being added to–much like the space itself. As I work to update each of my research areas each week, my process involves adding a...
January 18, 2016
#Research
The Four Categories Of Dwolla API Consumers
I just finished spending an hour talking with Brent Baker (@norcaljhawk), head of product for Dwolla, and Jordan Lampe (@JsLampe), about the vision behind the developer experience for their new dev...
The API Feedback Loop: Your Feedback Powers Everything We Do
One of the benefits of doing an API, is so that you can take advantage of the potential for a community feedback loop, driven by internal groups, external partners, and even in some cases the pubic...
Just The Best Parts Of The API Documentation Please
I was just talking API documentation with Brent Baker (@norcaljhawk), and Jordan Lampe (@JsLampe) from Dwolla. As we were going through their API documentation, they mentioned how they were using S...
January 13, 2016
#Documentation
I Just Cannot Get Behind API Patents, Especially When They Apply To HTTP And Hypermedia
I got an email in my inbox, about a new API modeling language from Elastic Path earlier today. The product is called Helix, and is sold as being “the first enterprise-class API modeling language de...
How Do I Provide A List Of Certified Applications To My API Ecosystem Partners
I was emailed by someone working in government, asking some pretty interesting questions around using an application showcase, to make trusted applications available to an ecosystem of partners. I’...
Helping The Average Business User With More Information On How To Put APIs To Work
API Evangelist has long been dedicated to helping the average business user understand all that is API. I saw early on in 2010, the potential of APIs, when used to empower the IT, or even shadow IT...
January 12, 2016
#Business
API Aggregation, Reciprocity, and Orchestration
I struggle a lot with how I separate out my research areas–there are a lot of reasons why I will break off, or group information in a certain way. Really it all comes down to some layer of separati...
API Stack, APIs.io, And APIs.Guru Need You To Create And Share Your API Definitions
I feel pretty strongly that for the next wave of growth in the API sector, we need the majority of public APIs in use today, to have well crafted, as complete as possible, API definitions in either...
API Stack, APIs.io, And APIs.Guru Need You To Create And Share Your API Definitions
I feel pretty strongly that for the next wave of growth in the API sector, we need the majority of public APIs in use today, to have well crafted, as complete as possible, API definitions in either...
Public GETs, In Concert With Private POST, PUT, And DELETE For Your APIs
Another story I wanted to tell from my work to expose an API yesterday, so I could get help with it, was focused around the service composition that I used. I feel like this is a powerful story, th...
Are We Stepping Back And Considering The Potential For Abuse With Our APIs?
I see a lot of APIs, and honestly I’m not excited about all of them. Some are public. Some are private. I am feeling that I could put the APIs I see into 3 different buckets: valuable, some value, ...
January 8, 2016
Using APIs To Address Regulatory Uncertainty Involved In Cross-Border Data Flows
I pulled the title for this post directly from understanding the impact of cross-border routing of data during an era of emerging geographic restrictions, from Dyn. I’m writing about this to add it...
I Loaded That CSV Into A Database, Now Let Me Expose An API So I Can Get Some Help
I have been working to clean up the the web presence for the API Strategy & Practice conference. We concluded the 6th edition of @APIStrat in Austin this last november (check out the videos), a...
We Need An API For The Chronology of Data Breaches Database
I came across the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, while conducting a search that turned up the chronology of data breaches, which provides details on 4,725 data breaches that have been made public si...
Providing A Dedicated Test User API As Part Of Your API Virtualization Strategy
I was profiling the Facebook API as part of my API Stack work. While I only use a handful of the endpoints available to me via the Facebook API, as the API Evangelist, I feel like I should have an ...
Your API Access Replicated Into Multiple Regions Around The Globe For Additional Charge
I am finding all sorts of interesting examples as I push forward my API plans research, where I study the API planning approaches employed by over 50 of the leading APIs. One of the items, on my AP...
Security Will Increasingly Be Used AS Component Of Tiered API Planning
As I look through the business models of leading API providers I am profiling, I’m increasingly seeing security as a selling point. When API providers break down their pricing into tiers, they are ...
AWS Has A Blog That Is Dedicated To The Command Line
Amazon has a new blog dedicated to just their Command Line Interface (CLI). I use AWS as anchor for many of my API stories, but I also acknowledge that many API providers will never be at the scale...
All Companies Who Have An Online Product Catalog Should Look At What Octopart Does With Their API
Octopart is a search engine for electronic parts. They have been on my API monitoring radar for some time now, because they have a very well done API. Octopart was one of the first API providers I ...
January 5, 2016
#Product
Microsoft Increases The Visibility Of Their API Driven Platform With A New Road Map
A road map for your API, is one of those essential building blocks that can go a long way in building trust with your API consumers. Sharing your plans, helps developers prepare for the future, and...
The OpenAPI Specification (fka The Swagger Specification)
It is a new year, and we have a lot of work to do when it comes to defining APIs in the new year. One of the results of 2015, was that the specification known as Swagger was spun off into the Lin...
Look Across My API Monitoring API Methods By Grouping Them Using Tag
Last week I was playing with defining API monitoring APIs so I can map to each stop along the API life cycle. I took three of the API monitoring services I use (APIMetrics, API Science, and Runscop...
Diff And Merging Of API Definition Formats
As the number of API definitions increases out there, I’m coming across many duplicates of APIs I already have in my collection(s). In 2016, I will increasingly need to be able to execute a diff on...
API Definition Origin, Validation, And Attribution
I have done a lot of work hand crafting, and often scrape crafting, machine readable OpenAPI Spec, as part of the work on the API Stack. Creating a usable API definition is a lot of work, making it...
API Blueprint Has Been Evolving In Two Critical Areas Where OpenAPI Spec (aka Swagger) Falls Significantly Short
Z (@zdne) over at Apiary published a pretty interesting blog post before christmas which highlights two important elements of profiling APIs using popular API definition formats. Z is key to the vi...
Thinking About The Monetization Layer For Public Data
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...
Here Are The Top API Stacks I Will Be Working To Define in 2016
My new partner in API crime Cloud Elements is helping motivate me to spend more cycles in 2016 on defining specific stacks of APIs, as part of my ongoing API industry research. I am taking the appr...
December 30, 2015
#Define
Do You Have What It Takes To Be On The API Academy Team?
When it comes to keeping an eye on what others are doing across the API space, and occasionally pushing forward a few crazy ideas, API Evangelist is your source. However if you really want to learn...
The Hard Work When It Comes To Defining APIs
I am stopping and collecting some of my thoughts, as I work through my API stack. I’m thinking about the more difficult aspects of defining APIs, this time it is for the APIs I depend on to operate...
December 29, 2015
Thinking About My API Usage At Scale Across Almost 35 External APIs
As I conclude the first phase of profiling the APIs that I depend on, I am thinking about my API usage at scale, and some new questions are arising, that I wasn’t thinking about before. I find my A...
My API Evangelist Strategy for 2016
As I approach 2016, I’m stepping back, and looking at the big picture of what it is that do, and using what I learn to help guide what I will accomplish in 2016. I tend to not subscribe to the conc...
A Roundup Of API Meetup Groups In North America
The existence, membership, and activity around local API Meetup groups is one of the overall health indicators in the API space. I’ve long been a proponent of local API meetups, helping jumpstart t...
A Little Hack To Help Me Better Define Method Based APIs Using OADF
A handful of the most iconic APIs out there, which I also happen to depend on for my own operations, are some of the more frustratingly designed APIs I know. There are many API design offenses we a...
December 23, 2015
#Define
Variable Rates On Your API GET Requests Depending On How Many POST or PUT Requests You Make
I’m down in the detail of how we craft our API plans, looking at the approaches of almost 100 different providers, and working to establish a common schema for cataloging the plans of these popular...
Button To Run This API In The HTTP API Client of My Choice
There are more HTTP client tools out there than I can shake a stick at (I’ve reached that point, I’m shaking sticks at things), and in 2016 I predict there will be even more entrants into the space...
Adding Journeys To Each Of My API Research Areas
I am continuing to build on the subway map exploration work, that I talked about at @Defrag and @APIStrat last month, and have a more static version of my API life cycle explorer ready, which I’m s...
Defining API Monitoring APIs So I Can Map To Each Stop Along The API Life Cycle
I am going through each of the 35+ areas of the APi space that I monitor, working to bring alive the over 900 stops along the API life cycle, that I have identified through my research. I’m still w...
Why I Labeled My Research API Plans Instead Of API Pricing
How to monetize APIs is on of the top questions I get from companies, right after concerns around security and control. I have separated my research into two main buckets, the first is focused on t...
Solution Discovery Instead of API Discovery Via API Aggregation and Reciprocity Providers
During my API discovery session talk at @APIStrat Austin this last November, I talked about what I see as an added dimension to the concept of API discovery, one that will become increasingly impor...
How Tight Is The Coupling Between The SaaS Business Model And The API?
As part of evaluating 50+ companies, and their business approach to delivering APIs, I came across the Box platform. As I am looking through this diverse slice of API companies, I am looking to bet...
December 15, 2015
#Business
Easier To Offer Ops APIs To Your Devs If Your API Service Provider Has APIs
I’m looking at the pricing APIs offered by some of the API providers that are further along in their API journey. This is just one example of how API providers are offering more operational level A...
December 15, 2015
Dialing In Your API Pricing Down To The Endpoint And Verb Level
I am spending a significant amount of time looking through the pricing pages for leading API providers, working to get a sense for some of the common approaches to API monetization in use across th...
December 15, 2015
#Pricing
Customizable Terms of Service As Part Of Your API Plans
I am spending a significant amount of time looking through the pricing pages for leading API providers, working to get a sense for some of the common approaches to API monetization in use across th...
Where Is The API Reciprocity Platform Designed Just For Managing API Operations
I am seeing more operations focused API tooling emerge lately, like Stoplight.io, and as I’m adding API reciprocity platform DataFire to my list of integration, automation, and interoperability pro...
Making Sure The Latest API Pricing Update Is Available In A Developer Portal Messaging Area
I am spending a significant amount of time looking through the pricing pages for leading API providers, working to get a sense for some of the common approaches to API monetization in use across th...
APIs In The Most Mature Sectors Have Pricing APIs
A lot can be learned from the pioneers of the API space. Companies like Amazon and Twilio have been used as a model by many providers, and are something I reference often across my research and sto...
December 12, 2015
#Pricing
A Process To Aggregate RSS Feeds As APIs For Non-Developers
A blog RSS feed is still my number one way to monitor what is happening across the API space. I also use RSS from Google Alerts and TalkWalker to monitor a variety of leading API industry keywords....
Minimum Viable API Service Provider Blueprint
There are some pretty good examples (in my opinion), of well defined API service providers across the API landscape right now– companies, who are selling services specifically to API providers. You...
December 7, 2015
#Blueprint
Going Beyond Just JSON Data And Considering The Relationships That Exist, And The Actions That Can Be Taken
I spent the weekend adding a Siren media type to my API building blocks API, in support of my API life cycle map work. Every time I dive into using Siren, and begin applying hypermedia constraints ...
A Fun Way To Explore HTTP Status Codes With A Subway Map From Restlet
If you were at @defrag or @apistrat in November, you know that I am working to better understand the often complex world of APIs using the Subway map concept. My goal is to better understand the ov...
75% Of Your API Efforts In The Enterprise Will Be Cultural And Political, Not Technical
I started API Evangelist, because I saw a huge deficiency in the overall API conversation–nobody was talking about the business of all of this, and how you actually make money doing this emerging w...
API Client, Tool, Garage, Hub, Playground, Studio, Workbench, And Builders
I am spending some time taking another look at my “client research”, which started out as just about Postman and PAW, but now contains ten separate services I’m and bundling into this area of resea...
December 4, 2015
#Client
What Is API Service Composition?
This is another one of those topics I talk a lot about, but only found few examples of me talking about on the blog–API service composition. If you aren’t familiar with the concept, it is the art o...
Automating API Key Management Using API Service Provider APIs, And Other Open Source Solutions
I’m working my way through some of the low hanging fruit in my API notebook, when it comes to stories, and found a story thread I was working on regarding automating API key management. I’m persona...
The Growing Need For API Virtualization Solutions
This conversation has come up over 10 times this month, at Defrag, APIStrat, and online conversations via Skype and GHangouts. The concept of API virtualization solutions. I am not talking about vi...
What Licensing Should I Be Considering When I Take Open Source Software And Offer Up As An API?
I’ve done this a couple of times now. I took PhantomJS, and created my Screenshot API, and used ImageMagick to create my Image Manipulation API. These are two openly licensed software solutions, wh...
Using The Wikimedia Objective Revision Evaluation Service And Move Beyond Just GET With Your API
I stumbled across Objective Revision Evaluation Service (ORES) last night, a web service running in Wikimedia Labs that provides machine learning as a service across Wikimedia Projects, and is desi...
Realizing I Need Hypermedia To Bring My API Lifecycle Vision To Life
I have been learning about hypermedia over the last three years now, and only earlier this year, I began playing with Siren to help me craft a better experience around my API industry news and link...
API Economy Tooling For The Business Masses
Most of the tooling and services I come across in the API space, are designed for developers. As I play with more services, and put tools to work, trying understand their role in the API space, som...
The Growing Need For API Virtualization Solutions
This conversation has come up over 10 times this month, at Defrag, APIStrat, and online conversations via Skype and GHangouts. The concept of API virtualization solutions. I am not talking about v...
December 1, 2015
Freemium Access For Your API Is Not Bad, It Is Just One Tool In Your Providers Toolbox
I get regular links sent to me, and foiks telling me that freemium API access is a bad idea. That it doesn’t help your API sales funnel, and was something that was just a thing, for a brief moment ...
Evolving My API Stack To Be A Public Repo For Sharing API Discovery, Monitoring, And Rating Information
My API Stack began as a news site, and evolved into a directory of the APIs that I monitor in the space. I published APIs.json indexes for the almost 1000 companies I am trackig on, with almost 400...
Each Of My APIs Has Its Own Github Repo With Two Branches, One Private And One Public
While it will never be 100% complete or perfect, I finally have my API stack in a way that lets me add, evolve, scale, and deprecate the endpoints as I need. I’ve been centralizing all of my APIs, ...
December 1, 2015
#Github
Deploying An API From Your Critical Twitter Data Without Being A Programmer
I am continuing my series on helping non-developers realize they can publish, and put APIs to work, without having an API expert in their pocket, using Zapier, Google Sheets, and Restlet. Its no se...
When Intelligent Programmers Realize They Do Not Understand HTTP And The Web That They Use Daily
I’ve seen something at an ever increasing pace lately, situations where very intelligent software engineers hit a wall, and realize they do not understand the fundamental building blocks of HTTP, a...
Making Sure Everything You Offer As An API Service Provider Is Portable
Runscope added the ability to import and export your API tests as JSON, helping make API monitoring a much more flexible and portable thing. You can import and export using the Runscope UI, as well...
I Like Being Able To Verify A Developer Is Real Before Giving Them Access to My APIs
As I think about the bad behavior that occurs on the API consumption side of API operations, I’m considering ways that I can help API providers address these problems when they arise within their e...
November 30, 2015
#Access
How Do I Price My API Resources?
I am continuing to push my research around API monetization, plans, and partners forward, whilep preparing for my API lifecycle keynote at @Defrag and @APIStrat. Along the way, I am also exercising...
November 30, 2015
#Resources
Bridging How We Currently Document Our APIs Now With How We Should Be Experiencing APIs Via Hypermedia
I am still catching up on my feeds, and open browser tabs, and one tab that has been open for a couple of weeks is Why Your Colleagues Still Don’t Understand Hypermedia APIs, by Luke Stokes (@lukes...
November 30, 2015
#Hypermedia
APIs Dedicated To Elections At the City, County, State, Or Federal Level
I’m neck deep in government open data again, and as we are gearing up for the presidential election, you really begin to see the potential for accurate, real-time election data via APIs. There are ...
November 30, 2015
#Elections
The Bad Actors On Both Sides Of The API Fence
I’ve always been a strong advocate for the API consumer, which is one of the primary motivations for me working to define best practices that API providers can follow across their operations. The m...
November 29, 2015
#Evangelism
The API Lifecycle (My Talk From @Defrag and @APIStrat)
I recently told the story of how I view the API life-cycle, based upon my research across the space, at the Defrag Conference in Broomfield, CO, and at my API Strategy & Practice conference in ...
Keeping A Window Open Into How Power Flows Within Algorithms Using APIs
I just read The Pill versus the Bomb: What Digital Technologists Need to Know About Power, by Tom Steinberg (@steiny), and I’m reminded of the important role APIs will (hopefully) continue to play ...
Providing API.json As A Discovery Media Type Every One Of My API Endpoints
It can be easy to stumble across the base URL for one of my APIs out on the open Internet. I design my APIs to be easily distributed, shared, and as accessible as possible–based upon what I feel th...
Providing API.json As A Discovery Media Type Every One Of My API Endpoints
It can be easy to stumble across the base URL for one of my APIs out on the open Internet. I design my APIs to be easily distributed, shared, and as accessible as possible–based upon what I feel th...
I Am Thankful For Another Amazing APIStrat
I am back home in Los Angeles, after another great edition of API Strategy & Practice–this time in Austin, TX. I have had a few day to decompress, and took a day to reboot my brain by crafting ...
November 24, 2015
#APIStrat
Sharing 235K API Definitions With The English Language API Recipe Book
I needed a side project to reboot my mind after @APIStrat this last weekend, so I opened up my notebook and picked a project that I’ve been meaning to give some attention to, one that would help me...
The APIStrat Austin Schedule Has Reached That Level Of Amazing For Me Again
This is the 6th edition of API Strategy & Practice, happening in Austin, TX next week. As one of the organizers, I can say that pulling together the perfect lineup of speakers and topics is alw...
Thinking Through The Licensing For An API Stack
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking through the licensing we apply to APIs, as part of my work on the Oracle v Google API copyright case. The licensing around APIs is still in flux, with the current ...
November 7, 2015
#Licensing
The Swagger Spec Is Reborn As Open API Definition Format (OADF) After Being Put Into Open API Initiative (OAI)
We reached another significant milestone in the API space today, after being acquired by SmartBear this spring, the Swagger specification is being moved into a Linux Foundation grouped called the O...
Contemplating Hypermedia When My Focus Is On Experience
I wish I had more time to spend on designing, and deploying APIs the way I desired. Without any real funding of individual APIs, I can only go so far with them, which usually doesn’t go beyond the ...
The 30 Areas I Am Working To Define In The API Space
When I started API Evangelist in 2010, I tracked on one area–API management. Over the years this expanding to be about API deploy, and design, and most recently monitoring and discovery. As I appro...
November 4, 2015
#Define
@SlashDB Created The Ranking Digital Rights Corporate Accountability Index API I Was Asking For
I read a lot of blog posts, and press releases about open data these days, and when I find a dataset I think offers a lot of value, or is just interesting enough to help push forward, I either try ...
Educating API Developers With Each Login Over At @CloudElements
I am a big advocate for making sure the on-boarding process for developers is as friction-less as possible. Developers should be able to signup, and login without anything getting in their way. Thi...
Adding An OAuth Scope Page As One Of My API Management Building Blocks
I’ve had a handful of suggested building blocks when it comes to authentication, as part of my API management research, but after taking a look at the OAuth Scopes page for the Slack API, I’m going...
A Social API Performance Report From @APIMetrics
APImetrics just released their second API Performance Report for Social Networks, aggregated from data they have been gathering from monitoring social networks since 2014. APImetrics is publishing ...
To Incentivize API Performance, Load, And Security Testing, Providers Should Reduce Bandwidth And Compute Costs Asscociated
I love that AWS is baking monitoring testing by default in the new Amazon API Gateway. I am also seeing new service from AWS, and Google providing security and testing services for your APIs, and o...
API Consumption Moves To The Main Stage At @APIStrat Austin This Month
When planning the API Strategy & Practice Conference, the team works very hard to make the speaker and session line up reflect what we see across the API space. The conference is meant to be an...
Please Tell Your API Stories
Many of you that have attended any of my talks, have heard me tell the audience about the importance of sharing your API stories. As an API provider it is the most important tool in your toolbox, a...
November 2, 2015
#Stories
Expanding My API Partner Research Into Its Own Project
As I explore through API portals, looking for the successful approaches to APIs, I’m increasingly seeing formal partner programs, resulting in me expanding the topic as its own research area. My ob...
Even Non-Developers Can Create An API Using Popular Form Services, Zapier, and Restlet
I have a notebook of story ideas I can do from any moment, but I find that I foten need some sort of inspiration to kick them off properly. I got that this afternoon in a Tweet from Leah Bannon, re...
I Have A Bunch Of API Resources, Now I Need A Plan, Or Potentially Several Plans
I have some really amazing resources exposed as APIs. Everyone is doing it these days, and I have some good ones, now I just need a plan. You know, actually, I need several plans, that will help me...
How Are We Going To Create The Standard And Poors And Moodys For The API Economy?
API rating is a conversation I have several times a year, with different groups, and is a conversation that seems to occurring with a little more frequency in recent months. How do we know which AP...
October 31, 2015
#Economy
After Combining My API Plans, Pricing, And Rating Research I See Hints Of An API Industry Economic Engine
After writing I Have A Bunch Of API Resources, Now I Need A Plan, Or Potentially Several Plans, and How Are We Going To Create The Standard And Poors And Moodys For The API Economy, I wanted to com...
API Visualization Exploration Using API Definitions
There are number of areas across the API life-cycle that are being expanded upon in the current space, thanks to the evolution of API definition formats like Swagger, API Blueprint, and RAML. One a...
An API Idea: HTTP Status Code Clinic
This is one of my ideas for an API service provider, that I will never get time to do, but would love to see exist in the space, so I am happy to put out there for someone else to do. I’m calling t...
Hand Crafted Or Generated SDKs For Your API?
One of the discussions we are having behind the scenes at APIWare.io, is whether we should be hand-crafting, or auto-generating SDKs for the clients we are working with on the design, deployment, a...
Adding A New Research Area To API Evangelist I Am Calling #APIDesignFiction
I have been writing some fictional stories on a project site I have called Alternate Kin Lane for some time now. Writing fictional stories in the tech space has provided a sort of pressure release ...
Which API Service Providers Across The 20 Areas I Track On Have APIs?
As I go through each of the 20 core areas of the API sector that I am keeping an eye on, in preparation for my keynotes at @DefragCon and @APIStrat, I’m taking a fresh look at which of them have AP...
The Ability To Deploy Your API Heroku Is A Gateway Drug To The Wholesale, Containerized API Economy That Is Coming
I was talking through the features, and roadmap for SecureDB with their team the other day, and one of the conversations that came up was around on-premise opporutnities for deploying encrypted use...
Learning About APIs From @darrel_miller And @gblock With In The Mood For HTTP
As you probably know, I’m always up for learning about APIs, so when @Darrel_Miller and @GBlock started doing their In the Mood for HTTP podcast, I was all in. Both Darrel and Glenn are API experts...
Learning About APIs From @darrel_miller And @gblock With In The Mood For HTTP
As you probably know, I’m always up for learning about APIs, so when @Darrel_Miller and @GBlock started doing their In the Mood for HTTP podcast, I was all in. Both Darrel and Glenn are API experts...
API Monitoring Should Be Baked Into Your API Strategy By Default
As I’ve written several posts on the recent Amazon API Gateway release, one of the side things I noted about the API solution from AWS, was that API monitoring is baked in by default. As stated on ...
Where Do I Start With The Storytelling Drumbeat For Our API?
It can be difficult to know where to start when it comes storytelling around an API. Many of us who have been in the space, have followed the lead of Twitter, Twilio, Amazon, and others, but when y...
October 26, 2015
#Storytelling
The Emerging Need For API Key Management Solutions
An API key management service targeting Drupal developers came across my radar this week. The service is very focused, in that it is a Drupal module, and is focused on helping Drupal developers man...
Successful Patterns For Multi-Lingual APIs and Documentation
I had a follower tweet out an interesting question about successful patterns for multi-linguarl APIs, which I thought was interesting enough to share as a story, adding to my research, and helping ...
Voice as the Next Generation API Client
Shortly after the Zypr voice API came on to the scene in 2011, I launched my research into voice APIs. Like many other areas of the API universe, voice has come in and out of focus for me, somethin...
Reconciling My API Orchestration Research With the Evolution of IDE, SDK, and HTTP Clients
I’ve been tagging companies that I come across in my research, and stories that I find with the term “orchestration” for some time now. Some of this overlaps with what we know as cloud-centric orch...
I Am Pumped for Two Upcoming Keynotes at DefragCon and APIStrat in November
I am keynoting APIStrat in Austin next month, and it is a big deal for me. Ok, its my event, and I probably shouldn’t be that excited, but it is the first time I’ve ever keynoted it. ;-) It is the ...
October 23, 2015
#APIStrat
API PLUG, A New Containerized API Design, Deployment, and Documentation Solution
I started playing with the possibilities when it comes to API deployment using virtual containers like Docker early this year, exploring the constraints this approach to API deployment introduced, ...
The Marketing in the API Space Session at @APIStrat Austin Next Month
Marketing your products and services in the API sector can often look very different than marketing of products and services in other sectors. Developers are a very different target audience, and t...
If Twitter Can Deliver Transparency Around API Access and Business Model, They Might Be Able To Find Their Way Again
It has been a year or two since I’ve given any deep thought to the Twitter ecosystem. There has been such little meaningful action to come out of the social platform over the last couple years, I h...
How To Build An API Brand Through Consistent Storytelling
I just had a call with one of my newer API partners, working with them on crafting version 1.0 of their API evangelism strategy, and the subject of what content to generate, and which channels to u...
October 22, 2015
#Storytelling
Adding a Suggested API Definition for API Portals to My API Management Spec Collection
One layer I am working to add to my API research, are machine readable API definitions that I find, or generate from the APIs of the API service providers I keep an eye on. Within this new layer I’...
An API For Finding Government Websites That Do Not End In .gov
I have used the Federal Agency Directory API for quite some time to lookup federal government agencies. USA.gov has some highly valuable, and simple APIs including the Social Media Registry API, wh...
An API For Finding Government Websites That Do Not End In .gov
I have used the Federal Agency Directory API for quite some time to lookup federal government agencies. USA.gov has some highly valuable, and simple APIs including the Social Media Registry API, wh...
An API For Encrypted Storage Of All Your Accounts, Data, Files, And Setting
I’ve been working on expand upon my API security research, but it can be difficult to find API focused security solutions. Exactly what is security when it comes to APIs can vary. Are you looking t...
You Can See Evidence Of The Expanding API Lifecycle In The New AWS API Gateway
It is up to API providers to establish a coherent approach regarding how they rollout and manage their APIs, something that historically has just involved deploying and managing, but in the last co...
Establishing A Common API Definition That API Management Providers Can Use
I mentioned the concept of what I call API building blocks coming to life by API service providers yesterday. These are the features provided from API service providers that are made accessible via...
Your API Strategy Provide A Glimpse Into Your Company Culture
Maybe I’ve looked at too many APIs, but I feel that APIs are very telling of the overall culture of a company. APIs that are trusting, tend to open up a full stack of APIs, including POST, PUT (or ...
NASA Is Rocking It With Their Very Inspirational And Simple APIs
NASA just launched two new APIs, as part of their open data efforts. I find the APIs they offer to be simple, and very inspirational examples of what an API can be. Maybe I just love space, but see...
October 14, 2015
#NASA
Another API Definition Conversion In The Works From The LucyBot Team
I wrote about the ability to convert between multiple API definition formats using API Transformer the other day, a solution being developed by the APIMATIC team, and shortly after posting, the Luc...
Bringing API Building Blocks To Life As The APIs Of Service Providers
If you have followed my work since 2010, you know I pull out what I call the common building blocks of originally just API management, but over the last five years this has grown to 17 areas of the...
3Scale Sets Example By Augmenting The Amazon API Gateway With Their Own API Infrastructure
One of the things that really bothers me in the API space is when API service providers are too competitive, establish silos, don’t use APIs themselves, and refuse to provide interoperability with ...
Thinking Through Some Of My Defensive API Management Tactics
As I add each API to my stack, I consider security along the way. I require an API key to access all of my APIs using my 3Scale API management infrastructure, and I also have different tiers of acc...
Some Thoughts For The Coming Wave Of API Hubs, Garages, and Workbenches
I’ve been getting demos of some pretty interesting new work spaces meant for API architects, and designers. Examples of this are API Garage, RepreZen API Studio, and the recent SwaggerHub. These ar...
October 6, 2015
#Hubs
Playing With The New SwaggerHub
I received a personal demo of the new SwaggerHub from Mr. Swagger himself – Tony Tam, this last week. SwaggerHub is a new API life-cycle hub, centered around the API definition format, developed by...
October 2, 2015
#Swagger
A Review of The CallFire Communication Platform
This is a review of the communication API platform CallFire, crafting a snapshot of platform operations, from an external viewpoint, providing the CallFire platform team with a fresh take on their ...
A Minimum Viable Existence For Four Of My New APIs
I have a whole bunch of APIs I want to deploy. There is a queue of APIs that I will never get to, but I can’t help myself, and when I am tired of watching what everyone else is doing, and want to g...
September 26, 2015
How Open Source API Proxies, And Other API Services And Tooling Can Strategically Partner
I was gathering my thoughts today around API management solutions can better work together, in response to an industry discussion going on between several creators of open source tooling. The Githu...
Converting Between The Popular API Definition Formats Using API Transformer
My own API management system allows me to import Postman collections, HAR files, Charles Proxy XML files, and Swagger version 1.2, but when it comes to output, it only speaks Swagger 2.0. I’ve been...
September 22, 2015
#Definitions
Adding A Page To My Research For Tracking On Swagger Extensions
I have a research project dedicated to trying to understand al things Swagger. I try to add any new research, or tooling there when I can. The latest thing I added was a page to list out Swagger ex...
Having The Resources You To Need To Scale Your Startup API Team For That Enterprise Project
I just sat in on an APIWare call with a fast growing startup, developing a better understanding of how we can assist their team. They have a pretty solid development team behind their API, so provi...
A Suggested, And Sponsored Link Relation Engine For Hypermedia APIs
Sometimes I have ideas, that are sticky, meaning they won’t leave my brain, but are not always concepts I personally enjoy exploring. This is just a little insight into the madness that is my brain...
September 21, 2015
#Hypermedia
API Definitions Broker Critical Conversations Between Business And Developers Who Are Building NextGen Web, Mobile, and Device Apps
If you are in an industry being impacted by technology, you have probably become very aware of the term Application Programming Interfaces, more widely known as APIs, and how they are driving web a...
Adding A 3rd Dimension To My API Monetization Thinking
When it comes to the API space, it always takes numerous conversations with API providers and practitioners, before something comes into focus for me. I’ve spent five years having API management co...
There Is A Big Opportunity Right Now When It Comes To API Design Tooling
API design and definitions are the number one area when it comes to talks submitted for APIStrat 2015 in Austin, and when it comes to traffic across the API Evangelist network in 2015. After diving...
Are There Really Any Monetization Opportunities Around Open Data And APIs?
One of my readers recently reached out to me, in response to some of my recent stories of monetization opportunities around government and scientific open data and APIs. I’m not going to publish hi...
A Data Migration Tool To Help You Import, Export, and Sync Your Data In The Cloud
The Element Loader from API service provider Cloud Elements came across my monitoring this week, providing a configurable JavaScript application that help simplify data migration, allowing you to m...
Working Hard To Generate API Value Within An Entrenched Legacy Industry Like Real Estate
I preparing a talk this week in Portland, OR, at the IDX Developer Summit. IDX serves the real estate industry, providing real estate professionals access to hundreds of multiple listing services (...
Some Potentially Very Powerful API Orchestration With The Amazon API Gateway
I sat down for a second, more in-depth look at the Amazon API Gateway. When it first released I took a stroll through the interface, and documentation, but this time, I got my hands dirty playing w...
You Have 24 Hours Left To Submit Your Talk For APIStrat Austin
There is a little more than 24 hours left for you to submit your talk for APIStrat in Austin, TX, this November 18th, 19th, and 20th. With this sixth edition of APIStrat, we are taking things back ...
When Are We Going To Get A Save As JSON In Our Spreadsheets?
My last rant of the evening, I promise. Then I will shut up and move back to actual work instead of telling stories. I’m working on my Adopta.Agency project, processing a pretty robust spreadsheet ...
State of Popular Database Platforms And Their Native API Publishing Features
I had a reinder on my task list to check-in on where some of the common database platforms were when it came to APIs. I think it was a Postgres announcement from a while back that put the thought i...
Cultivating the Next Generation of API Design Skills
There was a pretty interesting conversation around API design going on in one of my API slack channels over the last couple days, about what is API design, and what is needed to get developers, and...
Catching My Breath On My API Monetization Ramblings Before I Enter Into Some New Conversations
I have two more conversations kicking off on the topic of API monetization, so I just needed to take a moment to gather up the last wave of posts on the subject, catch my breath, and refresh my ove...
Algorithmic Transparency With Containers and APIs
I believe in the ability of APIs to pull back the curtain of the great OZ, that we call IT. The average business and individual technology consumer has long been asked to just believe in the magic ...
Expanding On My API Monetization Strategy And Research
This is a full walk-through of me trying to distill down my approach to API monetization, in a way that can be applied across not just 30 APIs, but potentially 300, or 3000. There are several thing...
A Blockchain To Act As A Universal API Credit Layer That Can Be Used By Both API Provider And Consumer
I have had this discussion several times now, in the dark corners of bars in San Francisco, Paris, Berlin, and Barcelona. It is something I just want to make sure is published on my site, as part o...
Learn From Google Maps API And Just Have Standard Approach To Free And Paid Tiers For Your API From The Beginning
It has been almost 10 years since Google launched the Maps API. With as many APIs as Google have, you’d think they’d have a better handle on a standard approach to pricing across all of them. As we...
Dwolla Just Released A White Label Version Of Their API -- Are You Ready For The Wholesale API Economy?
If you have heard any of my talks at API Days Sydney, in Barcelona, or at Gluecon in Colorado this year, you’ve heard me talk about wholesale APIs, and how I am using Docker to help make some of my...
The Two Platforms That Will Bring APIs To The Masses
I’m always on the hunt for API driven solutions that will help the average business user be more exposed to the power of APIs. It is common for us technologists to kick up dust, and get all excited...
Breaking Down The Layers of API Security And Considering Link Integrity
One of the reasons I setup individual research projects, is to provide me with a structure for better defining each aspect of the API world, something I am working hard to jump-start within my API ...
September 1, 2015
#Security
API Monitoring Is Often About The Little Details
As I make my way across my research projects, I’m learning more about how companies like Metacert can deliver valuable security services to API providers. I’m also getting a better idea of the nuan...
Please Do Not Hide Your API Definitions From Consumers
I am always pleased to see API providers publishing Swagger definitions, and using them to drive their interactive documentation. Projects like the Global Change Information System API, are getting...
Are API Keys and Secrets Actually Very Secure?
When it comes to API security, there are a number of things to consider, something I will be be working to define, and share as part of my ongoing research. However there are three building blocks ...
A Quick Example Of An API Provider Putting Content Type Negotiation To Work
While there are numerous examples of APIs that successfully offer more than one option when it comes to the content types their API returns, the concept is missing from the large portion of the API...
August 31, 2015
#Content
The Benefits and Risks of an Open API Standard
I’m immersing myself in the Data Sharing and Open Data for Banks, published by the HM Treasury and Cabinet Office in the United Kingdom, ”to explore how competition and consumer outcomes in UK bank...
August 29, 2015
#Open
Keeping an Eye on the Open Banking API Movement in the UK
Late in 2014, the HM Treasury and Cabinet Office in the United Kingdom, published Data Sharing and Open Data for Banks, ”to explore how competition and consumer outcomes in UK banking could be affe...
Influencing Important Work Like the UK Open Banking API Standard Is Why I Do This
I enjoy what I do, but when I embarked on my API Evangelist journey in 2010, I set myself on a mission to educate people about the business of APIs, and highlight that it isn’t just the technology ...
An API Monetization Framework To Help Me Standardize Pricing For The APIs I Bring Online
I’m almost to the point with my API stack, where I can start plugging in new APIs I have planned. Up until now, the APIs i have deployed, are of little use to a wider commercial audience. However s...
We Need an Open Abstraction Layer to Help Us Better Define and Design Our APIs
I walked around San Francisco with Jakub Nesetril (@jakubnesetril), the CEO of Apiary, Wednesday evening, talking about the API space. Eventually we sat down in Union Square, continuing our convers...
Thinking Beyond Just Language Specific Clients and Also Speaking the Formats Popular HTTP Clients Are Using
I was given an introduction to the Microsoft Graph A concept being applied to Office 365 APIs, other Microsoft APIs, and potentially beyond, to map out segments of users and every day objects. As I...
The API Design Guide Is Just The Beginning Of The Journey - Better Get Started!
I’m processing all of my thoughts from some travel to the big city of San Francisco. I was providing feedback on Microsoft’s API design guide, as part of the OneAPI Technical Advisory Group. As I w...
Crafting and Publishing API Design Guide Shows That You Are Further Along In Your API Journey
I spent all day Wednesday, at Microsoft offices in San Francisco, providing feedback on the Microsoft API design guide, as part of the OneAPI Technical Advisory Group. The OneAPI team had already d...
Making Sure The APIs Being Served Up Via Your Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Are Discoverable and Consumable Using APIs.json and Swagger
Making sure APIs that are available via the enterprise service bus, affectionately known as an ESB, more discoverable, accessible, and consumable via the open Internet, is one of the many challenge...
Further Defining the AngelList API as Part of My API Stack
I am slowly making my way through defining of the APIs available in the API Stack, beginning with the APIs that I depend on to operate API Evangelist. The best way to understand any API in my opini...
August 25, 2015
Setting a Precedent When Charging for High Volume Access to Government APIs
I’m neck deep in discussions around API monetization lately, from building a business model in the fast growing podcast space with AudioSear.ch, funding scientific research through API driven reven...
Easy Way to Inspect HTTP(S) API Traffic in a Multi-platform, Multi-device Environment
This is a deep dive from one of my loyal readers, who doesn’t just listen to what I write, he is pushing my own research in new directions, and reporting back to me. You have read his work before i...
What We Can Do To Make A Difference In The Wake Of Oracle v Google API Copyright Case
While we wait for the next steps of the long drawn out Oracle v Google Java API copyright battle, I wanted to take some time and talk about what we can all be doing to actually make a difference. I...
Building Everything You Need For A Global Nervous System Using The Twitter API
This is one of several stories I am evolving as part of series I’m calling API fairy tales. With these tales I want to educate business leaders, technologists, and government about the importance o...
Can We Keep Important Scientific Research Projects Alive Through Revenue Generated From API Access?
I am spending an increasing amount of time thinking about how you monetize data, content, and other digital resources via APIs. A couple of very compelling layers to all of this work, is pushing fo...
Modern API Service Providers Need To Speak Common API Definition Formats
I play with a lot of services that target the API space each week, during my regular monitoring of the space. These are services from all along the API lifecycle that service this space, from desig...
One Approach To Consider When Crafting Your Pricing As An API Service Provider
One of the areas I focus on in the API space, is the business of APIs, and how companies actually make the rubber meet the road when it comes to pricing the API resources they are serving up, as we...
August 13, 2015
#Pricing
A Common, Open Source API Design Editor Is Needed For API Service Providers
I love the API design editors that have emerged from Restlet as part of their design studio, and from APIMATIC as part of their SDK management service, and if you haven’t checked out Gelato.io, I h...
What API Means To Me
I love the wide swinging perception people have of who I am, often based upon a 15 seconds of sizing me up, reading the title, first and ending paragraph of a blog post, and often seeing this photo...
The Continuing Evolution of The API Gateway
I’m feeling like the recent release of the AWS API Gateway isn’t just an isolated product release, but more of a signpost in the overall evolution of the API space. It is quite possible that Amazon...
August 11, 2015
#Gateway
Submit Your Ideas For Talks At APIStrat Austin This November
We are picking up momentum on our way to the APIStrat conference this November 18-20th in Austin, TX. The call for papers is now open, and we are looking to hear your ideas for what the session dis...
HDScores: One Potential API Driven Business Model Aggregating Public Data
I came across HDScores a couple of weeks agao, but their API wasn’t quite ready, something they officially released this last week. HDScores is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. It is an A...
API Usability Course at Carnegie Mellon
I am accumulating more references to API goodness from across Universities, as part of my APIs in higher education research. The more I monitor, the more I find, this is how the API monitoring game...
Taking Another Look At Where We Are At With Data.json Files For Federal Agencies
I am spending some time, refreshing my look at the open data work, specifically the results of OMB Memorandum M-13-13, which required federal government agencies to publish a data.json file, provid...
Taking Another Look At Where We Are At With Data.json Files For Federal Agencies
I am spending some time, refreshing my look at the open data work, specifically the results of OMB Memorandum M-13-13, which required federal government agencies to publish a data.json file, provid...
How Do We Handle That Trailing Slash In Our API Endpoints?
I am participating in several API focused Slack channels these days, which opens up entirely new channels for conversations across the API community. I think the private channel(s) gives people a s...
August 4, 2015
#ai
When Planning Your API Portal Do Not Hide APIs and Always Translate From IT To Something Humans Can Understand
While updating my APIs in higher education research this last week I came across an API portal I think tells an important story about an evolution in how we develop and maintain software. The curre...
API Service Providers Need To Decouple The Services They Offer To API Providers
As I work with each generation of API service providers, I always notice a portion of them that are born out of a previous era of software development from the 1990s, and even sometimes the early 2...
API Rate Limits Are Making Me Think More About How I Design My APIs, and How I Consume Them
As I migrate the version 1.0 of my internal systems to an API-first version 2.0, one of the challenges I face is the optimization of some of the features in my own system. I have numerous systems I...
Adding A Credit Layer To My Existing API Service Composition
I am revisiting the service composition for my own APIs on a regular basis lately, along with the ever increasing number of conversations I’m having with API providers about their own API monetizat...
August 2, 2015
#ddi
API Evangelist and APIWare Partnering To Help You Do The Hard Work Of Developing and Managing Your API
I am fortunate to be able to take part in numerous conversations around API strategy, with companies, organizations, and government agencies who are trying to understand, and maximize the role they...
July 31, 2015
#Evangelist
The Potential When You Are Able To Spawn Virtualized Environments For Your API
I was made aware of the Citi Mobile Challenge during a conversation last week with the Anypresence team about their new JustAPIs offering. The conversation with them has triggered several potential...
Providing A Web Scraping Toolkit On Github To Jumpstart The API Conversation At The University of Toronto
I found a pretty cool Github repository during my latest review of my university API research, with a mission “to provide a collection of RESTful web APIs that can allow developers to create applic...
Is Your Monetization Rooted In The Resource Or Experience Side Of Your API Operations?
I had another one of my regular check-ins with Anne and Bailey over at Popup Archive today, with a focus around the monetization strategy for their AudioSear.ch API. I thoroughly enjoy my conversat...
Going Beyond Just Data APIs With Code Endpoints At Apitite
in my time as API Evangelist I’ve seen a number of API deployment as a service providers come and go. It is something that is technically hard to do properly, and something that historically had be...
Updating My Research To Include 48 Universities With Publicly Available API Efforts
I’m slowly working through all my research areas, updating the news items I’ve curated, adding and removing companies, continuing to identify some of the common building blocks, and the tools that ...
My New API For Asking Questions Of APIs - The APIs.json Edition
I am currently trying to move forward the 917 companies, from 223 business areas, with a total 882 APIs catalogued, and 407 Swagger definitions created, while working on a distributed way to unders...
July 29, 2015
#APIs.json
Asking The Right Questions Of API Operations
I ask a lot of questions about the API space. In m quest to make sense of the growing number of APIs in the space, I partnered with 3Scale to define the APIs.json format. In the year since we launc...
July 29, 2015
#Operations
Politics Of The API Economy
I did a napkin doodle the other day at my favorite local hangout during lunch and beers. I was thinking about the finer points of the API economy that I dwell on, and feel are important not just fo...
Augmenting Data Sources and APIs with POST, PUT, and DELETE Using Restlet APISpark
Most of the APIs you find out there are read only, meaning they act like a website and just allow you to retrieve data, content, and other media types, but usually do not let you read or write any ...
Taking A Look At Whats Next For The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Envirofacts Data Service API
I was asked by folks at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to provide some feedback on the Envirofacts Data Service API, as they prepare to work on the next iteration. I took a quick glance ...
The Window To The API Economy For Everybody Else
API Evangelist has always been about helping on-board the masses with concepts involving APIs, something that takes a lot of work, because more often than not, an API is a very abstract concept, fa...
July 23, 2015
#Economy
Setting rel=api Into Motion With Latest APIs.json Release
Bruno Pedro (@bpedro) who has been building APIs.json into his API Changelog service, made a pull request to the specification recently, pushing forward the link relation conversation for APIs.json...
July 23, 2015
#APIs.json
Setting rel=api Into Motion With Latest APIs.json Release
Bruno Pedro (@bpedro) who has been building APIs.json into his API Changelog service, made a pull request to the specification recently, pushing forward the link relation conversation for APIs.json...
July 23, 2015
#APIs.json
Pushing My API Gateway Thoughts Forward: API Gateway Anywhere With JustAPIs
I open up my Thursdays to briefings, calls, demos and other phone, skype, and hangout related activities. This morning I received a walk-through of the JustAPIs platform from AnyPresence, taking my...
July 23, 2015
#Gateway
Pushing My API Gateway Thoughts Forward: API and Single Page App Development with Wavemaker
I open up my Thursdays to briefings, calls, demos and other phone, skype, and hangout related activities. This morning I received a walk-through of the Wavemaker Online platform, and got a look at ...
July 23, 2015
#Gateway
Thoughts On API Gateway Deployment Over Artisan Farm To Table API Design And Deployment
I was wallowing in the exhaust of my previous story on Amazon API Gateway, and talking with an API development team about their preferred way to launch an API today. Leaving me thinking…what is the...
An Example Of Resource Based API Design Over At The Envirofacts Data Service API
I told a contact of mine at the Environmental Protection Agency I would provide some feedback for the next iteration of the Envirofacts Data Service API, and as I prepare my formal response, there ...
Using Existing Online Forums vs Developing Your Own To Support API Operations
As I tune into the fallout around the Reddit community, I think it is a good time to pull a story out of my notebook, that I began writing a month or two ago. These thoughts are born out of my post...
Taking API Monetization To The Next Level By Monetizing The Exhaust Around API Consumption
I have spent a lot of time thinking about API analytics. Understanding who is signing up to access API resources, and how they are putting those API resources to use, is one of the most valuable as...
As The API Design Space Grows, More Companies Are Publishing Their API Design Guides to Github
I recently went through my API design research, updating and evolving it, to help me better understand changes in the API design space, while also sharing as much of the information as I can with m...
I Depend On All Of You To Help Me Make Sure API Evangelist Is Complete
All of my public web sites, research projects, API portals, and micro apps run on Github Pages, which means there is always a Github repository behind each website. I’d say 75% of my projects have ...
July 18, 2015
#Evangelist
APIs Are Just The Next Step In The Evolution Of The Web
My storytelling on API Evangelist has two sides, one is about refining my own understanding of the API space, and the other is about refining, evolving, and helping make the stories I tell make sen...
July 18, 2015
#Web
Opportunities For Non-Programmers To Put APIs To Work For Them Is Picking Up Speed This Year
A core aspect of my mission as the API Evangelist is to help bring awareness amongst “the normals” of what an API is, as just how ubiquitous they are becoming. While I am excited about the potentia...
July 17, 2015
#Speed
Not Every Successful API Needs Venture Capital
The story of Pinboard’s sixth anniversary came up on my API monitoring this last week, and beside being funny as shit, it reminded me of how successful APIs can be, even when they do not follow tra...
July 17, 2015
#Venture Capital
The Biggest Obstacle For Hypermedia Adoption Is The Cognitive Load Of The Average API Designer
Those in the know with hypermedia, often express their frustration when it comes to the overall progress of hypermedia adoption, and the bespoke approaches of many API designers. while there are ma...
A Universal Me API
I am pretty demanding today, I just asked for sandbox environments to be default for all APIs, and now I’d like to see a universal /me API. I am profiling AngelList API, as part of my API Stack wor...
I Wish All APIs Had Sandbox Environment By Default
I am working through every endpoint of the AngelList API, making sure I make as many successful calls as I can, as I work to generate Swagger definitions for the API, using Charles Proxy. To suppor...
AWS Is Selling The API Solution The Enterprise Will Buy, Not Necessarily The API Solution They Need
I shared my view on the AWS API Gateway yesterday. I’m all about the AWS kool-aid (oh yeah!), but overall I was left underwhelmed. I feel the release of the API solutions represents a pretty signif...
The New AWS API (Gateway): Anyone Who Does Not Do This, Will Be Fired. Thank You. Have A Nice Day! - Jeff Bezos
It has been almost 10 years since Amazon shifted the conversation on the Internetz, with their release of Amazon S3, and Amazon EC2 -- showing us that web APIs were more than just a hobby thing you...
The New AWS API (Gateway): Anyone Who Does Not Do This, Will Be Fired. Thank You. Have A Nice Day! - Jeff Bezos
It has been almost 10 years since Amazon shifted the conversation on the Internetz, with their release of Amazon S3, and Amazon EC2 -- showing us that web APIs were more than just a hobby thing you...
My API Design Research Distilled Down As Single PDF Guide
When API Evangelist began five years ago it was a single research into the business of APIs, which ultimately became a research project which I called API management. Over the last four years, I ha...
Time To Remove Or Rotate Your API Access Keys
I got an email from Amazon Web Services this morning, regarding a set of API keys I setup a while back, for a prototype I was building. The project was over a year ago, and the keys have not been e...
Intuit Baked Their itDuzzit Acquisition Into Their Platform And Are Calling It Intuit AppConnect
I wrote about Intuit’s acquisition of API reciprocity provider itDuzzit last summer, and earlier this month they made the acquired technology available as a new platform extension, they are calling...
July 7, 2015
#Platform
Where Is The Containerized API Marketplace That Businesses Will Need For Success In The API Economy?
Building on what Orlando (@orliesaurus) brings up in his story on the missing brick in the API Industry, we are missing a common place to discovery and share common API designs–something I’ve been ...
API Police Report: Raw Thoughts From On-Boarding With Your API
I am working hard to generate detailed profiles, that include APIs.json indexes, and Swagger definitions, for each of the 1000 companies I have listed in the API Stack. I have encouraged anyone to ...
July 6, 2015
#On-Boarding
A Simple Walkthrough Of How To Deploy A 4th of July Fireworks API Using A Google Spreadsheet And APISpark
This is a guest post by Guillaume Laforge (@glaforge) of Restlet. He did a very cool API deployment project over the holiday weekend, as was good enough to share the details of his project as a sto...
A Complete (Enough) API Definition To Move On and Profile The Next API in The Stack
I’m working to profile as many of the top, publicly available APIs out there, as part of the API Stack. While I’ve come to feel that no API definition will ever actually be complete, I’m working to...
July 6, 2015
#Definitions
Five Years Of API Evangelist
In July of 2010, I started researching what would be the next step in my career. I was VP of Technology at WebEvents global, and was in charge of the technical side of running conferences for SAP a...
July 3, 2015
#Evangelist
Building Micro Apps and Tooling On Top Of Your API To Demonstrate The Value Your API Delivers
I was doing one of my regular checkins with my friend Anne Wootton (@annewootton) of Popup Archive today, something we try to do regularly, to share stories about what they are up to in the world o...
Tightening Up The Organizations That Are Included In My API Design Research
I try to go through each of my areas of research as often as I can and update the content, as well as my understanding. Ideally I update the news each week, take a look at the organizations involve...
The API Design Tooling I Have Included In My Research
I am going through each of my research projects, and tightening things down, now that I have them all driven through my new, master stack of APIs. First up was API design, and the other day I spent...
APIs Will Not Be Suffocated By Oracle and the Courts, It Will Be Done By Each Of You Not Sharing Your API Designs
I just read on Re/Code, that the Supreme Court declined to hear Google's appeal on the Oracle v Google case--prepare for the waves of stories from tech blogs, that this will suffocate the API econ...
June 29, 2015
The Responsive Swagger Driven Version of Slate API Documentation I Was Looking For
I wrote that we should be generating Slate API documentation from Swagger so we maintain a machine readable core the other day--while I love the look of Slate, I want to make sure all API meta data...
APIs.json Driven API Dictionaries For Use In Atom IDE Autocomplete Packages
I have been using the Atom editor when I work on local files on my workstation for some time now. With the latest version 1.0 release I took a fresh look at the architecture, and under the hood at ...
APIs.json Driven API Dictionaries For Use In Atom IDE Autocomplete Packages
I have been using the Atom editor when I work on local files on my workstation for some time now. With the latest version 1.0 release I took a fresh look at the architecture, and under the hood at ...
We Should Be Generating Slate From Swagger So We Maintain A Machine Readable Core
I am a big fan of API documentation when done using Slate. It creates very beautiful, and easy to use documentation, that makes learning about an API much more pleasant. You can find some pretty go...
The Expanding API Economy From The 100K Foot View
This is one of several stories I am evolving as part of series I’m calling API fairy tales. With these tales I want to educate business leaders, technologists, and government about the importance o...
June 25, 2015
#Economy
Looking At API Design, Deployment, And Management From A Form Point Of View
The concept of a form, is one one of those skeuomorphs, that have taken on an entirely new life on the Internet. The concept of a form is baked into HTML, PDFs, and many other commons aspects of ou...
The Over 30 APIs I Depend On To Run API Evangelist
I am working to craft complete Swagger definitions for the 1000 companies in my API Stack, and what better place to start than with the APIs that I actually use on a daily basis. I am working hard ...
June 23, 2015
#Evangelist
Someone Should Do A Site Like CodeProject, But Just For APIs
As part of my monitoring of the API space, I keep track of new posts on CodeProject, and occasionally I come across an API integration project. Some of the times it references it as an API project,...
Image If Everyone Automatically Knew That APIMATIC Had Added A New Endpoint?
I wrote a story yesterday about APIMATIC releasing a new API validation API to compliment their existing API client code generation API. I received an email from the APIMATIC team is how I found ou...
Breaking Down Publication References With The Global Change Information System API
I wrote about the Global Change Information System (GCIS) API earlier this year, and how they what they are doing with their API design represent how APIs are the next step in the evolution of the ...
Build Some APIs With Restlet And API Evangelist During The Summer of APIs
I am partnering with the Restlet team to put on a Summer of APIs, a virtual API challenge. The goal with this summer program isn’t to build apps on top of APIs, but build APIs that anyone can use, ...
June 22, 2015
#Evangelist
APIMATIC Adds New API Validation Endpoint To Their API Client Code Generation API Stack
I am working hard to establish a complete set of APIs for my own API stack which includes establishing complete Swagger definitions for the 25 APIs that I personally operate. These Swagger definiti...
The Swagger Definitions Collection Is The Cherry On Top Of Each API That I Profile
I create a lot of machine readable API definitions for the 1000 companies I monitor as part of my API Stack. I am using Swagger to define all of my APIs, providing me with a simple, yet powerful wa...
Parsing Charles Proxy Exports To Generate Swagger Definitions, While Also Linking Them To Each Path
Making sure the Swagger files I craft possess a complete definition for its underlying data model, one that is linked to each API path, and parameters where it is put to use, is important to me, bu...
Making My API Projects Forkable, Sharable In An IDE, Using Codenvy And APIs.json
I am playing around with making several stops along the API life cycle more accessible, and machine readable using APIs.json. To help me in my work, I am using my own API stack as a proving ground,...
Making My API Projects Forkable, Sharable In An IDE, Using Codenvy And APIs.json
I am playing around with making several stops along the API life cycle more accessible, and machine readable using APIs.json. To help me in my work, I am using my own API stack as a proving ground,...
Initial Thoughts Around Monetization For An API Deployment Service
I am helping a client work through their monetization strategy for an API deployment service. To help me give me a starting point for the work, I wanted to take a look at a handful of existing serv...
The Gumroad Small Product Lab: Accelerating Simple Ideas
I use Gumroad for publishing of my white papers, and I also keep an eye on what they are up to as part of my API monitoring–they have a pretty useful publishing API. During my weekly API.Report thi...
June 16, 2015
#Product
Going Beyond Just API Status And Providing An Official API Monitoring Service(s) With Your API
I’ve long advocated that an API Status page should be a required building block for any API operation. As I work on monitoring for my own master API stack, and as I read stories like Pingometer Kee...
Add SDKs.io URL For Companies And APIs That I Track On Via The API Stack
I am partnering with APIMATIC to help establish a common set of complete, and validated API definitions for the almost 1000 APIs I track on as part of my API Stack. I am using my Questions API to i...
My Minimum Viable Definition For A Complete Swagger API Definition
I have been working hard to establish some sort of minimum viable definition for a complete Swagger definition is, and I think I finally have got to a point where I have it–at least enough to work ...
DreamFactory Deploying APIs In Docker Containers Is How The API Economy Will Scale
I have been talking about virtualized API stacks for a while now, slowly evolving my own view of whats next for the world of APIs, based upon what I’m seeing happen across the sector. I am working ...
You Gotta Keep Em Separated: Breaking Down APIs Into Smaller Swagger Files
As I work to chase an elusive answer to the question, what is a complete API Swagger definition, I’m also faced with what I know John Musser (@johnmusser) would agree is the age old question, what ...
June 13, 2015
#Swagger
Swagger Represents The API Value Possible, Postman Is Unit Readied As Transaction, And HAR Could Be Evidence Of Value Actually Having Occurred
I am working through each of my 25 APIs right now, tackling a list of changes that include some adjustment for an evolution in my service composition, generating Postman collections, APIMATIC SDKs,...
Using API Definitions To Help API Providers With Their API Design Roadmap
As I work to create Swagger API definitions for the almost 1000 companies in my API stack, I’m chasing an elusive definition of a complete Swagger definition for any API. Only a small portion of AP...
Splitting My Blog API Into Two Separate APIs For News And Analysis
When I started API Evangelist, I knew I didn’t want to use WordPress or other common CMS, so I developed my own API, and page and blogging CMS. During the latest migration of my internal API infras...
New Approach At Google Assumes That The Internal Network Is As Dangerous As The Internet
I was recently reading about Google moving its corporate applications to the Internet, and as my brain works, began applying this ine of thinking to the world APIs. I am big advocate for companies ...
API Integration, Aggregation, Organization, and Reciprocity with Cloud Elements
I have had Cloud Elements under my API aggregation research for some time now, keeping an eye on what they are up to via their blog, Twitter, and Github accounts. Cloud Elements takes a handful of ...
My New API For Asking Questions Of APIs - The Swagger Edition
I am currently trying to move forward the 917 companies, from 223 business areas, with a total 882 APIs catalogued, and 407 Swagger definitions created, while working on a distributed way to unders...
June 9, 2015
#Swagger
My API Service Composition Tiers
I am slowly getting my new API stack in order, where I am close to opening it up for access to a wider audience. As part of this last round of work, I’m fine tuning my service composition strategy ...
June 8, 2015
How Do You Know When A Swagger API Definition is Complete?
As I go through the research from APIMATIC regarding automatically generating client code using Swagger, and I prepare to crank out Swagger definitions for almost 1000 companies in the API Stack, o...
Comparison of Automatic API Code Generation Tools For Swagger
I have met with the APIMATIC team several times over the last couple weeks to discuss the state of API definitions. If you aren’t familiar with APIMATIC, they are a API code as a service provider, ...
A Walk Through A Swagger API Definition To Identify The Moving Parts
I recently added a new tool to my hacker storytelling toolbox, that allows me to easily assemble walk through, that help me guide my readers through a scripted series of steps around any of my rese...
Join @apimatic, @blockspring, and @apievangelist In Completing API Definitions For 1000 Companies In The API Stack
3Scale and I have been working hard to craft APIs.json files for the top public APIs out there, including machine readable Swagger definitions, ever since we launched the open source API search eng...
June 5, 2015
#Definitions
Visions Of My Perfect API Design Editor Using Electron
Darrel Miller(@darrel_miller) reminded me of the desktop development platform Electron the other day, with his story on Moving Beyond the Browser with JavaScript and Hypermedia. I had been eyeballi...
Storytelling and the Future of Hypermedia APIs
Helping people understand the potential you see around a particular approach to API design, is hard stuff. Providing easy to follow stories, and implementations that the average person can follow i...
Generating Single Page Apps In React.js From Your Swagger Defined API With ReaCall
I wrote about a simpler example of API to SPA the other day, continuing my journey for apps, services, and tooling that easily deploys a Single Page App (SPA) or light-weight web and mobile clients...
Have Fun with Your Terms of Service
This is a guest post from Marsh Gardiner, who knows a little secret…that anyone can submit stories to API Evangelist. All you do is submit a pull request on the Github repo that runs the site. Of c...
May 28, 2015
#Terms of Service
Regarding The Solicitor General Weighing In On The Oracle v Google API Copyright Case: Are You Really Surprised They Do Not Get APIs? I Am Not!
My first emotion after reading the brief filed by the US Solicitor General, is that the federal government’s stance is so wrong, antiquated, and shows how behind the curve our government actually i...
"Have Fun with Your Terms of Service"
This is a guest post from Marsh Gardiner, who knows a little secret…that anyone can submit stories to API Evangelist. All you do is submit a pull request on the Github repo that runs the site. Of c...
May 28, 2015
#Terms of Service
Rolling The Dice - Swagger, Postman, and ALPS
I enjoy playing with simple, meaningful ways of leaning about APIs. The other day, during the regular monitoring of the API space, I came across a simple dice rolling API, which I decide to map out...
A Cleaner, Simpler Example of API To SPA
One of my areas of research that got boost of energy at Gluecon last week, was the area of Single Page Applications, aka SPAs. SPAs are one huge area of potential growth for the API space, but like...
Why You Are Not Doing Microservices Right!
Yeah, I know, it is a click-bait title. My goal is to not flame the haters, but educate everyone involved, both the people looking to learn about microservices, and those who are practicing microse...
The Emphasis During Next Phase Of API Evangelist Will Be About You Telling Your Story
I am going on five years of API Evangelist this summer, and I’ve been doing some reflecting about what the next five years will be about. While listening to my friend Mike Amundsen (@mamund), I had...
May 26, 2015
#Evangelist
Going Beyond Just Documenting Your API, And Making Things Fun
I look at a lot of API documentation, something that until recently has been pretty static–pun intended. As an API consumer I really appreciate standardized approaches to documenting an API, like u...
Swagger Allows You To See The Girl In The Red Dress
While at Gluecon this week, one of the events I particpated in was the Swagger API Meetup, Tuesday evening. There was a small group of Colorado Bros (TM) there, admittedly there “just for the beers...
May 23, 2015
#Swagger
A Unique and Personal API Onboarding Experience
I have written many times before about the right way to onboard with an API, as well as how not to onboard with an API. I see a lot of APIs, and can tell you which APIs have put thought into the pr...
Usage Of Swagger For The APIs At The UC Santa Barbara Lab for Research on Adaptive Computing Environments
This is a Github issue submission I received, in response to whether or not anyone is doing anything interesting with Swagger. In the lead up to talks about Swagger next week at Gluecon, in Colorad...
Are You Doing Anything Interesting With @APIBlueprint? Or Know Someone Who Is?
I am preparing for a big week of discussion around API definitions at Gluecon, and in addition to working on my Swagger research, I kicked off deeper research into API Blueprin, looking for the com...
May 14, 2015
#Blueprint
It Will Be A Busy Week For API Industry Next Week At Gluecon
I am preparing to head to Colorado next week for Gluecon--one of my can’t miss events in the API space. Gluecon is always a great place to be, to discuss the API space with the folks who are leadin...
May 13, 2015
#Industry
Are You Doing Anything Interesting With Swagger? Or Know Someone Who Is?
I am preparing for a big week of discussion around Swagger next week, and I’m spending time going through Swagger research project, refreshing some of the companies I know are doing interesting thi...
May 13, 2015
#Swagger
Weekly API.Report For May 11th, 2015
The Weekly API.Report represents the best of what I've read throughout the week, and is only what I personally felt should be showcased. Each news item comes with a link, and some thoughts I had a...
May 11, 2015
Small Utility APIs: Roll Dice
I enjoy documenting APIs that I come across on the Internet. Not all designs catch my attention, but when they do, I like to add them to my monitoring systems, and with some of the smallest, open s...
May 11, 2015
Small Utility APIs: Deck of Cards
I enjoy documenting APIs that I come across on the Internet. Not all designs catch my attention, but when they do, I like to add them to my monitoring systems, and with some of the smallest, open s...
May 11, 2015
Applying A Little Hypermedia Is Helping Me Tighten Down My API Design And Tell A Better API Story
I get hypermedia at a high level, but have no real experience designing or deploying a hypermedia API or client. For the longest time I just watched the hypermedia conversation from afar, but in th...
A Good Example Of Hypermedia API Using The Siren Specification
I am spending a small amount of time each week, adding a new hypermedia layer to my link curation API. My goal is to better understand hypermedia, while also improving the designs of the APIs that ...
May 11, 2015
#Hypermedia
Weekly API.Report For May 4th, 2015
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) -- READ MORE I'm one day late this week, but got er done--yay!! My Weekly API.Report represents the best of what I've read throughout the week, and...
May 5, 2015
Sometimes Open Data Just Needs That Human Touch
I had a great conversation with Chris Taggart (@countculture), the CEO of OpenCorporates, after his keynote at APIDays Berlin / APIDays Europe 2015 last week, about how they get the data they need,...
Guest Post: Why The API Pattern Is Broken And How We Can Fix It
Has Owen Rubel emailed you, commented on your thread, called you or your co-workers? Your not alone, feel free to contact me for more information. This a guest post by Owen Rubel, fellow API arch...
May 5, 2015
The Legal Side of Healthcare APIs
I was taking a look at a new healthcare API recently, adding it to my stack, for deeper review at a later date. Whenever I add a company to my monitoring and review system, I go through the site to...
A Review of The CallFire Communication Platform
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) – **READ MORE** This is a review of the communication API platform CallFire, crafting a snapshot of platform operations, from an external viewpoi...
The Technology, Business, and Politics of APIs Via A Community Driven API Life Cycle
In 2010 I started API Evangelist, as part of my effort to better understand the world of APIs. I was looking to not just the technology of how it was done, I saw there were plenty of people doing t...
I Will See You In Barcelona Next Week For APIDays Mediterranea
After recovering from an amazing week in Berlin for APIDaysBerlin / APIStrat Europe 2015, and catching up on some work, which included a 20 hour push to get the last weeks API.Report completed, I a...
Weekly API.Report For April 27th, 2015
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) -- READ MORE This week's report was a painful one, because I did very little work last week when it came to monitoring the space, thus I was forced...
April 28, 2015
Thank You Berlin For Helping Make APIDaysBerlin / APIStrat Europe So Amazing!
I am still coming off the high that was @APIDaysBerlin / @APIStrat Europe this last April 23rd through 25th in Berlin. There were a number of talks that I enjoyed, ranging from open data, to 3D pri...
My Open Data Panel At APIDaysBerlin and APIStrat This Friday In Berlin
In addition to helping be the MC for the API event, one of the conversation I am facilitating at @APIDaysBerlin / @APIStrat Europe this Friday in Berlin, is an open data discussion on the main stag...
Weekly API.Report For April 20th, 2015
My Weekly API.Report represents the best of what I've read throughout the week, and is only what I personally felt should be showcased. Each news item comes with a link, and some thoughts I had af...
April 20, 2015
Quantifying My Minimum Viable API Footprint Definition As Real API Portal
I wrote a post the other day laying out what I'd consider a minimum viable footprint for API operations. My vision of just exactly what an API is, has gone beyond just the technical, ever since I ...
April 20, 2015
Quantifying A Minimum Viable API Footprint Definition As Real APIs.json Driven Portal
I wrote a post the other day laying out what I’d consider a minimum viable footprint for API operations. My vision of just exactly what an API is, has gone beyond just the technical, ever since I s...
Thinking Through How We Handle The Internet of Things Data Exhaust, And Responsible API Monetization, With Carvoyant
I’m very fortunate to be the API Evangelist, as I get to spend my days discussing, some very lofty ideas, with extremely smart and entrepreneurial folks from across many different business sectors....
If Government Faces Technical Hurdles When Meeting Open Data Requirements, We Need to Lean On Vendors For Solutions
I was reading Obama administration agrees with Sunlight: Agencies should disclose what data they keep private, which is a topic I follow closely, as I’m passionate about government opening up their...
Exploring The Ways Can We Put API Driven Tools Like Known To Work
I see a lot of software come and go. I adopt applications, tools, and online services for a variety of reasons, with some of these tools remaining a regular part my operations, with others coming a...
April 17, 2015
#Tools
A Healthy API Strategy Does Not Involve Scheduling A Briefing To Discuss--Just Do It
I get a number of folks contacting me about their API ideas, and email or call me, looking to schedule a meeting or briefing to discuss the API ideas. This is something I always reply with a reques...
April 17, 2015
#Strategy
Preparing Postman Collections Ahead Of Time For Developers Like JustGiving Does
I have been slowly adding Postman Collections to many of the APIs indexes for my new master stack. I index each API using an APIs.json file, as well as provide a master APIs.json which brings toget...
On Twitter, Gnip, DataSift, And Making The Hard Platform Decision
I have had Steve Willmotts of 3Scale’s response to the announcement that Twitter was cutting off firehose access for over a week now, and bringing the higher level access completely in house via th...
Hypermedia APIs From Sebastien Cevey of The Guardian at APIDaysBerlin / APIStrat Next Week
The most important stories told across the API space, the ones that have the biggest impact on API providers, and ultimately API consumers, are the stories that come out of the trenches of the API...
April 14, 2015
Hypermedia APIs From Sébastien Cevey of The Guardian at @APIDaysBerlin / @APIStrat Next Week
The most important stories told across the API space, the ones that have the biggest impact on API providers, and ultimately API consumers, are the stories that come out of the trenches of the API ...
Hypermedia APIs From Sébastien Cevey of The Guardian at @APIDaysBerlin / @APIStrat Next Week
The most important stories told across the API space, the ones that have the biggest impact on API providers, and ultimately API consumers, are the stories that come out of the trenches of the API...
April 14, 2015
Weekly API.Report For April 13th, 2015
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) -- READ MORE My Weekly API.Report represents the best of what I've read throughout the week, and is only what I personally felt should be showcased...
April 13, 2015
On APIs and Microservices
I’ve been monitoring an emerging slice of the API, that has been dubbed “microservices” for some time now, and you’ve even heard me explore its use, when describing my architectural approach to red...
My Minimum Viable API Footprint Definition
This is something I talk about often, but it has been a while since I’ve done a story dedicated to it, so I wanted to make sure and take a fresh look at what I’d consider to be a minimum viable foo...
April 10, 2015
#Definitions
How Not To Onboard With Your API: Fiber Locator API
Somewhere during my weekly monitoring I found the Fiber Locator API, which like all APIs, especially the ones that ask me to “request access”, I signed up for the service. Understanding where telec...
Bridging Our Virtual and Physical Worlds With The Link Creation Studio
APIs are very much a virtual concept, something that is very abstract, often difficult to explain, and is something that very much lives in the online world. Spending much of my daily life in this ...
Working Toward An API Definition Driven, SEO, and Section 508 Compliant API Documentation Interface
This is a topic I’ve had an increasing number of conversation with folks about in the last couple months, and a friend of mine Tweeted in response to today, resulting in this lovely rant. This is a...
Opportunities In The Long Tail Of API Deployment For Non-Developers, Using Kimono Labs
I was just doing on of my regular check-ins with Pratap Ranade (@pratapranade), the CEO of Kimono. We try to make time to catchup on what each other are up to, and find where we can work together t...
Here We Go Again, SOA And API - We Have Already Done This!
This is another story that came to mind while listening to the last episode of Traffic and Weather. As John and Steve were talking about the API definition format Swagger switching from Reverb to S...
Auto-Generating Code Using Swagger Still Means You Will Get Your Hands Dirty
Yay! Another story generated by listening to Traffic and Weather (blame John and Steve). I do enjoy sharing my random thoughts while listening to those two. This one is around the SDK discussion du...
What Are Good Example Of API Deprecation Policies
I had one of my followers ask me if there as a “gold standard for API deprecation policies” out there. I’d say that deprecation policies are a little different than some of the other legal building...
The Work It Takes To Connect And Keep Up With Each Valuable API I Come Across
If I find a new company during my research, it takes me about a minimum of 15 minutes to lightly profile what they are up, and add to my system, and if I do a full profile, it can take several hour...
Encouraging Feedback By Thinking Through Your API Road Map, Out In The Open, On Your Blog
This story is derived from listening to the API podcast, Traffic and Weather. One of the things John Sheehan (@johnsheehan), and Steve Marx (@smarx) discussed during the recent show, was a post Ste...
Considering The 3D Robotics Drone API As Potential Blueprint For The Drone Industry
As my Internet of Things (IoT) research continues, I’m applying much of my API thinking from the mainstream API space to the world of IoT. A couple weeks ago I stumbled across the 3D Robotics Drone...
A Little Standardization Around How We Do Internet of Things (IoT) APIs And Developer Portals Could Go a Long Ways
I was dedicating some time to researching APIs in the Internet of things (IoT) space, and stumbled across the Myfox API, serving the Myfox home security products. While the developer portal for the...
Why The New API Blueprint Sharing Button From Apiary Is So Important
API design service provider Apiary, quietly launch a new sharing button for API Blueprints, in their interactive API documentation, the other week. They added a setting in their account area, which...
Where You Will Find Me Next: Berlin, Barcelona, and Broomfield
I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to cut back on my travel in 2015, and focus on some important research, coding, and writing. I apologize to all the events I’ve said no to over the last couple...
I Wish API Providers Published Their Developer Portals On Github So I Could Submit Pull Requests
I spend a lot of time looking through the developer portals of API providers. I see a lot of things, both the good and bad, while navigating these portals, and while some of the bad stuff I see are...
Combined Calls: Monetization Through The Bundling Of API Calls
I was doing my regular monitoring, and found myself on the AlchemyAPI site. Not exactly sure how I got there, but I stumbled across their HTMLGetCombinedData API, which can be used for analysis on ...
Weekly API.Report For April 6th, 2015
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) -- READ MORE My Weekly API.Report represents the best of what I've read throughout the week, and is only what I personally felt should be showcased...
April 6, 2015
Blockspring Shifts The API Client Conversation With Their Google Spreadsheet API Add-On
The one thing I’ve learned in five years as the API Evangelist is that us technologists and developers don’t always see the world like everyone else. We focus on the perfection of the technology, o...
API Streaming: Cache And Push Data From APIs Using StreamData.io
I was introduced to StreamData.io the other day, by Gabriel Dillon (@gjdillon) of Readme.io. StreamData.io provides a caching, and push layer for apps to take advantage of, that can be deploy on to...
Temp API Keys: Leave Them Laying Around The Web Where Devs Will Find Them
I was reading Are You Or Your Customers Leaking Your API Keys? from Daryl Miller (@darrel_miller) the other day, which spurred me to float up a story in my Evernote, from a couple months back. My t...
Weekly API.Report For March 30th, 2015
I swear 3D Printing is continuing to cross over in some interesting ways: Sensors Embedded into 3D Printed Casts and Braces Will Track Patients Progress - An interesting intersection of healthcar...
March 30, 2015
Quantifying The Community Around The Swagger API Specification
This post is extracted from a deep dive I’ve been doing into the Swagger ecosystem, as part of regular conversations I have been having with Tony Tam (@fehguy), trying to understand how we can bett...
Amazon Echo: Voice Enablement Will Be Major API Driven Channel In The Future
I’ve been tracking on the potential for voice APIs since Siri was first announced, a topic that often meant telephony like from Twilio, or audio transcription from Popup Archive and Clarify. When I...
Even More Pondering On My Microservice Definition
I am evolving my own personal microservices definition, something that is constantly changing, as I work on my infrastructure, read other people’s own definitions (no shortage these lately), and co...
With The Addition Of The DroneKit API, I Am Now Tracking On The World Of Drone APIs
There are many areas I track on as part of my research. Things that do not show up on my weekly API.Reports, or in my analysis on API Evangelist. One of these is the area of drones. I’m fascinated ...
WhatsApps Reason For Not Opening Up API Is Just Not Informed And Short-Sighted
There was a quick post from Mashable the other day about a conversation with WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton, called WhatsApp cofounder: Sorry developers, no API for you. Its pretty common argument ...
March 27, 2015
#Open
Politics of APIs: Talk Of API Driven Regulation Is Increasing
When I started API Evangelist, I was all about the Business of APIs, something I still focus on, but increasingly over the last couple years I am focusing more on what I call the politics of APIs. ...
How Do You Make Something, Something, The API Edition
After reflecting on API management and the Apigee IPO, I’m thinking deeper on how the API space has come to be a “thing”. To kick off this story, you have to start with the API itself, something ve...
Swagger Shifts Hands From Reverb to SmartBear
The news came out yesterday that SmartBear was taking over ownership of Swagger, from Reverb. Swagger has been outgrowing its home at Reverb for some time now, becoming much more than I think even ...
March 26, 2015
#Swagger
Reflecting On API Management And The Apigee IPO
It has been a little over three years since I published my first roundup of API management providers. I’ve been tracking on this new breed of companies long before I started API Evangelist, but in ...
Weekly API.Report For March 23rd, 2015
Ok, it seems like Monday is going to be the regular posting day for my weekly API.Report. No matter how hard I try to get done over the weekend, something always seems to get in the way. Regardles...
March 23, 2015
Overcoming API Rate Limits Like They Did With WebhookDB
I was listening to too infrequent Traffic and Weather API podcast today, and one of the topics John and Steve covered was an interesting approach to API consumption, and getting past API rate limit...
Bringing My IT Infrastructure Out Of The Shadows With An API-First Approach
I’m slowly migrating my own infrastructure, towards a microservice first approach, something you can follow the details of on my alpha.apievangelist.com blog. I’ve been running on my own custom bre...
An API Has No Value Until It Is Actually Used
I am putting a lot of thought into the value of an API request and response lately. I’ve talked about the potential of a Postman collection as a unit of measurement, for the API economy. I’m also s...
March 20, 2015
#Value
APIs.json As A Distributed Transport Layer For The API Economy
I’m working with multiple partners to define what I’d consider to be the firsts stops along the API lifecycle, when you use APIs.json as the scaffolding for your API operations. APIs.json is a mach...
What We Do In The API Community Influences How The Rest of The World Is Making Change
I was just talking with my friend Oliver Seiler (@0seiler) in New Zealand via email. Oliver is great at keeping me in tune with API related stories out of New Zealand. I was making sure he knew how...
The API Journey: We Do Not Always Get Our API Strategy 100% Perfect, But We Can Communicate, Learn and Evolve
Running the perfect API operation is pretty much a delusional dream. Even leaders like Twilio and AWS have platform, and ecosystem produced problems on a regular basis. In my opinion, API are all ...
More Pondering On My Own Microservice Definition
Like API, the term microservice has emerged as a force, along with a meaning that is very precise, or very broad, depending on who you are. The only thing I’m sure of at this point, is the term mic...
Weekly API.Report For March 16th, 2015
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) -- READ MORE Phew!! This week was hard. I just couldn't find the mojo to plow through, but I did it. A little late on Monday evening, but still so ...
March 16, 2015
The Enterprise Will Make The Same Mistakes With API And Microservices That They Did With SOA, Because Essential API Concepts Go Right Over Their Head
I would say the enterprise space fleet has successfully shifted their course, heading in the general direction of everything API. SAP, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, and the rest of the usual suspects hav...
Postman Collections As Unit Of Measurement For Transactions In The API Economy
I’m immersed in deep thoughts about the implications of machine readable API definitions like APIs.json, Swagger, and Postman Collections, which are being applied to APIs, in some very different, b...
Making The API Feedback Loop Machine Readable With APIs.json
If you are following some of my recent stories, I’m heavily focused on APIs.json, as I work to organize my own stack of microservices, using APIs.son and Swagger. I’m working hard to define additio...
Going Beyond Excel As A Data Source For API Deployment And Focusing On It As An API Client
I’ve said it before, and I will say it again — Excel and spreadsheets will continue to be super critical for the growth of the API industry. There are an increasing number of solutions like APISpar...
Get API Results Into A Google Spreadsheet By Pasting The Following Into A Cell
My API hero of the day is Alan deLevie (@adelevie) over at 18F. I was tweeting out my story “Going Beyond Excel As A Data Source For API Deployment And Focusing On It As An API Client” today, and h...
March 13, 2015
#Spreadsheet
Transitory APIs: Intentionally Building APIs That Can Go Away At Anytime
I use many types of APIs. Some are public APIs, operated by other people, and then there are the APIs I have designed, operate, and consume on my own. As I design, redesign, deploy, and manage my A...
March 12, 2015
#Transit
Crafting Exactly The API Definition You Need With Swagger Vendor Extensions
I was listening the APIsâUncensored podcast last weekend, where Ole Lensmar (@olensmar), and Lorinda Brandon (@lindybrandon) sat down for a conversation with Tony Tam (@fehguy), the creator of AP...
Augmenting A Read Only API With AN External POST, PUT, And DELETE
I am revisiting some work that I started when I was working in Washington DC as a Presidential Innovation Fellow(PIF). Actually there are several things going on here, a sort of perfect storm of AP...
A Glimpse At What I Am Imagining For API Driven Analysis, Visualization, And Beyond
I came across an interesting piece of technology today while doing new curation for API.Report. RASON, an interesting approach to API driven analytics and potential UI and visualization, that kind ...
What is ALPS?
I was watching an open thread around ALPS over at API Craft, something that is on my working list to better understand, apply more in my world, and tell the story all along the way. ALPS author, an...
Visualize Your Cloud Presence Using Mohiomap
There are lots of good visualization stories recently, or maybe I’m more focused on API driven visualizations. Who knows? This particular post is an API story because Mohiomap, the company at the c...
Targeting Some APIs In My Stack For House Cleaning And Maybe Some Design Iterations
As I look through more APIs, and I don’t just play around in their developer portal, and look at documentation, I am actually get my hands dirty generating Swagger definitions, and authenticating a...
@Broadcom, I Am Going To Need Your Switches To Support Virtualized Containers So I Can Deploy My Own APIs Too
While processing the news today over at API.Report, I came across a story about Broadcom delivering an API for managing their latest network infrastructure. The intersection of Software Defined Net...
An Outside-In Approach Will Play A Critical Role In Driving The API Economy
I’m a big fan of private APIs, and all for keeping API access tailored to meaningful groups of users vs. just opening up data to the public, without first thinking critically about the possible pro...
March 10, 2015
#Economy
What Exactly Does Your API Do?
A short, concise, portable description of what your API does, is one of the most critical building blocks of API management, and is essential to reducing friction when new users are on-boarding wit...
Weekly API.Report For March 9th, 2015
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) -- READ MORE This is the third week in a row I've managed to do this weekly report, something that took me about 9 hours of work, so I can see that...
March 9, 2015
The API Journey Or What Is the Point of an API, By Tony Hirst (@psychemedia)
Tony Hirst (@psychemedia) wrote an interesting story about what I would consider the API journey, which he called, “What’s The Point Of An API?”. I’m the first to call bullshit on the term API, whi...
March 9, 2015
#Journey
Slowly Adding The People Layer To The API Evangelist Network
I’m adding a new layer to my monitoring of the API space, what I consider to be the people layer of the API Evangelist network–the actual people who are executing on much of what I talk about, acro...
Postman Collections Will Take Your API Productivity To The Next Level
If you are an API developer, it is likely you have used Postman, the simple tool for building, testing, and documenting your APIs. I have Postman open as a Google Chrome App, which allows me to mak...
Ask The Stack When You Need API Support
I was profiling the video sharing API Dailymotion the other day, going through their developer area and profiling their API operations. One of the things I do as part of the profiling of any compan...
March 9, 2015
#Support
We Need An Open Library Of The Most Common Utility API Implementations
I was spending time profiling APIs late last night while putting back a couple of IPAs. Yes this is what I do on a Friday night, you have a problem with that? Anyways, I was crafting Swagger defini...
March 7, 2015
#Open
A Breakdown Of My Dream APIs.json File
I’m continuing my work, to help people understand what APIs.json is, and the varying ways that it can be put to use. My post the other week, breaking down Fitbits APIs.json file is a good example o...
March 7, 2015
#APIs.json
Three Ways I Am Putting APIs.json To Work
I had a conversation with some folks who are building a wikipedia of API definitions the other day, looking to employ formats like Swagger, and APIs.json to make an open, authoritative directory of...
March 6, 2015
#APIs.json
My Ideal Profile Of Companies Who Are Doing Interesting Things With APIs
When I come across a new company, during the course of my monitoring and information gathering across the API space, I enter them into my company API. Once a company is in there, and I’ve deemed it...
March 6, 2015
My API Discovery Research
I am giving each of my primary API research sites a refresh, and first up is the home page of my API discovery research. As I update each home page, I’m going to publish here on API Evangelist to h...
Launching A Data Visualization API Into Your Own Infrastructure With Lightning
I was reviewing one of the many entries in my review queue of companies who are doing interesting things with APIs, and stumbled across the data visualization API—Lightning. Their implementation gr...
API Evangelist Call Thursday Summary For March 5th, 2015
I work to isolate all of my calls on Thursdays, leaving other days of the week to more asynchronous forms of communication, and deep dives into coding, research, and storytelling efforts. Last Thur...
March 5, 2015
#Evangelist
My API Design Research
I am giving each of my primary API research sites a refresh, and first up is the home page of my API design research. As I update each home page, I’m going to publish here on API Evangelist to help...
Making Sure My API Roundup Stories Are Machine Readable By Designing Them As APIs.json Collections
Making a list of valuable APIs has been a staple of my tech blogging for 10 years now, and as I work to find even more meaningful ways of defining the API space, I’m pushing the envelope on how I d...
Adding Four New Building Building Blocks Providing An API Management API Blueprint
I am adding four new building blocks, to my list of suggested building blocks that API providers should consider when crafting their API management strategy. These four building blocks, are based u...
You Can Feel It When An API Evangelist Is The Real Deal
I had the pleasure of finally meeting someone in person, that I feel like I’ve known for years, while I was over in Australia, for API Days Sydney—Keran McKenzie (@keranm), API Evangelist for MYOBa...
March 3, 2015
#Evangelist
Some Please Build A True Next Generation Press Release Aggregation API
I spend a lot of time wading through press releases at the number of the dominate aggregate news outlets, looking for API news. I also have a number of scripts running, keeping an automated eye on ...
Weekly API.Report For March 2nd, 2015
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) -- READ MORE I am a couple days late on this weeks API.Report, after being sick last week, taking the weekend to recover--at least I got it done. T...
March 2, 2015
Visualizing And Exploring My Microservices Catalog Using APIs.json With Swagger.ed
I’m just getting started exploring the ways to use APIs.json when it comes organize my new Docker fueled, micro services stack. I’ve been using APIs.son to describe each micro service, as well as d...
Using Machine Readable API Definitions To Solve A Persistent Question: Are There Any Write APIs In Federal Government?
A topic I’ve written about before, and one that I answer regularly on forums, via email, and on Twitter is, “Are there any write APIs in the federal government?” It is a valid question, and as I sa...
Moving Away From Legacy Vendor Relationships To A Devops, Micro-Services Way Of Life At Nike
I had the pleasure of attending a gathering at Heavybit Industries last week, a community for developer-focused entrepreneurs, where one of the headlining speakers was Nike CTO Chris Satchell. I wi...
Generating Client Side Code From Machine Readable API Definitions
This post has been open for almost two weeks now in Evernote. It began as a simple story about the possibility for generating code samples and libraries using Swagger. The longer it stays open, the...
A Peek At The Future With White Label APIs
I’ve been talking about the possibilities around wholesale APIs for a while now, something that is only going to become more prevalent with the popularity of micro services and containers. I though...
February 26, 2015
The Alpha API Evangelist Workbench
The API Evangelist network is my open workbench, and I understand for many, it can be confusing to see some of my half-baked ideas alongside some of my more hardened API 101, business of APIs, and ...
February 24, 2015
#Evangelist
Driving Your Single Page Applications And API Cookbooks Using API Definition Formats Like Swagger And API Blueprint
During my monitoring of the API space this last week I had one of those rare discoveries, amongst thousands of misses, and around a hundred slightly interesting nuggets, a simple move forward calle...
Scaling What I Do At API Evangelist
In my day to day operations, I get regular calls from VC’s (Venture Capitalists) looking to better understand APIs, the role they are playing within specific industries, working towards a better aw...
February 23, 2015
#Evangelist
My Brain Dump On An API Definition Fueled Life Cycle
I’ve written about this topic before, in an effort to understand the possible incentives for API providers to generate their own machine readable API definitions in formats like Swagger and API Blu...
Looking Beyond The Number Of APIs, Or Just New APIs, And Working Harder To Find Only The Most Important APIs
I constantly struggle to stay in tune with the scope of the API space, and keep pace with its rapid expansion. As part of this struggle, I am always on the hunt for new ways to shift the way I look...
February 23, 2015
I Got Swagger.ed Last Week, And Now I Am Seeing API Visualizations
Some of the side effects of being so open and transparent about my ideas, like the one I had around API visualizations, is that people who are doing similar things, like Ardoq, eventually find you....
Developing Small, Simple, Meaningful Tools That Make An Impact Across The API Space
I have API tooling on the brain, a result of conversations on multiple fronts, and the evolution of my own thoughts on creating what I’d see as the perfect API design tool. My thoughts on API tooli...
February 23, 2015
#Tools
API Evangelism Sometimes Seems Similar To The Environmental Discussion - What We Would Like, Does Not Reflect What Actually Happens On The Ground
I was just listening to segment on NPR, All Things Considered, about educating students around the environment. Throughout the program I couldn’t help be reminded of a similar imbalance in the worl...
Weekly API.Report For February 20th, 2015
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) -- READ MORE I have been inspired by my partner in crime Audrey Watter's (@audreywatters) approach to her weekly news on Hack Education, and will b...
February 21, 2015
The Role APIs Can Play When It Comes To Online Trolling
There is an interesting story about Twitter trolling over at Yahoo News from CBCNews.ca, which includes recommendations from Adria Richards (@adriarichards) for using the Twitter API to crack down ...
February 16, 2015
Meet The Platform Team Over At Mendeley API
I was playing catchup on my feeds over the weekend, and came across a nice, meet the Mendeley platform team post, from the academic research API. I’m a big fan of these types of efforts, that help ...
February 16, 2015
#Platform
Are Your APIs Ready For The Coming Containerization Evolution Of The API Space?
If you were at Defrag in Colorado last November, or in Sydney, Australia for API Days last week, you’ve heard me talk about what containers are doing to APIs. There is a subtle, but important shift...
February 14, 2015
#ai
An API For The Interactive JumboTron Floor Display At The National Museum of Mathematics (MoMath) In New York
I just found one of the coolest API stories I’ve seen in a while over at CHANCE, the quarterly magazine designed for “anyone who has an interest in the analysis of data, informally highlighting sou...
Changes To LinkedIn Developer Program Are No Surprise
LinkedIn recently announced some changes to their developer program, which involves further tightening down the screws on who has access to the API, limiting public access to only a handful of very...
Migrating My Own API Infrastructure Conversations To My Personal Blog And Keep API Evangelist About Mainstream Stories
After seeing the conversation around my In The Future There Will Be No Public vs. Private APIs, I’m reminded of my own mission. I write on API Evangelist first and foremost for my own education, an...
February 8, 2015
#Blog
#Evangelist
#Infrastructure
#Stories
#Conversations
#ai
#Personal
#Mainstream
APIMATIC Code-Generation-as-a-Service Has Built-In Support For API Commons Manifest
The API savvy folks over at Apimatic are at it again, pushing forward the conversation around generating of software development kits, using machine readable API formats, and this time the doorway ...
A Minimum Viable APIs.json File For Your APIs
I’m continuing my work to help people understand what APIs.json is, and the varying ways that it can be put to use. My post the other day, breaking down Fitbits APIs.json file is a good example of ...
February 8, 2015
#APIs.json
A Minimum Viable APIs.json File For Your APIs
I’m continuing my work to help people understand what APIs.json is, and the varying ways that it can be put to use. My post the other day, breaking down Fitbits APIs.json file is a good example of ...
February 8, 2015
#APIs.json
When You Are Ready For Nuanced Discussion About Who Has Access To Your API I Am Here
David Berlin has a rebuttal post on ProgrammableWeb to my recent post In The Future There Will Be No Public vs. Private APIs, called Long Live The Private API. I’m a big fan of doing story response...
February 6, 2015
#Access
My Wish Has Been Granted: Swagger Driven API Visualizations From Ardoq
I’m a big fan of putting my ideas for new tools, services, and other stuff out on the Internet, for public consumption. My mother taught me how to manifest things in my life, and this is my digital...
Defining Virtual API Stacks Using The Service Broker API Over At IBM Bluemix
I’ve been talking about developing virtual API stacks for a while now, and as I continue understand current shifts in cloud computing, I am doing my own reshuffling towards a more microservices, an...
February 5, 2015
What Exactly Is API Commons?
As I travel around talking to folks about APIs, I spend as much time as I can educating folks about API Commons, and I’m constantly reminded how little people, who have even heard, and read about A...
February 4, 2015
#API Commons
What Do I Mean When I Say APIs Are Just The Next Step In The Evolution Of The Web?
I remember the vision clearly from 2004, when I first changed the URL for my Delicious social bookmarking account to make it return a list of bookmarks as XML instead of HTML. It was a vision of th...
February 4, 2015
#Web
Recap Of APIs At Dept of Education, And The FAFSA API
My work on APIs for the Department of Education, and the FAFSA API began while I was working in Washington DC as a Presidential Innovation Fellow. Shortly after leaving DC, I was informed that conv...
February 4, 2015
#Education
I See An Opportunity In Paying Attention To Other Types Of APIs
I’ve been pretty focused on web APIs in my API Evangelist world, steering clear of hardware, networking, desktop software, and the American Petroleum Institute. While you will never catch me paying...
February 4, 2015
APIs Used To Close, Rather Than Open The Internet
I get a lot of folks who come to my blog, see the title, read one or two posts, and assume that I’m a blind lover of API technology, and that I see APis as a solution to everything. While some of t...
February 4, 2015
#Open
An Increase In Number Of Press Releases Involving API Integration
I spent a portion of my time each day reviewing press release sites, in addition to the 1000+ blogs I keep an eye on, for syndication to API.Report. During the course of my work this year, I’m noti...
February 4, 2015
#Integration
The Logo Page Over At The MYOB API Is Very Helpful
I spend a significant portion of my day looking for company logos, for use in the API stories I tell. When I come across a proper implementation of a logo page, one of the business building blocks ...
February 3, 2015
#Logo
Static HTML Documentation Generated From Machine Readable API Blueprint Definitions Using Aglio
I’m on the hunt for new ways to deploy attractive, interactive API documentation, from machine readable API definition formats like Swagger and API Blueprint. I am advocating for the development of...
In The Future There Will Be No Public vs. Private APIs
As I continue to evovle my service composition definition, using my 3Scale API infrastructure, across my microservices stack, the thought of public vs private doesn’t even enter the equation. I am ...
February 3, 2015
In The Future There Will Be No Public vs. Private APIs
As I continue to evovle my service composition definition, using my 3Scale API infrastructure, across my microservices stack, the thought of public vs private doesn’t even enter the equation. I am ...
February 3, 2015
APIs Are Establishing New And Useful Processes Faster Than Patents Can Keep Pace With
I’m spending a lot of time reading API related patents lately. I downloaded all of the patent applications between 2005 and 2015, filtered for all patents that mention “application programming inte...
A Machine Readable Version of The Presidents Fiscal Year 2016 Budget On Github
The release of the the president’s fiscal year 2016 budget in a machine readable format on Github was one of the most important things to come out of Washington D.C. in a while when it comes to ope...
February 3, 2015
#Github
We Need Better API Documentation And UI Deployment Options
I was having a Twitter conversation with John Sheehan(@johnsheehan) about the easiest way to generate interactive API documentation this weekend, without getting all tangled up in having to get int...
API Management Infrastructure And Service Composition Is Key To Orchestration With Microservices In A Containerized World
As I work to redefine my world using microservices, I have this sudden realization how important my API management infrastructure is to all of this. Each one of my microservices are little APIs tha...
February 2, 2015
#Management
#Orchestration
#Microservices
#API Management
#Infrastructure
#ai
#Micro
API Evangelist Logomaker
In 2010, when I started API Evangelist, I sat down to create a logo, and after six hours of frustration in photoshop, I eventually just typed out my logo as a basic JSON representation, kind of as ...
Why Would You Ever Give Students API Access To The Student Information System (SIS), And Let Them Build Un-Sanctioned Apps That We Will End Up Having To Support?
I went up to California State University Channel Islands the other day to talk APIs with their tech team, and I was happy to find at least one strong API skeptic on the team. API skeptics also give...
Why Would Want To List All Your Universities Web Services (APIs) Out In The Open, Via Central Portal? What A Security Risk!
I went up to California State University Channel Islands the other day to talk APIs with their tech team, and I was happy to find at least one strong API skeptic on the team. API skeptics also give...
Breaking Down The Fitbit APIs.json File
The quantified-self API Fitbit recently added an APIs.json for their domain. Their usage of APIs.json is a perfect, dead-simple, introductory example of how APIs can start putting APIs.json for the...
January 31, 2015
#APIs.json
Breaking Down The Fitbit APIs.json File
The quantified-self API Fitbit recently added an APIs.json for their domain. Their usage of APIs.json is a perfect, dead-simple, introductory example of how APIs can start putting APIs.json for the...
January 31, 2015
#APIs.json
API Patents 2005 Through 2015
I started doing research on API patents recently, and after about 5 days of processing XML files from the US Patent Office, I’m going to stop processing at the year 2004 (way back). This gives me 2...
January 31, 2015
#Patents
What Is Missing On My Microservices Using APIs.json
I’m using APIs.json to organize my swagger defined microservices running in docker containers, and using the machine readable API index to drive navigation between microservices organized in a sing...
Talking APIs Up At California State University Channel Islands
I spent the day yesterday up in Camarillo, at California State University Channel Islands (CI). Half my time I spent speaking with a mix of folks from the campus tech team about APIs, and the other...
January 30, 2015
Proxy The Public API You Are Using With APITools And Send Me The Swagger It Generates, Please...
APITools is a simple, open source, API middleware that allows you to “track, transform and analyze the traffic between your app and the APIs”. With just a few clicks you can proxy any API you use, ...
How To Generate An API Surface Area Map For A Microservice?
I was struggling with exactly how much API surface area can exist for a service before it stops being micro the other day, and while I don’t think I’ll ever find a precise measurement for this, I’d...
January 30, 2015
#Micro
Wordnik API Is The Base Building Block Of Twitter Bots
I’m fascinated by the rise of Twitter bots. Little automated bundles of social media joy, built to spew mostly nonsense, but everyone once in a while you find nuggets of wisdom in the Twitter API f...
Using Swagger As Fingerprint For My Microservice Docker Containers
I’m rebuilding my underlying architecture using microservices, and docker containers, and I’m using APIs.json for navigation and discovery within these new API stacks that I use to make my world go...
Using APIs.json For My Microservice Navigation And Discovery
I’m rebuilding my underlying architecture using microservices and docker containers, and the glue I’m using to bind it all together is APIs.json. I’m not just using APIs.son to deliver on discovera...
Using APIs.json For My Microservice Navigation And Discovery
I’m rebuilding my underlying architecture using microservices and docker containers, and the glue I’m using to bind it all together is APIs.json. I’m not just using APIs.son to deliver on discovera...
Incentives For Companies To Be More Public With Their API Presence
I spend time each day reviewing about 15 different press release distribution websites, looking for API related news for API.Report, and potentially seeds for stories elsewhere on the API Evangelis...
January 28, 2015
#Presence
How Much API Surface Area Before It Stops Being Micro?
I have most of the core platform that I run API Evangelist on re-engineered as individual microservices, defined on Github, and running using Docker instances. I’m using APIs.json for discovery, na...
January 28, 2015
#Micro
The Politics, Marketing, And Fear of API Security
I cringe, when I think about the number of mobile applications out there, that people depend on in their personal and professional lives, that are using insecure APIs, allowing personally identifia...
APIs Role In Data Security And Privacy
As we get close to wrapping up the first month in 2015, it is clear that Internet security and privacy will continue to be front and center this year. As technology continues to play a central role...
My Experiences Generating API Server or Client Code Using Swagger
When you start talking about generating server or client side code for APIs, using machine readable API definition formats like Swagger or API Blueprint, many technologists feel compelled to let yo...
Finished Processing 973 API Related Patents From 2013
I’m slowly processing XML files of patents from the US Patent Office. You can read the origin of my journey here, but as of today, I finished processing 50 files of patent applications for 2013, ad...
Doing The Research In Preparation For My Patent On A Patent API
David Berlind’s (@dberlind), Amid The API Copyright Controversy, An API Patent Claim Surfaces story from this last Friday, planted some ideas in my head around APIs and patents—something that once ...
January 25, 2015
#Research
Preparing For My Talk At API Days In Sydney With Lots of Docker, Swagger, and APIs.json Work
i’m spending a lot of time lately, playing around with different approaches to deploying APIs in Docker containers. Part of this is because it is the latest trend in API deployment and management, ...
As API Space Expands, So Do The Sources Of Knowledge: New YouTube and SoundCloud Channels
The API space is continuing its rapid expansion, and along with the number of API design, deployment, management, and integration providers, and the number of API conferences, there are some new so...
A Conversation About My Subway Map API On The APIsUncensored Podcast
There is a new podcast on SoundCloud called APIsUncensored, from the folks over at SmartBear. I was honored to have a mention in the first episode, where they brought up a project I did a couple of...
Simple, Intuitive API Backends With HTTPHUB
I come across a lot of API related companies during my monitoring of the space, which I queue up, and as I have time, I work to explore and understand what they do. One company that I’ve had open i...
Translating Postman Collections Into APIs.json Collections And Back Again
I’ve been a Postman user for a while, as a tool for quickly making API calls against the APIs I use most, and explore the new APIs I discover daily. As I use Postman, I can’t help but think the con...
This Is How You On-Board With An API
I sign up for a lot of APIs, and when I encounter a frictionless on-boarding process, I feel the need to showcase, and help everyone understand how important it is to make the process as easy as po...
The Next Steps For The The Recreation Information Database (RIDB) API
I referenced the Recreation Information Database (RIDB), in my story late last year, when I was asking for your help to make sure the Department of Agriculture leads with APIs in their parks and re...
REST API Design: Bridging What We Have, To The Future, By Organizing The JSON Junk Drawer
API storyteller J(a)son Harmon (@jharmn) has a new YouTube channel up called API Workshop. He’s going to be publishing regular API design workshop episodes, with the latest one titled REST API Desi...
How Not To On-Board With An API
I wrote a piece earlier today about the kick-ass on-boarding process at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) 3D Print Exchange API--within two clicks I had my API key and was making an API call....
A New 3D Print Exchange API from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
There is an very interesting new 3D Print Exchange API from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH 3D Print Exchange is designed for publishing “biomedically-relevant” 3D models, that any...
January 21, 2015
#Print
We Added 3 New Speakers To @APIStrat Lineup - Have You Submitted A Talk?
We just added three new speakers to the lineup for @APIStrat Berlin this April 24th and 25th. I get pretty excited about this part of the event planning lifecycle, which is all about reviewing talk...
January 15, 2015
#APIStrat
Instant Access To APIs Via Github Profile
An open project for me this month, is about better understanding how API keys are provisioned, and how developers are given access to valuable resources. As the number of APIs grows, so do the numb...
Storing API Keys In The Private Master Github Repository For Use In My Github Pages
My public websites have been running on Github Pages for almost two years now, and slowly the private management tools for my platform are moving there as well. Alongside my public websites, I’m ad...
Storing API Keys In The Private Master Github Repository For Use In Github Pages
My public websites have been running on Github Pages for almost two years now, and slowly the private management tools for my platform are moving there as well. Alongside my public websites, I’m ad...
Using Containers To Bridge What Swagger Cannot Define On The Server-Side For My APIs
When I discuss what is possible when it comes to generating both server and client side code using machine readable API definitions like Swagger, I almost always get push-back, making sure I unders...
Use APIs.json To Organize My Swagger Defined APIs Running In Docker Containers
I continuing to evolve my use of Swagger as a kind of central truth in my API design, deployment, and management lifecycle. This time I’m using it as a fingerprint for defining how APIs or micro-se...
Internet Of Things Security And Privacy Will Always Begin With Asking If We Should Do This At All
As I read and listen to all of the Internet of Things stories coming out of CES, I’m happy to be hearing discussions around privacy and security, come out of the event. I feel better about IoT secu...
Scrubbing Individuals And Company Names From Stories I Tell
I find it more valuable to scrub the names of the APIs from about 75% of my stories, which I feel helps them be received by a widest possible audience as possible. If I say “API Provider X”, other ...
January 8, 2015
#Stories
Providing An oAuth Signature Generator Inline In Documentation
I talked about Twitter’s inclusion of rate limits inline with documentation the other day, which is something I added as a new building block, that API providers can consider when crafting their ow...
Internet Of Things Security And Privacy Will Always Begin With Asking If We Should Do This At All
As I read and listen to all of the Internet of Things stories coming out of CES, I’m happy to be hearing discussions around privacy and security, come out of the event. I feel better about I...
January 8, 2015
Generating Swagger Specs For The APIs Of The 700+ Companies That I Monitor
I’m about 1/3 of the way into generating Swagger specifications for the APIs at the 700+ companies that I monitor. I have the Swagger specs for almost 250 APIs so far, and have no idea how many I’l...
Using APIs To Help Achieve A More Owner-Controlled Internet of Things Experience
A blog post that caught my attention recently was Fuse, Kynetx, and Carvoyant, by Phil Windley (@windley). Phil is pushing the boundaries of connecting devices to the Internet, and is very vocal ab...
The Quickest Way To Proxy, Secure, Rate Limit, and Monitor My APIs
As I am designing my APIs, one of the first things I decide is whether or not I will be making this public. If its a simple enough resource, and doesn’t put too much load on my servers, I will usua...
January 7, 2015
#Proxy
Putting All Your API Resources Into Single Query Parameter Like Flickr Does
When you use a well designed, and I hate saying it, but a RESTful API, you know it. I’m not a restafarian, who is super strict about API design, but I do know an easy-to-use, intuitive interface wh...
January 7, 2015
#Resources
My Dream Stack For Machine Readable APIs.json Properties
The properties of each API that is listed in an APIs.json file can be called anything, as long as you preface it with X-, and the URL can point to anything you wish–to me this is one of the most fl...
Developer Support With Google Helpouts
I was cruising around the Google Developer area and I stumbled across Google Helpouts. A service being billed as “Experts with Answers, Meet Developers with Questions”. Seems like a more one-to-one...
January 7, 2015
#Support
Connecting Our History At The Digital Public Library of America Using APIs And JSON-LD
If I had to pick one API that I worship the ground they walk on, and yet for some insane reason I don’t write about very often—it would be the Digital Public Library of America. I can go on for day...
Treating All Mobile Application API Usage Like It Is External
I have read several stories about security breaches in the past couple days, ranging from exploitation of APIs across the distributed systems we are increasingly depending on, to no security at Moo...
Server Skeletons In Restlet Studio And APISpark
I was working in APISpark, playing around with different approaches to creating APIs for data stores i have in Amazon S3, Github, and in Google Spreadsheets. The cloud API deployment solution allow...
Reddit API Methods Listed Alpha or By oAuth Scope
I was taking another look at the Reddit API over the weekend, and thought their listing of API endpoints was pretty interesting. They provide two ways of looking at the platform APIs: API Secti...
API Evangelist In 2015
In 2015, I will enter the 5th year of API Evangelist. To quote one of my favorite bands–“What a Long Strange Trip Its Been”. I couldn’t be more thankful for the career choice I made in 2010, and ex...
January 6, 2015
#Evangelist
Another High Profile Mobile To API Security Breach, This One At MoonPig Greeting Cards
I saw a story of yet another security breach related to how mobile phones are using APIs today. This one is from Paul Price, on his blog ifc0nfig.com, about the greeting card site MoonPig. Paul hi...
Your Secret Sauce Does Not Include Restricting Access To Your APIs
Your company’s secret sauce doesn’t involve keeping your APIs closed and proprietary—it is about making them as open and accessible as possible, to the point where even your competition can’t help ...
January 5, 2015
#Access
What Exactly Is APIs.json?
As I travel around talking to folks about APIs, I spend as much time as I can, educating folks about APIs.json. In the course of my evangelism, I’m constantly reminded how little people, who have e...
January 5, 2015
#APIs.json
Reverse Engineering Of The Kayak API From The Mobile App
I am beginning to track on reverse engineering API story that I come across, so if you find any, feel free to share my way. If you aren’t familiar with this growing trend, I’m talking about the rev...
Our IoT API Is Available In Java, C++, and Node.js
I am spending a lot of time lately reviewing Internet of Things (IoT) providers, as I work on a white paper for Gigaom. There are some very interesting approaches to APIs out there in IoT-land, and...
Our IoT API Is Available In Java, C++, and Node.js
I am spending a lot of time lately reviewing Internet of Things (IoT) providers, as I work on a white paper for Gigaom. There are some very interesting approaches to APIs out there in IoT-land, and...
Adding Two More Building Blocks For API Rate Limiting
After giving some recent attention to the Twitter API ecosystem, a place where I always learn a lot, I’m shifting up my API rate limit building block, in my list of API management resources. If you...
A Refreshing First Impression When You First Land In The Etsy API Area
When you first land on any API developer landing page, the impression you get, can be one of the most important aspects of on-boarding with an API that I know of. More time than not, I’m pretty con...
Zapier Baked In By Default For The Rev Transcription API Platform
I’m always working to help API providers understand the importance of designing their API developer portals, with a larger audience in mind. Not everyone who visits your portal, will be the one int...
White Label API Reciprocity And Interoperability
I had someone ask me, if out of the 30 API reciprocity providers I track on, if I knew if one of them offered white or private label services. I couldn’t confidently say whether or not any of them ...
December 29, 2014
#Interoperability
Credit Based API Pricing, With Monthly And One-Time Plans
I’m reviewing the business models of many of the top API platforms over the last couple of weeks, and I’m seeing some pretty interesting approaches to API monetization. As I look through each API, ...
Adding Rate Limits For APIs In The Documentation For Each Endpoint
As I look through the API efforts of various providers, I’m always looking for the little things that can make on-boarding, and sustained integration with an API as frictionless as possible. One of...
Making Sure The Most Important Layers Of API Space Stay Open
APIs are a really tough concept to help folks on-board with. I have come to realize that people see APIs very differently, and most of the time, I think this can be a good thing. In a perfect world...
December 21, 2014
#Open
A Common Place To Manage All The API Definitions In My World
I’m profiling all the 700+ companies I monitor across the space, going through each one and defining their API program, evaluating the tech, business and politics of their operations. Part of this ...
December 21, 2014
#Definitions
Swagger 2.0 For The Docker API
I’m developing a common API for all the APIs I deploy via Docker containers, meaning that each API that I design as a Docker image, will have an API to control all aspects of deployment, and its op...
December 20, 2014
#Swagger
On Being An API Broker For Hackathons
I recently had a conversation with one of my contacts at a federal agency about a hackathon tour they are planning. The federal government doesn’t call these events hackathons, they call them data ...
December 19, 2014
#Hackathons
Are You A Hypermedia Pragmatist?
I have been spending a lot more time in 2014 learning, discussing, and telling stories about hypermedia. Early this year I identified that hypermedia was moving beyond just academic discussion, and...
December 19, 2014
#Hypermedia
Do You Know That Hypermedia Is A Better Solution For Discovery Than APIs.json?
I spend a lot of time field questions from people about APIs.json. This is something I expect to be doing for the next 10 years, and happy to field questions about exactly what it is all about, and...
Do You Know That Hypermedia Is A Better Solution For Discovery Than APIs.json?
I spend a lot of time field questions from people about APIs.json. This is something I expect to be doing for the next 10 years, and happy to field questions about exactly what it is all about, and...
API Service Idea: API Via Excel From Within Corporate Email
Most organization I’ve worked with, the Excel spreadsheet is the central way of storing, managing and sharing data, with email being the number one way to share these data filled documents. When I ...
With Number Of APIs Continuing To Grow Account Automation Will Be Key
I personally depend on over 40 APIs, all of which I have to manage my developer account, apps, and API key access for. This can be a lot of work, and as I continue to add APIs to my stack, this wor...
December 16, 2014
#Automation
History Of APIs: NOAA APIs Have Been RESTful For Over 20 Years
This post is a comment that was left on my Low Hanging Fruit For API Discovery In The Federal Government post, showcasing some of the government API work I am doing. I get a lot of people who email...
Understanding More About The Web Communications Platform Respoke
In the coming months I’m doing some deep profiling of the API space, so you are going to see me reviewing the approach of more API providers in the space. My goal with API reviews is not just to sh...
Swagger Definition Driven Sandbox And Simulation Data Templates For APIs
This is something I’ve written about before in API Sandbox And Simulator From Carvoyant, and Salesforce Adds Sandbox Templates. However it is something I’d like to formalize, and get some new API s...
Swagger API Definition Mapper
I was having one of my long overdue check ins with API godfather John Musser today, and it reminded me of an idea I wanted to put out there, so while it was fresh in my mind, I wanted to share. I’m...
Moving Beyond Just The PDF With A Single Page Report (SPR)
I’m playing with more data visualizations lately, trying to establish a dynamic set of tools that I can use in my storytelling across the API Evangelist network. I’ve been focusing on using D3.js, ...
December 3, 2014
#PDF
Join Me For APIDays Berlin And APIStrat Europe This April 24th-25th 2015
Here we go again. If you were in Chicago for APIStrat this September, then you know we are planning to have the next edition of APIStrat in Berlin, this spring. This round 3Scale and API Evangelist...
A Market For API Developer Credits
This story gets file into the “way in future” bucket, because the infrastructure needed to make happen doesn’t even exist. Beyond research from API grandfather John Musser (@johnmusser), and a few ...
Where Do Developers Get Idea That APIs Should Never Go Away?
Almost every time an API shuts down, the tech blogosphere, and the social networks favored by the tech community erupts in comments resembling: That is what you get for depending on APIs, and APIs ...
December 1, 2014
#Developers
The Context.io API And Thinking Out Of The Box When Crafting APIs
I recently finished looking through all of the email APIs available in the space, narrowing it down to just a handful of companies who I felt were worthy of showcasing as part of my email API resea...
December 1, 2014
#Context
The Context.io API And Thinking Out Of The Box When Crafting APIs
I recently finished looking through all of the email APIs available in the space, narrowing it down to just a handful of companies who I felt were worthy of showcasing as part of my email API resea...
December 1, 2014
#Context
My Turkey Holiday Project: A Subway Map API
A long time ago I defined the API Evangelist network using a subway map format, plotting out the different routes you could take, and the locations all along this journey. As with anything I do, th...
Adding New Section For My Sixteen Basic API Templates
As I build out new APIs for use across my systems, as well as map out the landscape of valuable API resources available today, I’m working to define templates that other API providers can follow wh...
Is Your API More Than Just A Footnote On Your Website?
Not all companies who have an API are Twilio, where the API is the product. With Twilio when you land on their website home page, you are in API developer area by default, this is what Twilio doe...
November 24, 2014
#Web
There Are Four API Design Editors To Choose From Now
In the early days, there was just one API design tool to use, Apiary.io. Now at the end of 2014, we have four separate API design tools to choose from. I credit Apiary.io for opening up this new er...
Sales, Onboarding And Support In A Self-Service API World
I was reviewing an API over the last couple of weeks–I signed up for an account, came back several times, and made a handful of API calls in hopes of learning more about how the API works. This is ...
An API For Developers To Access Their API Account Information
When I landed on the version 3.0 landing page for the Mailjet API, the first thing I noticed was their API configuration API. Providing a set of API endpoints for managing my own API usage is defin...
My Continued Support As Signer Of Oracle v Google Amicus Brief From EFF
https://www.eff.org/files/2014/11/07/google_v_oracle_computer-scientists-certpetition-amicus-brief_14-410_final.pdf As the Oracle v Google API copyright case was on its way to the Federal Circuit ...
Join Me Tomorrow For A Panel Discussion On API Ecosystems At SF MusicTech
You can find me in San Francisco tomorrow, at the Kabuki Hotel for SF MusicTech. I’m moderating a panel, dubbed “API Ecosystem”, where I will be talking APis with Antti Silventoinen (@Lamantiini) o...
I Will Review Your API On API Evangelist if You Add An APIs.son File Plus A Machine Readable API Definition
I’ve been crafting Swagger 2.0 definitions for many of the leading APIs i track on lately, and to help alleviate my pain and suffering, I’m willing to write about your company if you write your own...
Resource Base API Monetization vs. Experience Based API Monetization
I’m lost in API monetization land, evaluating the business models of common APIs, so you are just going to have to cope with it, until I get through this research. Honestly, I really don’t care thi...
Resource Base API Monetization vs. Experience Based API Monetization
I’m lost in API monetization land, evaluating the business models of common APIs, so you are just going to have to cope with it, until I get through this research. Honestly, I really don’t care thi...
Tracking On The Red Flags For API Monetization
I spend my time gathering what I call b”uilding blocks”, as I work my way through the API landscape. I’ve been tracking on the building blocks of API management since 2011, and have expanded that t...
Project Idea: Codenvy-Like Containerized Spreadsheets
I wrote a story about a company I’m advising for last week called Codenvy, who is delivering modular, scalable, cloud development environments using their web IDE and Docker. I’m currently working ...
Messente API: Always Use A Backup DNS Solution
I found the DNS implementation over at the Messente SMS API interesting, and worth of sharing for deeper evaluation. I’ve been considering the various approaches by API providers when crafting thei...
November 5, 2014
#DNS
Guest Post: Help Us Bring Out The Worst Of The Net So We Can Generate Page Views
This is a guest post from one of our sponsors. We actually cringed, and puked in our mouth a little bit when we saw an email come in from this company, requesting a post, but they paid us well, and...
API Sandbox And Simulator From Carvoyant
I’m digging deeper into my Evernote lately, getting back to those half written stories I have laying around, and next up is about the Carvoyant API sandbox and simulator. I came across their Free #...
November 5, 2014
#Sandbox
Some Examples of API Integration Pages In The Wild
One pattern I’m seeing emerge on some of the API platforms I’m watching from week to week are integration pages, showcasing the other 3rd party services than an API has integration with. An integra...
Project Idea: Server Side API Deployment Using Open Source API Frameworks
As I write up a story on Magnet, another one of the API SDK service providers to emerge in the space, I can’t help but evaluate what other building blocks have the potential to evovolve, and be off...
Moving Elasticsearch Into API Management With New API Security And Access Features
Elasticsearch, the open source, distributed, real-time search and analytics engine just announced that it is introducing a security layer on top of their API driven search platform. Historically yo...
The Expanding API Universe: More API SDK Focused Services Emerge
I’m beginning to see just about every building block in the design, deployment, management, and integration of APIs evolve into individual startups who are looking to provide services to the API se...
New API Management Providers: Clean, Modern API Portals With ReadMe
It makes me happy to see new arrivals in the world of API management service providers, especially after all the consolidation we saw last year with many of the 1st and 2nd wave of providers like M...
Just Be Straight Up About Your API Pricing
I know. I’m kind of a broken record this week, but I’m trying to quantify the business model, and monetization strategies of APIs across various industries, and understanding what companies are cha...
I Trust API Providers More When API Pricing Is Front And Center
When you look through as many APIs as I do, you start to get a feeling for many of the subtle signals, that can result in a wealth of information about the actual viability of an API. One signal I’...
Swagger Visualization Layer Using D3.js
I’m just going to keep putting my ideas out there, so that y’all will build what is needed for the API space. In support of my API design tool, and my interactive API documentation tool, I want a S...
Establishing Common Dictionaries That Industries Can Use In Their API Design
I’m going through each of the 100+ business sectors I track on as part of my API Stack. As I make my way through each sector, and generate Swagger, and APIs.json files, the language of the resource...
Top 5 Most Popular Themes On API Evangelist In 2014
Throughout 2014, when I look at the top 10 posts in my Google Analytics dashboard each month, there has been a consistent theme of what stories are driving page views. The concept of a page is only...
Query Parameter Determining Which Fields Are Queried For API Call
I was taking a look through the NewsCred API yesterday and there was a parameter I have seen before, but find interesting, and wanted to share with you. It was a field called query_fields, which yo...
October 29, 2014
#Design
Now Our Development Environment Is Now Containerized And Scalable Like Our Production Environment
The production environment for delivering web and mobile applications has radically evolved in the last couple years, becoming more distributed, scalable, virtualized, and containerized. APIs, and ...
Guest Post: Let Our Sponsors Blow A Little Smoke Up Your Ass
This is a guest post from one of our sponsors. We didn’t vet them as a sponsor, or the content they were going to write. We just cashed their check on the way to the strip club this evening, and ga...
October 29, 2014
#Sponsors
API Discovery Continues Its Move Into The IDE With Eclipse Che
Another layer to the release of Codenvy this week, was the announcement of the Eclipse project Che, an open source “project to create a platform for SAAS developer environment that contains all of ...
Evolving Beyond Just Resources Towards A More Experience Based API Design
I really love the thought process around API design, and I am always looking for ways to push forward my craft. Telling stories is one way I do this, forcing me to make what I’m doing understandabl...
Another View of The API vs. Data Download Model
I’ve talked a lot about the benefits of APIs over download of data stores in the government space, and I’m always on the lookout for other interesting examples of making data available via an API, ...
October 28, 2014
#Data
Another View of The API vs. Data Download Model
I’ve talked a lot about the benefits of APIs over download of data stores in the government space, and I’m always on the lookout for other interesting examples of making data available via an API, ...
October 28, 2014
#Data
If You Have A Publicly Available Mobile App You Have a Public API
I’ve had several browser tabs open around the recent Snapchat security breach, hoping to craft an API-centric story around the whole affair. I think SmartBear covers the security lesson around the ...
Reducing The API Stack Down From 830 to 690
I just finished going through my API Stack, taking a fresh look at each API provider, and recording some information about each of the providers in my API monitoring system. When I started looking ...
October 26, 2014
Gathering My Thoughts Around Common Patterns For Base URLs Across Nearly 700 APIs
I just finished going through my API Stack, taking a fresh look at each API provider, and looking for one simple thing—the base URL for each of their APIs. Throughout the process I looked at almost...
October 26, 2014
#Patterns
I Am Using Kimono Labs To Fill In Gap For Companies Who Do Not Have AN RSS Feed For Their Blog
I am tracking on around 2500 companies who are doing interesting things in the API space. Out of these companies about 1000 of them have blogs, which for me is a pretty important signal. About 1/4 ...
October 25, 2014
#Blog
Someone Please Build My Open, Interactive, Portable, And Visual API Documentation Toolkit
I wrote about visual API documentation a few months back, after I looked at the approach from OpenFDA, and now after taking a look at the value Slate brings to API providers like Dwolla, these feel...
Dwolla Using Slate For An Evolved API Documentation Experience
I’m liking the new Dwolla’s new API docs that they just launched. They are using an open source API documentation framework called Slate, developed by Tripit, for their own API documentation. I e...
Crazy Mess Of URLs Across 400 Of The APIs In My Stack
I know that some of my readers are URI experts, URL ninjas, and masters of the domain, but most of my readers are not, and I wanted to share some of the 100K view of what I see across the world of ...
October 24, 2014
#4
Reworking My API 101 Content: Consuming APIs
APIs came in to existence to satisfy a demand for access to valuable content, data and resources, and the more APis that are developed, the more the appetite for API consumption has grown. APIs ena...
I Need Help To Make Sure The Dept. of Agriculture Leads With APIs In Their Parks and Recreation RFP
I need your help with something. I’m in the business of helping start-ups, all the way up to our federal government identify valuable assets, and make them more accessible for use in websites, and ...
October 16, 2014
I Need Help To Make Sure The Dept. of Agriculture Leads With APIs In Their Parks and Recreation RFP
I need your help with something. I’m in the business of helping start-ups, all the way up to our federal government identify valuable assets, and make them more accessible for use in websites, and ...
October 16, 2014
What Is The Biggest Challenge For Fraud Detection API SiftScience?
I’m spending more time reaching out directly to API providers, in an effort to better understand what they are up to. A couple weeks ago, I asked Sarfaraz Rydhan (@safoo) from the Fraud Detection A...
Reworking My API 101 Content: Providing APIs
The world of APIs starts with an individual, company or organization, with some sort of content, data, or other digital resource, wanting to make it available, on the Internet, in a machine readabl...
What I Spent Ada Lovelace Day Working On
As I track on the API space, the gender gap becomes increasingly obvious. As with many other guys, I’m struggling with coming up with the most constructive way that I can contribute to closing the ...
An Outside-In Approach To Jumpstarting An API Effort At The University of Oklahoma
I wrote a story a couple of weeks ago, about how to kickstart APIs at the University of Oklahoma (OU). I ended the post, saying I would find some easy targets for generating the initial APIs, and p...
Exposing Dictionaries From My API Collections
I’m playing around with different ways to compose, and examine collections of APIs. I have a database of over 2500 API that I keep an eye on, and for some of them I’ve been generating Swagger specs...
Launching 25 APIs To Assemble A Single Poem For Each Day
I first started Poem of the Times back around 2003, and for about five years I harvested a poem each day, from the top headlines across the top english speaking newspapers around the world. Sometim...
October 10, 2014
#Launching
Exploring The Possibilities of Being An API Broker
I’m playing around with different ways of building API collections using APIs.json, and building on a concept I saw introduced by Cyril Gaillard’s story titled “I don’t need a business co-founder, ...
The Publicly Available Private Target APIs
I’m doing my usual monitoring of the API space, and while looking at various developer areas, I stumbled across the Target Developer Portal. I find the Target developer portal interesting because i...
October 9, 2014
#ai
The Real-Time API Layer Becoming Default For Providers
One of the API news story of the day was the release of the Hacker News API. I’m only lightly interested in the fact that HN now has an API because, honestly I don’t feel like an API at this point ...
Trade.gov Using APIs.json And Added To APIs.io
I’ve been a big proponent of APIs in the federal government, and it makes me really happy to see Developer.Trade.Gov using APIs.json to provide an inventory of APIs available at the federal agency ...
Trade.gov Using APIs.json And Added To APIs.io
I’ve been a big proponent of APIs in the federal government, and it makes me really happy to see Developer.Trade.Gov using APIs.json to provide an inventory of APIs available at the federal agency ...
I Updated My APIs To Use Swagger 2.0
I spent some time this weekend updating a handful of my APIs to the new Swagger 2.0 API definition format. I was already using an older version of Swagger, so the migration wasn’t too difficult. I ...
October 6, 2014
#Swagger
Divorces, Mergers And Acquisitions, In The API Economy
As I hear stories of the HP separation today, I’m reminded of how companies of all shapes and sizes interact, both historically, and in this potentially new API driven business landscape we find ou...
Taking A Fresh Look At What Open Source API Management Architecture Is Available
I’ve been a outspoken advocate for more open source API management tooling, for some time now. I’m sensitive to the fact that startups have to make money in the API space, but in my opinion a certa...
Reworking My API 101 Content And First Up Is The 100K View
The home page of API Evangelist has always been my API 101 page, where any new visitor can land, not know a thing about APIs, read the page, and walk away understanding at least what an API is, and...
Translating The World Of Hypermedia APIs For The Normals
I’m giving my hypermedia API research a little love today, and as part of this I was reviewing examples of hypermedia in the wild like with the Elastic Path Cortex API. Elastic Path was the first c...
October 2, 2014
#Hypermedia
Seamless Spreadsheet To API Solution From Data Everywhere
As the popularity of APIs rapidly increases, I’m seeing spreadsheets play a growing role in both providing APIs, as well as consuming APIs. On the road to #APIStrat Chicago I came across a company ...
Internal Strategy Trumping External API Efforts In Many Conversations
I spend many of my days talking to startups, SMB, SME, larger enterprise, institutions, and federal government folk about APIs—if you haven’t heard, its what I do. I’ve become the sort of counselor...
Maybe I Am Missing Something, But Where Is Your Pricing Page?
I was doing some research on travel and transportation APIs over the last couple of weeks, and one of the developer portals I was looking at was one of the enterprise leaders in the space, the Sabr...
October 1, 2014
#Pricing
I Find It Interesting That Wordnik Created The API Definition Format Swagger
I’m working through my API design stories, and was working through some research on the origins of Swagger, and as I’m writing a paragraph on Wordnik, I became distracted around how Swagger was bor...
Autogenerate Runscope-powered API SDKs Using APIMatic
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) – **READ MORE** As the API lifecycle continues to expand and comes into focus, new services are emerging to help both API providers, and consumer...
Where Do We Start With APIs At The University of Oklahoma?
I’m dedicating more time lately to research how APIs are being used at universities, and a couple months back I published my first white paper on using APIs in higher education. As I do with other ...
September 30, 2014
What I Would Look For When Hiring a Modern API Developer?
I get asked about hiring developer advocates, and API developers quite often during the week, but this specific question in my inbox from Augmate, I found more interesting. I thought their usage of...
The U.S. International Trade Commission Includes APIs In Latest Report
Those of us who live and breathe the API space, throw around a phrase, “The API Economy”, quite a lot. Referring to the increased usage of APIs across vital industries to drive web and mobile appli...
September 30, 2014
#International
The U.S. International Trade Commission Includes APIs In Latest Report
Those of us who live and breathe the API space, throw around a phrase, “The API Economy”, quite a lot. Referring to the increased usage of APIs across vital industries to drive web and mobile appli...
September 30, 2014
#International
Thank You @3Scale For Investing In The Community With @APIStrat
We just wrapped up the 4th edition of @APIStrat in Chicago last week, and once again I’m very happy with the way things went, as 400+ folks gathered to discuss APIs. The event had the right tone, a...
Introducing API.Report, A Community API News Site
I curate a lot of interesting stories across the API space from my RSS feeds, the Twittersphere, and my overactive email inbox each day. Only a small percentage of these stories ever make it to my ...
Introducing API.Report, A Community API News Site
I curate a lot of interesting stories across the API space from my RSS feeds, the Twittersphere, and my overactive email inbox each day. Only a small percentage of these stories ever make it to my ...
Extract Knowledge From Audio And Video Using The Clarify API
I’ve been tracking on a growing number of video, and voice enabled APIs lately, and one that is continually popping up to the top of my API monitoring list is Clarify. The description Clarify prov...
My API 101 Workshop At @APIStrat In Chicago Next Week
I’m working on the details of my API 101 workshop with Kirsten Hunter (@synedra) next week. She is delivering most of the content for the 2 hour workshop, as she has evolved a pretty sophisticated ...
Some Advice For The Enterprise When Beginning Your API Journey
I’m seeing the enterprise wake up to the potential of an API centric approach to doing business, slowly evolving beyond a Service Oriented Architectural (SOA) approach, and trying to understand why...
Machine Readable API Definition Format Swagger Matures to 2.0
The machine readable API definition format Swagger, just rolled over to version 2.0. I use Swagger to describe all of my APIs, and I largely associate the creator of Swagger, Wordnik for kicking of...
Machine Readable API Definition Format Swagger Matures to 2.0
The machine readable API definition format Swagger, just rolled over to version 2.0. I use Swagger to describe all of my APIs, and I largely associate the creator of Swagger, Wordnik for kicking of...
How Do We Continue Moving Green Button Data And APIs Forward?
I’m preparing for a talk at the The Smart Grid Interoperability Panel Second Annual Conference, in Nashville Tennessee, specifically participating on a panel titled “Using Power Grid Open Data Init...
September 17, 2014
#Data
Beyond Public APIs In Government: Internal Access to Resources
The conversation around open data and APIs in government is dominated by talk of making resources available to the public, which is a good thing, but is only 1/3 of the discussion that should be oc...
Can You Show Me The ROI On All Of This API Stuff Before We Commit
I am working on a white paper for a big enterprise provider who is looking to deliver solutions in the API space. At their request I’ve gone through six industries and looked for companies who have...
September 14, 2014
#ROI
Building The Type Of Audience I Really Want
I used to work hard to write blog posts on API Evangelist that would have broad appeal with the Hacker News community, and at first I didn’t have any luck, after trying to engage with readers on po...
September 14, 2014
#Audience
In The Future APIs Will Be Default For All Cities
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) – **READ MORE** In 2014 we are making significant progress in deploying APIs in support of city operations, but we still have so much more work a...
September 13, 2014
#Cities
No Public APIs Are Not Going Away Just Cause A Few BigCos Fumble At It
I saw another story about whether or not public APIs are going away, which is another story in a fairly long line of stories I’m seeing lately from enterprise outlets about whether or not the demis...
September 11, 2014
Internal API Search Engine For Everyone At Your Company (Not Just Developers)
I’ve talked about how the open source API search engine APIs.io can be deployed as an internal API search engine, as well as for public API discovery in the past. One aspect of this approach that I...
If You Need Assistance With Your Healthcare API Strategy I Have The Person
I get a lot of folks who engage me about the API space, most of them are API providers, many are focused on API consumption, with only just a small few are looking the evangelism and analyst side o...
Explaining APIs To Senior Leadership: Access To Company Resources Without The IT Hassle
One question I get pretty frequently from my readers, is about how they should explain APIs to their senior leaders, specifically the non-tech savvy executives. In my opinion, these conversations c...
A Conversation With @ijroth, @dorkitude, @antonyfalco, and @medjawii In The Next Generation API Stack Panel @APIStrat
When I think about the concept “API mashup”, It conjures up visions of clever hacks using Twitter and Google Maps from 2008 or 2009, where savvy developers would find innovative ways to mashup two ...
API Evangelist Thoughts On The Right To An API Key And Algorithmic Organizing
There was a very interesting piece from venture capitalist Albert Wenger (@albertwenger) of Union Square Ventures over the labor day weekend, called Labor Day: Right to an API Key (Algorithmic Orga...
September 6, 2014
#Evangelist
Explaining APIs To Your Senior Leadership
One question I get pretty frequently from my readers, is how should they explain APIs to senior leaders, specifically the executives who aren’t tech savvy. In my opinion, these conversations can be...
An API Evangelism Strategy To Map The Global Family Tree
In my work everyday as the API Evangelist, I get to have some very interesting conversations, with a wide variety of folks, about how they are using APIs, as well as brainstorming other ways they c...
Thank You For Your API Evangelist Blog(s)
I get quite a few nice comments about my blog(s) behind the scenes. Many are from the enterprise or insttutions, where I know I could never get away with publishing publicly. As the APi space has h...
Video From The Hypermedia Panel At API-Craft In Detroit Last Month
I never properly wrapped up my experience at API-Craft last month, where I moderated a pretty important panel discussion on hypermedia with Mike Amundsen (@mamund), Mike Kelly (@mikekelly85) Steve ...
Please Open Source Your API Before Shutting It Down
I am making another pass through 821 companies doing interesting things with APIs, and flagging a handful of them as inactive. I will then attempt to contact each of the companies to see if anyone ...
Explaining My Work Around APIs In Higher Education To Institutions
I’m needing to quantify the work i do around APIs in higher education for a university in the U.K., so I figured I’d craft into a story that I can share with my readers, and potentially other schoo...
You Can Have An API Just By Choosing Products And Services That Have APIs
When it comes to APIs, the quickest way to get an API for your company, organization or government agency is to choose to only use online services that have APIs. Twitter, Facebook, Google, Dropbox...
Using Excel As An API Datasource And An API Client For The Masses
I’ve been tracking on the usage of spreadsheets in conjunction with APIs for several years now. Spreadsheets are everywhere, they are the number one data management tool in the world, and whether A...
Brewing Up Something Awesome With The Jive Software API
Enterprise social API Jive Software wins for the best developer landing page. Normally I tell folks, like I did with Trade.gov last week, that your landing page should have a short, precise descrip...
Relationship Between APIs And Containers
Containers are a fast growing trend when it comes to delivering compute resources online. Reflecting the world of API design, I feel containers are about deploying exactly the cloud resources you w...
Real-time and Visualizations Will Be Key in Financial API Deployments
I have been doing a lot of research into the world of financial APIs, specifically looking at some of the larger companies providing APIs that deliver market news, data, corporate profiles, and oth...
Notification Focused Startups Within Leading API Ecosystems
I was keeping an eye out for interesting API stories on ProductHunt the other day and came across an cool notification startup that lives in the Stripe API ecosystem, called Hooked. Hooked allows ...
APIs That Do One Thing And Do It Well Like ZipLocate
My friend Mark Silverberg (@skram), pointed out a very cool API the other day, that geolocates zip codes, and appropriately named ZipLocate. What I really like about ZipLocate is that they do one t...
August 26, 2014
Adding Separate Page For My API Stack APIs
I have been slowly producing my own stack of APIs, which I’m putting under The API Stack brand. My goal with each of these APIs is to do one thing, and do it well, then package up the server side c...
August 26, 2014
#ddi
Which API Do I Need?
I was looking around the Google Developer area as part of some regular work, and I noticed an interesting page Google has under their mapping session, that help users decide which API they need bas...
The Expanding API Conference Landscape
As I’m riding the build up for APIStrat in Chicago, and preparing for I Love APIs in San Francisco, and the API 360 Summit in DC, I can’t help but think about how busy the API event scene is gettin...
August 25, 2014
#Landscape
Ocotoparts Open Source Google Spreadsheet
Electronic search engine APIs Octopart developed a pretty slick Microsoft Excel plugin for their API a while back, and have now taken it to the next level, with a Google Spreadsheet connector for t...
Andrew Nacin Of WordPress @APIStrat Chicago
I am super stoked to announce that we have Andrew Nacin (@nacin), the lead developer from WordPress keynoting API Strategy & Practice in Chicago next month. We are looking to continue the conve...
Push Button API Deployment With The Heroku Button
The new Heroku Button gets us one step closer to a new age of API deployment, where anyone can deploy the APIs they need without any developer or IT resources. As I’m working on packaging up API de...
August 23, 2014
#Deployment
WordPress Style API Modules For Government
The other night I was writing about the need for a social media directory API, like the one the GSA has launched for the federal government, but specifically for the City of Chicago. I was trying t...
The Heroku HTTP API Design Guide
I stumbled across a cool resource out of Heroku today, their HTTP API design guide, which intends to direct practices for API design on the Heroku API platform. Heroku’s goals around APIs design a...
What I Have Been Calling API Trends, Are Slowly Being Baked Into API Operations
In my monitoring of the API space, when I started seeing a large number of blog posts, tweets, companies, and other elements I track on get tagged with the same tag over and over, I take notice. My...
August 21, 2014
#Operations
FDA Finding Their API Mojo With A New Drug Label API
I first wrote about openFDA back in June, showcasing the launch of their new developer area, and I’m happy to see they aren’t missing a beat when it comes to launching new APIs. I recently saw that...
Adding PokitDok To Healthcare Research And The API Stack (Well They Did)
I’m adding PokitDok, a simple API for healthcare to The API Stack, and my overall APIs in healthcare research. Well I didn’t exactly add them, PokitDok added themselves to my healthcare research by...
Why I Am Continuing To Integrate Zapier In My Business Workflow
I depend on a number of cloud services to make my personal and business world go round. Even as a programmer, who can hand code just about any script to integrate, automate, and orchestrate my worl...
Who Is Going To Build The Uber API Platform For The Sharing Economy?
The sharing economy is booming, and with the release of the Uber API, the attention on this space will only increase. Personally I’m only interested in the surface area of the API that Uber has rel...
The API Focused Dev Shop
I tag a lot of interesting companies that show up during my weekly API monitoring. When I see a tag go from 1 or 2, to over 5 companies–I take a closer look to see what is going on. An increase in ...
Sorry Google, Your Programming Test Is Not A Valid Measurement Of My Skills
I’ve been talking with a very nice recruiter over at Google over the last couple weeks, and she has been so kind in keeping me updated about opportunities for evangelism at Google. This is the 3rd ...
August 20, 2014
#Skills
Route SMS Messages To Google Spreadsheets Via Twilio API With TwilioSheet
If you follow Twilio blog or Twitter account you can always find a good API story from the API leader. It also makes me happy to see trends I’m seeing from other provider re-enforced by the API hea...
Publishing Your APIs To Product Hunt
It can be hard to keep up with what the latest geek trends are–where all of the latest digital watering holes are (especially when your old), that allow you to find the latest info, conversations, ...
Providing Users With Reciprocity Tools So Important Intuit Purchases itDuzzit
One of the interoperability, automation, and reciprocity providers I track on itDuzzit has been acquired by the accounting platform Intuit. Usually acquisitions are just news, and not worthy of ana...
August 19, 2014
#Tools
Bing Developer Assistant for Visual Studio Delivers Relevant API Code
The Bing Developer Center team has released a pretty interesting pluginthat assist developers who use Visual Studio when building web or mobile applications using APIs. In an effort to make develo...
August 19, 2014
#Code
Average Number of APIs Used In A Modern App
I had someone ask me the other day if I had any numbers on how many APIs are used in a modern web or mobile applications–great question! I often refer to the growth in the number of APIs we use, bu...
August 19, 2014
An APIs.json Collection Of API Resources Across Your Public, Partner Or Internal Resources
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) – **READ MORE** APIs.json was designed to be a versatile API discovery format, not just a format for public API discovery via search engines like...
An APIs.json Collection Of API Resources Across Your Public, Partner Or Internal Resources
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) – **READ MORE** APIs.json was designed to be a versatile API discovery format, not just a format for public API discovery via search engines like...
One Possible Reboot Of The API Stack
I used to publish out a list of curated stories each week, and a listing of the top 25 APIs I was paying attention to during my regular monitoring of the API space to a site I called The API Stack....
August 18, 2014
#Reboot
How Are Dev Shops In Chicago Using APIs? A Talk With Bryson Pouw At Blaze Portfolio
I recently talked with Bryson Pouw (@bpouw), Founder / CEO at Blaze Portfolio Systems in Chicago about how his portfolio management and trading technology company sees the world of APIs. Last week ...
August 18, 2014
Every API Provider Should Have A Logo And Branding Page
I spend a lot of time looking for good quality logos to represent the companies I track on and write stories about. I have a certain vision in my head about how I want company listings and detail p...
What Is An API First Strategy? IT architecture And Catalyst For Engagement
I wrote about What Is An API First Strategy? Adding Some Dimensions To This New Question the other day after talking with 18F. One of the commonets on the post was from my friend Logan Powell (@log...
Taking A Look At The API Licensing Stack
One of the byproducts of the Oracle vs Google API copyright case, was a realization that many API providers and consumer do not understand the layers of the API stack, let alone the potential licen...
August 14, 2014
#Licensing
The Speed Of Federal Government When It Runs On Github
I’m coordinating with the development team for Developer.Trade.Gov today, providing them with a review of their new developer area, and some suggestions on how to make their APIs, and developer mor...
Swagger, APIs.json, And Review For The New Developer.Trade.gov
I got a gentle ping today, as I often do when there is a new developer hub or API launched in the federal government. This time it was located within the Department of Commerce, for the Internation...
Swagger, APIs.json, And Review For The New Developer.Trade.gov
I got a gentle ping today, as I often do when there is a new developer hub or API launched in the federal government. This time it was located within the Department of Commerce, for the Internation...
Student, Instructor, Classroom, Class, And Course API Planning At BYU
I spoke with Phil Windley (@windley) over at Brigham Young University (BYU) about their API strategy this morning. BYU is bringing together API providers and consumers, to establish a coordinated s...
August 14, 2014
#Planning
The Color Of Money When Deploying APIs At The Department Of Veterans Affairs
I haven’t written much about my experience last summer as a Presidential Innovation Fellow (PIF) at the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA). I have lots of thoughts about experience at the VA, as we...
Taking Web Service Inventory At The Department of Veteran Affairs
I haven’t written much about my experience last summer as a Presidential Innovation Fellow (PIF) at the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA). I have lots of thoughts about experience at the VA, as we...
Taking A Look At The API Licensing Stack
One of the byproducts of the Oracle vs Google API copyright case, was a realization that many API providers and consumer do not understand the layers of the API stack, let alone the potential lice...
August 13, 2014
Replacing Legacy Systems With APIs At The Department Of Veteran Affairs
I haven’t written much about my experience last summer as a Presidential Innovation Fellow (PIF) at the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA). I have lots of thoughts about experience at the VA, as we...
Never Looking Out The Window, Let Alone Trusting Anyone External Of The Department of Veteran Affairs
I haven’t written much about my experience last summer as a Presidential Innovation Fellow (PIF) at the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA). I have lots of thoughts about experience at the VA, as we...
Can You Add My API To Your Website Listing?
I get regular requests to add APIs to my website via email, Twitter, and carrier pigeon. I have an Evernote that I put these requests into, and as I have time, I review, then possibly add to the ap...
August 13, 2014
#Web
Adding Google To List Of API Deployment Companies
I was taking another look at the Google Cloud Platform yesterday, and stumbled across Google Cloud Endpoints. It was something I saw come across my feeds, but really didn’t give it the time it need...
What Is An API First Strategy? Adding Some Dimensions To This New Question
I hear this phrase used more and more lately, “An API First Strategy”. It is something you hear from startups like printing API LOB, to established players like Pearson, all the way up to 18F at th...
The Five Month Journey Toward A Stable APIs.json Discovery Format
I published the story last night on finalizing the most recent version of the API discovery format APIs.json, and the support for it in the open source API search engine APIs.io. Steve and I are do...
The Five Month Journey Toward A Stable APIs.json Discovery Format
I published the story last night on finalizing the most recent version of the API discovery format APIs.json, and the support for it in the open source API search engine APIs.io. Steve and I are do...
How Are Mobile Dev Shops In Chicago Using APIs? A Talk With Dave Devitt At SYDCON
I just talked with Dave Devitt (@sydcon), President at SYDCON Web Development, Inc. in Chicago about how his web and mobile development shop sees the world APIs. I’m always on the hunt for stories ...
August 11, 2014
#Mobile
An API Case Study Format From Google Cloud Platform
I was browsing through Google’s Cloud Platform, in the 15 minute lead up to a preliminary discussion with Google about being an evangelist for the platform (another story), and I saw a useful patte...
Next Stable Version of APIs.json + APIs.io Is Ready - Are Your APIs Discoverable?
Steve (@njyx), Nicolas (@picsoung), and I have been working hard to gather all the feedback from some very smart folks on the API.json format. Now we are stoked to finally announce that we have the...
Expanding API Gateway Connectors Into A World of API Deployment Startups
I’m seeing an increase in the number of API deployment services this year, such as startups like StrongLoop and API Spark. These companies are looking to help all of us deploy APIs from common syst...
Where The Good IPAs Are In Chicago While At API Strategy And Practice In September
In preparation for API Strategy & Practice in Chicago, September 24-26th, I did a little research on where the good beers, and specifically the kick-ass IPAs can be found. You may not know, but...
August 9, 2014
#Strategy
The Blog For Your API Is The Most Important Signals You Can Send
A blog is such a simple thing, but when it comes to the world of APIs, it can be one of the most important signals for whether or not an API is worthy of integration, or you should just move on and...
August 8, 2014
#Blog
Share Your API News With Me On The API Report
I’ve launched a new API news site, designed to provide short news updates from across the world of APIs. The API Report is the newest part of the API Evangelist network of sites, with apievangelist...
August 8, 2014
#News
Public APIs Are Tough When You Are In A Tightly Controlled Industry
ESPN just announced that they will no longer be accepting registrations for public API keys, and discontinuing all of their public APIs. I saw a few enraged comments on the Twitterz when I original...
August 8, 2014
#Industry
Give Me A URL To Request Then Store My API Keys In My Private Github Repo
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) – **READ MORE** I went through 77 federal government API developer portals a couple of weeks ago, as part of some API discovery work I’m doing wi...
Mapping The World Of Internal APIs Via Rogue API Registry
Daniel Jacobson - Scaling the Netflix API I was learning more about the discovery of private APIs with the Charles App, and was fascinated by its potential to visualize, and map the darkest region...
Continuing With The API Restaurant Analogy
I began exploring the use a restaurant menu to help people understand API copyright, and how your API definition is not your secret sauce, and that there is so much more to your API that just the s...
The University of API White Paper: Looking At APIs In Higher Education
Download as PDF I spend a great deal of time looking at new APIs from companies, institutions, and government agencies during my weekly monitoring of the API space, and over the last couple years,...
August 6, 2014
#Education
The Hypermedia API Debate: Sorry Reasonable Just Does Not Sell
I moderated a panel of hypermedia experts at API Craft in Detroit last week. One theme that dominated not just the panel, but was also pervasive in the conversation over the next two days of the AP...
August 5, 2014
#Hypermedia
Twilio The Hell Out Of The Largest And Most Important Industries
Irakli Nadareishvili (@inadarei), Dave Goldberg (@davidgoldberg) and I were having an interesting conversation on the Twitterz, after I posted “As We Recover The Banking Industry Seems To Be Warmin...
As We Recover The Banking Industry Seems To Be Warming Up To APIs
I originally started writing this post after API Strategy & Practice in Amsterdam, where I had numerous conversations with banks, about the potential of APIs, and how banks might be starting to...
The Leaders When It Comes To APIs In Higher Education
When visiting an API developer area, as soon as the page loads, you can tell if its an organized effort, or something that was thrown up by a single project or team. Half of the institutions I trac...
August 2, 2014
#Education
Everyone Is About To Get An API With The New Wordpress API
While at API Craft in Detroit this week I had the pleasure of hanging with two leads on the WordPress(org) development team, and discuss the API strategy for the blogging platform. Andrew Nacin (@n...
The Emerging Landscape Of API Orchestration Platforms
I’ve been exploring one possible API future more and more lately, a future which centers around the a concept of being able to deploy virtual API stacks, by employing the power of deploying API res...
Getting Labeled A Hater On The Hypermedia Panel At API Craft
I’m still gathering all of my thoughts on the hypermedia media panel this last week at API Craft. I have an Evernote full of ideas, thoughts, and potential stories from the amazing API event this w...
August 1, 2014
#Hypermedia
My Discussion Today With 6 Hypermedia Leaders At API-Craft in Detroit
I’m preparing for my hypermedia panel at API Craft Detroit today. The API Craft organizers have brought together one of the most important line-ups, when it comes to the hypermedia API discussion, ...
July 28, 2014
#Hypermedia
Getting To Know Jørn Wildt For The API Craft 2014 Detroit Hypermedia Panel
I’m preparing for my hypermedia panel with Mike Amundsen (@mamund), Mike Kelly (@mikekelly85), Steve Klabnik (@steveklabnik), Kevin Swiber (@kevinswiber), Jørn Wildt (@JornWildt), and Markus Lantha...
Hypermedia Feels Like We Are Still Learning To Communicate With APIs
I’m looking through each of the worlds, of my hypermedia panelists, Mike Amundsen (@mamund), Mike Kelly (@mikekelly85), Steve Klabnik (@steveklabnik), Kevin Swiber (@kevinswiber), Jørn Wildt (@Jorn...
Getting To Know Markus Lanthaler For The API Craft 2014 Detroit Hypermedia Panel
I’m preparing for my hypermedia panel with Mike Amundsen (@mamund), Mike Kelly (@mikekelly85), Steve Klabnik (@steveklabnik), Kevin Swiber (@kevinswiber), Jørn Wildt (@JornWildt), and Markus Lantha...
Getting To Know Kevin Swiber For The API Craft 2014 Detroit Hypermedia Panel
I’m preparing for my hypermedia panel with Mike Amundsen (@mamund), Mike Kelly (@mikekelly85), Steve Klabnik (@steveklabnik), Kevin Swiber (@kevinswiber), Jørn Wildt (@JornWildt), and Markus Lantha...
Getting To Know Steve Klabnik For The API Craft 2014 Detroit Hypermedia Panel
I’m preparing for my hypermedia panel with Mike Amundsen (@mamund), Mike Kelly (@mikekelly85), Steve Klabnik (@steveklabnik), Kevin Swiber (@kevinswiber), Jørn Wildt (@JornWildt), and Markus Lantha...
New Indix API KickStart Program Reduces Costs For Developers
I like to showcase examples of companies who use their API communities as incubators, establishing them as a sort of external R&D lab that invests in 3rd party developers who are building cool ...
Getting To Know Mike Kelly For The API Craft 2014 Detroit Hypermedia Panel
I’m preparing for my hypermedia panel with Mike Amundsen (@mamund), Mike Kelly (@mikekelly85), Steve Klabnik (@steveklabnik), Kevin Swiber (@kevinswiber), Jørn Wildt (@JornWildt), and Markus Lantha...
A Shared, Distributed Experience(Metrics) Layer For The API Driven Application Stack
I’m in the middle of processing multiple emails, as well as coming down off an early morning conversation, all on the subject of analytics. A portion of the conversations are about analytics at the...
Showcasing Your API Integrations With Other Platforms
I saw two tweets from Zapier the other day, where they were highlighting two separate SaaS platforms, who had integrated Zapier into their own platform. Both Gumroad and Hall took the time to highl...
Increasing The Focus On APIs In Higher Education Is Important
Maybe I’m a little biased at the moment, after participating in a Reclaim Your Domain hackathon with some really smart folks from multiple universities, as well as working on my first white paper o...
July 24, 2014
#Education
Getting To Know Mike Amundsen For The API Craft 2014 Detroit Hypermedia Panel
I’m preparing for my hypermedia panel with Mike Amundsen (@mamund), Mike Kelly (@mikekelly85), Steve Klabnik (@steveklabnik), Kevin Swiber (@kevinswiber), Jørn Wildt (@JornWildt), and Markus Lantha...
The New StrongLoop API Server Provides A Look At Future Of API Deployment
I’m looking through the most recent API server release from StrongLoop, and I can’t help but see echoes of what I’ve been researching, and covering across the API Evangelist network. API management...
July 23, 2014
#Deployment
Models For API Driven Startups Built Around Public Data
I had a conversation with a VC today who looking for some information on startups, who had APIs, and had built their company around public data. The two companies that were referenced in the origin...
Reclaim Your Domain LA Hackathon Wrap-up
I spent the weekend hacking away with a small group of very smart folks, at the Reclaim Your Domain Hackathon in Los Angeles. Fifteen of us gathered at Pepperdine University in west LA, looking to ...
Will You Add Me To API Evangelist And How To Spot The Cool Kids
In the API space it is easy to recognize the cool kids, the ones that are in the know. These types of personalities just understand how to get things done, don’t take no for an answer, and understa...
July 17, 2014
#Evangelist
When I Remix APIs Using Swagger How Do I Deal With Authentication Across Multiple APIs
One of the things I’m loving about where the API space is going, is the simplicity, and remixability of available API resources, when they are defined with machine readable API definitions like Swa...
It Takes A Team Of Evangelists To Raise An API
There are a lot of lessons to be learned from the leaders of the API space, pioneers like Amazon, Twilio and SendGrid, when it comes to running our own API programs. Fortunately for the community, ...
Support For Only Two Creative Commons Licenses In The API Commons
When we first conceived API Commons, we were a little fuzzy about which of Creative Commons licenses API providers should apply to their API definitions. As long as a provider took a stance on API ...
Machine Readable Terms of Service Didn't Read Applied To APIs Via APIs.json
I’ve long been fascinated by the Terms of Service Didn’t Read project. i’m on the mailing list, and try to make time to stay in tune, but have yet to ever contribute any bandwidth to the EXTREMELY ...
Machine Readable Terms of Service Didn't Read Applied To APIs Via APIs.json
I’ve long been fascinated by the Terms of Service Didn’t Read project. i’m on the mailing list, and try to make time to stay in tune, but have yet to ever contribute any bandwidt...
July 16, 2014
API Deployment For Non-Developers Using Zapier, Google Docs, and APISpark
I’m exploring different ways that APIs can be deployed, with an emphasis on deployment by non-developers. There are numerous cloud services available, that allow non-developers to execute common bu...
State of Hypermedia Today @ API Craft In Detroit
I’m working with Brian Mulloy (@landlessness) of Apigee, to organize six of the leading hypermedia experts for a 2 hour panel discussion on the state of hypermedia, at API Craft, in Detroit, Michig...
July 15, 2014
#Hypermedia
Need A Formal API Standard For Your Government Agency? Fork 18Fs, And Make It Your Own!
The elite technology group at the GSA, known as 18F, has released the latest copy of API guidance for federal government agencies to follow when designing their own APIs. Using 18F’s own descripti...
CORS Makes Your API Portable And Remix-able
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) – **READ MORE** I was looking through federal government APIs the other day, looking for the low hanging fruit, when it came to making government...
Chief Data Officer Needs To Make The Department Of Commerce Developer Portal The Center Of API Economy
Today, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker (@PennyPritzker), announced that the Department of Commerce will hire its first-ever Chief Data Officer. I wanted to make sure that when this ne...
An API Definition As The Truth In The API Contract
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) – **READ MORE** /kinlane-productions2/ One conversation I had at #Gluecon this year, was around the role an API plays in being a contract betwee...
Look At Existing APIs In The Space Before Designing Your Own
It is a pretty basic concept—look at other competing or complimentary APIs in the space, before designing your own. This seems like common sense to me, but I look at APIs for a living, and I’m inte...
July 14, 2014
#Design
Libraries Hacked: UK Library API, Data And Technology Hacks
I stumbled across a pretty cool site, dedicated to educating, and providing librarians with the tools they need to hack–of course with an emphasis on APIs. Libraries Hacked mission is ”analyzing an...
Financial Data Aggregator Yodlee Looking For A Director of Developer Evangelism
I spoke with the leading financial data API aggregation providers Yodlee last week, regarding their hunt for a director of developer evangelism. Yodlee provides an aggregation API that is designed ...
AutoDevBot Open Sources Their API Monitor
The API monitoring service AutoDevot has opened sourced their JavaScript API monitoring solution, built on Frisby.js, called API Monitor Runner. The API monitoring tool, allows for a pretty robust ...
Low Hanging Fruit For API Discovery In The Federal Government
I looked through 77 of the developer areas for federal agencies, resulting in reviewing approximately 190 APIs. While the presentation of 95% of the federal government developer portals are crap, i...
Looking At 77 Federal Government API Developer Portals And 190 APIs
I spent most of the day yesterday, looking through 77 of the developer portals listed on the 18F Github portal. While I wanted to evaluate the quality and approach of each of the agencies, my goal ...
Applying APIs.json To API Discovery In The Federal Government
I recently updated my APIs.json files for all my API Evangelist network domains, to use version 0.14, which is getting pretty close to a stable version. While I await APIs.io to be updated to use t...
The Power In API Discovery For APIs.json Will Be In The API URL Type
An APIs.json file lives in the root of any domain, or subdomain, and provides references to a collection of API resources. The APIs.json is meant to be a lightweight framework, where someone can bu...
Fixing The Machine Readability in API Commons
When I first published 11 simple API definitions, I had developed using schema.org, into the API Commons, I made a mistake when I referenced the Swagger specifications for each of the APIs. I linke...
July 9, 2014
#API Commons
Evolving How We Approach The API Lifecycle With APIMatic
I’ve expanded my monitoring on the world of APIs, from just API management, which I’ve been doing for four years, into tracking on APIs across multiple buckets I’m calling design, deployment, manag...
July 7, 2014
#Lifecycle
APIs Can Open Up Your Company To Outside Ideas
I talk about this concept often, but couldn’t find any definitive post on APIs opening up a company, organization, or agency to outside ideas. This is something I hear from startups, up to federal ...
July 7, 2014
#Open
APIs Are Often Just A Facade That Is Covering Up The Legacy View Of World
I was exchanging emails with someone regarding API design considerations at their large institutions today, and where they could find healthy patterns for API designs within their industry. As with...
A Mobile Developer Toolkit With The University Of Michigan APIs
I am continuing my research into how universities are using APIs, and while I was going through the developer areas for the universities I track on, I noticed an interesting mobile developer toolki...
July 7, 2014
#Mobile
Kicking Off Image Manipulation API Work
I’m working a wider campaign focused on getting my shit together around my images, and part of that is continueing work I had started with my screen capture API, and launch more image manipulation ...
An API For API Ideas
I have a lot of ideas while being the API Evangelist. It just comes with the territory. I have an Evernote folder that I publish these ideas to, and some of them, like my Screen Capture API, I actu...
If This Then Visualize That (IFTVT)
In the tech space, when we see a pattern that works, we run with it. This is why you hear, “It is the Uber for X”, or “It is the Github for X”, and I recently talked about how I’m starting to see m...
Expanding The Layer Of API Discovery From Within The Developers IDE
Much like API design and integration, the world of API discovery is heating up in 2014. We are moving beyond the API directory as our primary mode of API search, in favor of a distributed approach ...
Expanding The Layer Of API Discovery From With The Developers IDE
Much like API design and integration, the world of API discovery is heating up in 2014. We are moving beyond the API directory as our primary mode of API search, in favor of a distributed approach ...
An Open Source Distributed API Search Engine
I wanted to stop and reflect for a moment on the open source, distributed API search engine, that 3Scale and API Evangelist developed, in support of the APIs.json discovery format. When we conceive...
Shadow API: Launching An API Before Someone Else Does
In a perfect world, every government agency, non-profit organization, and company would have an API, and the content and data available via their website, mobile applications, and other systems, wo...
July 2, 2014
#Launching
Making More Time To Play With The Smallest Federated Wiki
I’m always working to better understand the best of breed technology solutions available online today, and to me, this means, lightweight, machine readable apps that do one thing and do it well. On...
Intellectual Exhaust (IE)
As I generate shitloads of content playing the API Evangelist on the Internets, I struggle with certain words, as I write each day—one of these words is intellectual property (IP), which Wikipedia ...
Deploying An API From Amazon S3 File Store
I’m spending a lot of time updating my API deployment research lately, making sure it reflects what is truly going on out there in the space. In addition to tracking on legacy approaches to API dep...
Building Blocks Of API Deployment
As I continue my research the world of API deployment, I’m trying to distill the services, and tooling I come across, down into what I consider to be a common set of building blocks. My goal with i...
July 1, 2014
#Deployment
Deploy An API From A Google Spreadsheet Using APISpark
Spreadsheet are the most used datastore in business. When Google came out with their web-based spreadsheet, it was a game changer (for those who have access), when it came to managing, collaboratin...
June 30, 2014
#Spreadsheet
APIs.json API Property Types
I’m working the great feedback we’ve had on APIs.json, an adding everything to the Github issues for consideration in the next version. Today I’m spending a little time thinking through the big pic...
June 30, 2014
#APIs.json
API Design White Paper
Download as PDF My research for API Evangelist spans 50+ projects, but my core research is focused on seven projects in API 101, history, design, deployment, management, discovery and integration....
June 30, 2014
#Design
Developing The Language We Need To Communicate Throughout The API Lifecycle
We are still in the infancy of the API economy, and now with barely 14 years of evolving web API design, we are only just now developing the languages we will need to communicate around APIs throug...
June 28, 2014
#Lifecycle
The Restlet (Open Source) and API Spark (Cloud) Business Model
I’m always on the hunt for common patterns that are working within the API space, and shine light on them, work to understand why they work, so that others can emulate these successful patterns in ...
Nest Provides A Real-Time Layer By Default For API Consumers
I had several folks point me to the Nest API release the other day. I enjoy this, because I’m not always the fastest in finding news—eventually I’ll find it, but I rely on my human API monitoring n...
Monitoring Your Resources Becomes Default With Google Developer Console
I’m not at Google I/O this week, enjoying some downtime in SoCal, but I am watching some of the news coming out of the event. One thing I noticed, was the addition of monitoring to the Google Devel...
Internal API Summit Within Every Company
I participated in the API Summit at Edmunds.com yesterday. The event brought in API professionals from Mashery, Netflix, SOA Software, Ticketmaster, and EPAM Systems to discuss APIs, internally wit...
June 27, 2014
#Internal
If I Could Design My Perfect API Design Editor
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) – **READ MORE** /kinlane-productions2/ I’ve been thinking a lot about API design lately, the services and tooling coming from Apiary, RAML and S...
Federal Government So Slow To Adopt New Technologies...Wait, What, A Swift API SDK?
It is a common theme, that government of any kind, especially the US federal government is too slow when it comes to adopting new technology. While this may be a popular meme for anti-government cr...
Federal Government So Slow To Adopt New Technologies...Wait, What, A Swift API SDK?
It is a common theme, that government of any kind, especially the US federal government is too slow when it comes to adopting new technology. While this may be a popular meme for anti-government cr...
Multiple Types of APIs.json For Discovery
I’m working through thoughts around a suggestion for future versions of APIs.json API discovery format, and as I do with other things I’m trying to make sense of, I wanted to write a blog post on A...
Multiple Types of APIs.json For Discovery
I’m working through thoughts around a suggestion for future versions of APIs.json API discovery format, and as I do with other things I’m trying to make sense of, I wanted to write a blog post on A...
APITools Raises The Bar With Open, On-Premise API Testing and Monitoring Tools
APITools, the cloud-based API integration services is raising the bar for the space by introducing an open source, on-premise version of their API monitoring service. APITools only launched this ye...
Adding Data Visualization Layer to Interactive API Documentation
I recently reviewed a new API initiative from the Food & Drug Administration, called OpenFDA. I gave a whole list of things that they did right when launching the API, but one item that I thoug...
Thinking Beyond Just The Car At API Days in San Francisco
After speaking at API Craft SF on Thursday, I kept the API talk going with two days of API car talk at API Days San Francisco. While there is a lot of focus specifically on the car itself, there wa...
June 16, 2014
#Google
Its If This Then That For X
One interesting theme I heard at API Days San Francisco last week, was the concept of API reciprocity, or If This Then That(IFTTT) moving into more niche areas. This edition of API Days was focused...
I Would Review Your API Dropcam, But I Cannot Access It
One of the mutiple requests to review APIs currently in my inbox, is from the camera platform Dropcam. Every email or tweet I get, asking me to review an API, I at least click in to see what is hap...
API Craft San Francisco Wrap-up For June 2014
I participated in an API Craft meetup this last Thursday, hosted by 3Scale in San Francisco. The gathering included Uri Sarid(@usarid) representing RAML, Jakub Nesetril(@jakubnesetril) on behalf of...
June 16, 2014
#4
Netflix Finally Shutters Support For Public API
Netflix officially announced they will be ending support for their public API. Its no surprise, as they announced early in 2013 that they would longer accept new registrations for the API. While I...
June 15, 2014
#Support
StackExchange, Twitter, And Github As Default Feedback Loop For APIs
I’m still extracting great examples of API design, deployment, and management, that other API providers can follow, from recent API projects out of our federal government, with FBOpen from 18F, and...
The edX API
This post should tell you about how behind I am in my storytelling—this story is from an event I attended in Arlington TX, on April 30th, and May 1st. While in Arlington, I spoke to a group of prof...
Four Reasons OpenFDA API Launch Was Successful (Hint: Not Just The Tech)
My friends over at Social Health Insights, wrote about their experience being one of the beta users for the new OpenFDA API, and what they thought contributed to the success of the API launch from ...
June 6, 2014
#Open
Retrieve My Data Like Retrieving Video Surveillance Photos From CCTV
I’m an advisor to the camera API platform, EverCam. I don’t advise the startup because I’m super excited about the opportunities for APIs for security cameras. I’m involved because I believe in the...
The Machine Readable Questions We Should Ask Of Terms Of Service
I’ve been following the work of Terms of Service Didn’t Read for some time now. In my opinion this work is some of the most important legal work out there right now, which is guiding all of our act...
What Are The Incentives For Creating Machine Readable API Definitions?
After #Gluecon in Colorado the other week, I have API design on the brain. A portion of the #APIStrat un-workshops were dedicated to API design related discussion, and API Design is also the most t...
June 5, 2014
#Definitions
Swagger Levels The API Design Playing Field With New Editor And YAML Definitions
In January I started taking a closer look at the world of API design, by reviewing the top movers in the space, Swagger from Wordnik, API Blueprint from Apiary, and RAML from Mulesoft. My goal was ...
Publish Your API Into The API Commons From APISpark
I’m still playing catch up on many of my stories from over the last month, and one of them is the ability to publish your API definition straight from your API deployment using APISpark. If you are...
June 5, 2014
#API Commons
Help Developers Understand What To Do Next With Your API Response
There are numerous reasons for API designers to follow hypermedia patterns when crafting their internal, partner or publicly available APIs. One of the most fundamental reasons for offering hyperme...
June 5, 2014
#Developers
Deploying APIs Using Heroku And 3Scale Add-On
I am playing around with deploying APIs using multiple cloud platforms, and using popular container solutions. Next up is quickly deploying one of my utility APIs, to Heroku, complete with access c...
Beta Testing Linkrot.js On API Evangelist
I started beta testing a new JavaScript library, combined with API, that I’m calling linkrot.js. My goal is to address link rot across my blogs. There are two main reasons links are bad on my site,...
API Commons Added To The API Commons
Even with the risk of possible creating some sort of API wormhole, I just added the API Commons API to the API Commons. The API for adding and searching for APIs that are in the commons, now has an...
June 5, 2014
#API Commons
Twitter As The Platform For Learning About APIs And The Internet Of Things
I’ve had the pleasure of watching Romain Huet (@romainhuet), developer evangelist at Twitter, give his very entertaining talk three times now, and if you haven’t seen it, I recommend looking it up ...
The Machine Readable Questions We Should Ask Of Terms Of Service
I’ve been following the work of Terms of Service Didn’t Read for some time now. In my opinion this work is some of the most important legal work out there right now, which is guiding a...
June 4, 2014
Retrieve My Data Like Retrieving Video Surveillance Photos From CCTV
I’m an advisor to the camera API platform, EverCam. I don’t advise the startup because I’m super excited about the opportunities for APIs for security cameras. I'm involved becau...
June 4, 2014
How Will The US Census Bureau API Influence the 2020 Census?
I’ve been tracking on the API from the US Census Bureau since they launched in 2012, and even met with them to discuss their strategy over the last couple years. The team at the Census Bureau has s...
June 4, 2014
#Census
Another Strong API Implementation In Federal Government With OpenFDA
I am really impressed with the quality of API deployments coming out of the federal government recently. I wrote about the FBOpen API from 18F a couple months ago, and the latest is the OpenFDA API...
Significance Of The We The People API Being First Modern Read / Write Web API In Government
I finished up my response to the Department of Education RFI focused around the use of APIs at the government agency, a place where I’m not just advocating for APIs, but pushing very hard for read ...
Pushing The Space Forward With Talks At #APIStrat - Did You Submit Yours For Chicago?
I’m working my way through the collection of talks from API Strategy & Practice Amsterdam that are available on Youtube, and I’m reminded of what an amazing lineup of speakers we’ve managed to ...
My Response To How Can the Department of Education Increase Innovation, Transparency and Access to Data?
I spent considerable time going through the Department of Education RFI, answering each question in as much detail as I possibly could. You can find my full response below. In the end I felt I coul...
The Swagger Specification
This post is an exact copy from the Swagger specification page, on the Swagger Github project. As I was reviewing the latest Swagger 2.0 release, I read this descripton, and I really felt it caputr...
May 29, 2014
#Swagger
API Evangelist Now Available In Portugese
The mission of API Evangelist is to increase awareness of APIs amongst not just the developer community, but also business, organizational, and government leaders around the globe. It is very impor...
Why APIs Should Be Designed By Linguists
I’m constantly evangelizing how APIs bring individuals and companyies out of their silos and stimulate conversations internally amongst distributed groups,co and externally with partners and the pu...
May 23, 2014
#Design
Restaurant Menus As Analogy For API Copyright
One of the interesting conversations that came out of the APIStrat Un-Workshops at Gluecon this week, was the exploration of the analogy of applying copyright to restaurant menus, and applying copy...
May 23, 2014
#Copyright
One Characteristic Of Many Of The Enterprise API Folks I Meet
When I run into enterprise folks at events, one of the common characteristics I notice, is they always tell me how much they read my blog. Yay! Many of these people have Twitter accounts, which fol...
May 23, 2014
#Enterprise
Keeping The API Conversation Moving Forward At The Gluecon APIStrat Un-Workshops
I’m still gathering my thoughts from the deep technical conversations that occurred on Tuesday at the Gluecon APIStrat Un-Workshops in Colorado. Before the official Gluecon festivities kicked off, ...
API Design May Take On New Meaning When API Copyright Comes Into The Picture
In 2014 API design is exploding, proving to be one of the fastest growing areas of the API industry. For many years we’ve talked purely about API management, but after consolidation in the space, a...
Solving The Problem Of API Discovery
API discovery has not changed much since 2005, when John Musser launched ProgrammableWeb, the API directory we’ve all come to know and love. In 2014 (9 years later), we have Mashape and a handful o...
May 20, 2014
#Discovery
When Reviewing An API Should I Condemn Providers For A Lack of Public Access?
I’m torn on a matter that I face when reviewing APIs for companies. I get emails from people who want me to review their API implementation, and they state they want public developers to get excite...
Hypermedia Adoption Will Not Be About The Perfect API Client
As I’m working to add yet another API example to my growing list of hypermedia APIs in the wild, I can’t help but think about the long evolution of hypermedia, and how it will eventually become par...
18F Pushing For Write APIs In Government To Become A Reality
We’ve seen a significant growth in the number of APIs in government, but to date most of these APIs are read-only, meaning you can just retrieve content or data from these APIs, not actually add, u...
May 15, 2014
#Government
One Of The Problems With API Terms of Service Is That There Is No Negotiation
There is a laundry list of problems with the current state of terms of service, affectionality called TOS–those legal documents we all agree to as part of our usage of online services, and are defi...
The Future Of Public Private Sector Partnerships Being Negotiated At The API oAuth Scope Level
A couple of weeks ago I attended a two day API specification session between major California utilities, Southern California Edison (SCE), San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), and Pacific Gas ...
Zapier Looks To Educate Everyone With An Introduction To APIs
API interoperability and reciprocity provider Zapier is looking to get everyone up to speed on the world of APIs, by providing an introduction to APIs that is meant for both developers who are new ...
May 14, 2014
#Zapier
Join Me For Iot, Realtime And API Design At Gluecon In Colorado Next Week
The time has come for one of my favorite events in the tech space—Gluecon. If you have never been to Gluecon or Defrag, read some of my previous posts about just how different the event is. Gluecon...
May 14, 2014
#Design
I Will Be Moderating Open Data And API Workshop Discussion With GSA, DISA, DNI, NASA And White House Next Week In Maryland
I was invited to moderate a workshop panel in Maryland next week at the The American Council for Technology (ACT) - Industry Advisory Council (IAC) Management of Change 2014 event. If you arenat fa...
Gathering My Thoughts With APIs In Higher Education
I had too many scribbles in my Evernote about work I’m doing for APIs in higher education, so I decided I need to publish as a story, which hopefully will help me organize my thoughts, figure out m...
May 12, 2014
#Education
Where Will Your API Stand In The Oracle v Google API Copyright Debate?
I wanted to comment on the response yesterday in the Oracle v. Google case being played out in the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. This appeal is important to me because it ...
Partnering For Me Is About Sharing Of Ideas, Research and Stories
I just turned down a potential partnership with a major enterprise company. As I do with many stories, I will scrub the names of those involved, because there is no reason to blame a single company...
Green Button (Energy) API Added To API Commons
One of the most meaningful API projects I work on with the US government is the Green Button API, which provides access to energy data for US consumers across the country. First, what is the Green ...
API Docs Are An Error: Bridging Where We Should Be And Where We Are Currently
I heard an interesting statement this week at APIDays Berlin that I’ve heard before, “API document is an bug not a feature”. The logic behind this is that if you design a proper API, using proven R...
May 7, 2014
#Docs
Remembering Why This Whole API Thing Is Working - APIDays Berlin
This is my speaker notes from my talk this week at APIDays Global in Berlin. You can find my slide deck in my talks repository on Github, and find more photos from the event on Flickr. We live in ...
Would You Pay For Alternate Options For An API Terms Of Service?
Terms of service guide every aspect of how we provide and consume an APIs that drive our web and mobile applications. As an excercise, lets imagine a future where API terms of service (TOS) are mac...
Would You Pay For Alternate Options For An API Terms Of Service?
Terms of service guide every aspect of how we provide and consume an APIs that drive our web and mobile applications. As an excercise, lets imagine a future where API terms of service (T...
May 1, 2014
I Will Be Speaking At APIDays In Berlin Next Week
I getting ready to heading to Berlin in the morning. I’m scheduled to speak at APIDays Berlin on Monday. APIDays is the sister site to #APIStrat, an event you will always find me at, no matter wher...
May 1, 2014
#Speaking
Come Talk API Strategy And Practice in Chicago - September 24-26th
Its official, the next edition of API Strategy will be in Chicago, September 24,25, and 26th 2014. We’ve dubbed this version of the conference, ‘APIs Going Mainstream’! As APIs make their way into...
Business Of Internal APIs At IBM Impact Last Tuesday
I spoke on the business of internal APIs at the IBM Impact conference in Las Vegas, this last Tuesday. About 15 people attended my talk, but the conversations I had with folks afterwards, signaled ...
What Can The Enterprise Learn From The Open API Space?
I’ve been studying the API space exclusively for the last four years, and have worked hard to try and understand the space by studying the history of APIs, and as a result I can confidently say we ...
A Rare Beast In Government, The Write API
The number of APIs in government has grown significantly in the last couple of years, increasing access to public data, potentially driving the private sector to build web and mobile apps around go...
April 25, 2014
#Government
Planning Everything Upfront vs Iterating On An API Over Time
I just finished up participating in an API specification session for Green Button data with Southern California Edison (SCE), San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), and Pacific Gas and Electric ...
Browsing The 261 APIs At Brigham Young University
I’ve been tracking on education and university APIs for a while now, but after kicking off some work on the FAFSA API prototype, and preparing a response for to the request for information (RFI) on...
April 23, 2014
ReliefWeb Is Tackling The Worlds Biggest Problems Using APIs
I was introduced to the ReliefWeb API last week, which provides information including reports, jobs, training, countries, and source details on global crises and disasters going back to 1996. The ...
Turning Forms Into APIs: Crap In, Crap Out
I’ve been involved in a lot of conversations lately around turning government forms into APIs. Which seems like a great idea, right up until the part where I’m thinking about the original workflow ...
April 18, 2014
#Forms
The Private Internal Tier Of My API Service Composition
The first consumer of all of my APIs, including my screen capture API is me. I develop my APIs first for my use, and only recently have decided to make available to the public. So when I sat down t...
April 17, 2014
#Internal
I Will Be Talking Business of Internal APIs in Vegas at IBM Impact
The biggest impact APIs will have at your company will be the internal, cultural change regarding how you do business. We are in the middle of an explosion of APIs, and while there are many new pub...
API Virtual Stack Composition Like The Absolut Drinks Data API
If you read my blog regularly, you know I am constantly pushing the boundaries of how I see the API space, and sometimes my ramblings can be pretty out there, but API Evangelist is how I work throu...
April 17, 2014
#Data
An Operational Harness For My Screen Capture API
I am evolving my own approach to deploying my API resources, and I needed an important sounding name for it, so came up with “operational harness” over a couple pints of IPAs. Ok, so what do I mean...
April 17, 2014
#Screen Capture
Two Things I Learned On Traffic And Weather Today
If you aren’t already familiar with Traffic and Weather, it is an extremely structured discussion between John Sheehan (Runscope) and Steve Marx (Dropbox), about “the latest API and cloud tools, ne...
Keep Your API Developer Area Blog Up To Date
I look at a lot of API developers areas in my work, and the first sign I see that nobody is home behind an API, is that their blog is out of date. I found myself at the ESPN developer center last ...
April 16, 2014
#Blog
Interesting Example of Social Page Over At Cisco
Its not often I find myself referencing Cisco when it comes to shedding light on interesting practices for the API space, but today is not your usual day. At some point yesterday, I found myself a...
April 16, 2014
#Social
External API Deployments Using Sync One Possible Future Of Government API Deployments
I just wrote up a piece about how to deploy an API driven application backend using Orchestrate.io, and wrote a piece last week on API deployment using Solr and government data. After writing about...
What Are Some Good Examples of Hypermedia APIs?
I’m increasing my coverage of hypermedia APIs in 2014, as we move from discussion to concrete hypermedia implementations in the wild. In support of this, there was a quick conversation on Twitter t...
API Driven Backend For Apps Using Orchestrate.io
There is a great post over on the Orchestrate.io blog about how they deployed a backend for the MarvelousDB app, using data from the Marvel API, allowing you to explore the world of Marvel comic bo...
April 15, 2014
#Backend
API Driven Backend For Apps Using Orchestrate.io
There is a great post over on the Orchestrate.io blog about how they deployed a backend for the MarvelousDB app, using data from the Marvel API, allowing you to explore the world of Marvel comic bo...
April 15, 2014
#Backend
The APIs I Depend On To Run API Evangelist
I maintain an active list of online services I depend on for my business, using Evernote. Each month I spend an hour or two maintaining this list, to make sure it is complete and actively change my...
April 14, 2014
#Evangelist
Service Composition for My Screen Capture API
I now have a pretty simple screen capture API. You can pass it a URL and it gives you back a PNG image file of that website. Meeting my definition of a simple utility API. I use this API in my own ...
April 14, 2014
#Screen Capture
Liberate Government Data By Deploying Web APIs With Solr
I reviewed the deployment the FBOpen API the other day, which is a simple API resource of business opportunities with the U.S. Federal Government. An interesting aspect of the FBOpen implementation...
Reclaiming My Domain
After the recent heartbleed security fiasco, I’m spending my weekend going through my list of online services that I depend on, changing my passwords, and along the way I’m going to reclaim as much...
Reclaim My Domain - Kin Lane
Over ten years ago I learned the hard away about my domain. I purchased kin lane.com from a website hosting provider I found online, and after they drained over 1K from my bank account for a simple...
Moving Beyond My Basic 3Scale API Infrastructure Plan
I have been using 3Scale API Infrastructure to manage API Evangelis’s public APIs for almost two years now. My APIs provide access to my blog posts, news I curate, and the tools I track on. I also ...
Next Steps For My Screen Capture API
Earlier this year I created a screen capture API, filling a need I have across my network—capturing an image snapshot of any web page. Not all APIs are created the same, but I think this screen cap...
April 11, 2014
#Screen Capture
My Answer To Why You Should Not Use Services Like Quora That Do Not Offer API And Data Portability
As the API Evangelist I spend a lot of time cheering for companies to have APIs, and in 2014 I’m continuing a slow shift from cheerleading to calling out companies who do not have an API. If you ar...
The Levers, Dials, And Switches For Your Participation In The API Economy
I am playing with different ways of explaining the 100K view of how companies, and ultimately governments will participate in the API economy. As with APIs themselves, visualizing something like ho...
April 10, 2014
#Economy
Help Improve This Content: Another Reason To Deploy API Developer Area on Github
I just published a post showcasing Socrata’s use of Github to deploy their new open data and API developer portal. There are numerous reasons for using Github as part of your API management strateg...
Exploring What Is Next For The Green Button API
The end of last year I was asked to spent time thinking about three things: 1) An API for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) 2) Next steps for the Green Button API 3) API strategy...
Developer Portals On Github: Example From Socrata
Civic data platform Socrata has launched a new developer area to support developers who are building apps on top of city, county, state and federal data, as well as the publishers of this data. A r...
Understanding The World Of APIs Via API Codex
The mission of API Evangelist is all about bringing awareness of APIs to the masses. The biggest challenge I face in doing this, is that API Evangelist is primarily a blog, which means a chronologi...
April 9, 2014
#Code
The Role Of Scraping In API Deployment
Scraping has been something I’ve done since I first started working on the web. Sometimes you just need some data or a piece of content that isn’t available in a machine readable format, and the on...
16 Areas Of My Core API Research
When I first started API Evangelist, I wanted to better understand the business of APIs, which really focused on API management. Over the course of four years, the list of companies delivering API ...
April 9, 2014
#Research
GovFresh Live Chat With FCC CIO David Bray Using Github
I stumbled into a pretty interesting use of Github yesterday, which I’m seeing as part of a greater push from our government to use the popoular social coding platform. The government blog Govfresh...
April 8, 2014
#Github
18F Shows What Is Possible In Government With FBOpen API
There has been some great coverage of the new group of tech specialists out of the GSA, dubbed 18F. According to their own home page, 18F: …builds effective, user-centric digital services focus...
Containers Will Do for APIs what APIs Do For Companies
I was just having another conversation about virtualized cloud containers like Docker.io, and the approaches from leading cloud providers like Amazon with Cloud Formations, and RedHat with OpenShif...
API Definitions: How Do They Model REST?
Last week at #APIStrat Amsterdam, I moderated, and presented in a session that was called API service descriptions. I gave the talk for the first 15 minutes, then Sumit Sharma (@sumitcan), Ole Lens...
Adding Evercam.io To The API Commons
The Internet of things (Iot), and security camera API platform evercam.io has submitted the API definition for their camera API to the API Commons. I’ve been impressed with the amount of leadershi...
Adding Evercam.io To The API Commons
The Internet of things (Iot), and security camera API platform evercam.io has submitted the API definition for their camera API to the API Commons. I’ve been impressed with the amount of leadershi...
The API Evangelist Should Have APIs
As I have evolved my blog from a content management system into an API industry monitoring system, much like other companies I work with, I’m making the switch to use more APIs in my operations. As...
April 6, 2014
#Evangelist
Twitter API Is Gateway Drug For Internet Of Things
Last week at #APIStrat in Amsterdam, I had the pleasure of watching a keynote by Romain Huet (@romainhuet), Developer Advocate at Twitter, aptly titled “connecting to the pulse of the planet”. I’ve...
So Much Can Be Lost Through Automation
As I go through the management of my 60+ research sites that make up my API Evangelist network, I can’t help but think about how I can automate specific aspects of the process. This is the way my c...
April 4, 2014
#Automation
Taking A Quick Look At The Leading API Partner Programs
I’ve seen a wave of blog posts about additions to the developer and partner programs, of some of the leading APIs in the industry, making me think its time for some more research into the area. Par...
API Definitions: What Is Behind The Name?
Last week at #APIStrat Amsterdam, I moderated, and presented in a session that was called API service descriptions. I gave the talk for the first 15 minutes, then Sumit Sharma (@sumitcan), Ole Lens...
April 3, 2014
#Definitions
50 Building Blocks Of The API Economy
I spend a lot of time looking through the websites of API companies, trying to understand not just the way they do business, but their role in their overall industry, or possibly how they influence...
April 3, 2014
#Economy
3Scale Moves Into API Integration Space With APITools
API Infrastructure provider 3Scale has moved beyond just API management, with a launch of a new API integration service called APITools. 3Scale, one of the original API management providers, is mov...
Visualizing The Value Your API Delivers
I was reading the news about “BandPage raising $9.25M to help musicians reach and monetize billions of fans worldwide” today, which in itself isn’t all that exciting. Sorry, while VC investment in ...
March 31, 2014
#Value
Should Government Provide Download Or API Of Government Data Resources?
I just got an email from an open data, API evangelist, working on a “New Zealand cross government program that is set up to deliver better public services for businesses and providing more and bett...
Last Weeks API Strategy And Practice in Amsterdam (#APIStratAMS)
I am back in Los Angeles, after being in Amsterdam last week for API Strategy & Practice. It’s Monday morning, with the event ending Friday, and rather than being drained and exhausted, I’m sti...
Some Of The Best Discoveries Can Be Found Amongst Twitter Followers
I spend a lot of time each week reading the blog feeds, and twitter streams from the best API providers in the space. In my opinion this represents the lowest hanging fruit in my API monitoring, wh...
Last Chance To Register For Workshops At #APIStrat in Amsterdam
The first day at API Strategy & Practice is always workshops that expose you the world of APIs, and #APIStrat in Amsterdam next week is no different. We had four workshops, but successful devel...
API Inception Getting Twitter Data Via Gnip Through New Brandwatch API
Content and data aggregation provider Gnip just announced a new API from their “Plugged In Partner” Brandwatch, who launched the Brandwatch API, giving developers access to social data, filtered th...
Adding API Rating Agency To Discovery Stack
I’m adding the API Rating Agency to my stack of companies who deliver in the area of API discovery. The API Rating Agency helps API consumers understand each API provider on a whole list of metrics...
Strandbeest, APIs And Orchestrating The API Economy
I’m going through the schedule for API Strategy & Practice next week in Amsterdam, getting intimate with each keynote, panel, and session, and their speakers. On day one we have a keynote from ...
March 18, 2014
#Economy
Building More Metrics Into Your API Branding Strategy To Quantify Your Reach
I use both Bitly and Google shortened URLs to track activity across my networks. I don’t just track click throughs, I also track image impressions for many of my projects and partners. This usage o...
API Discovery and Trust At #APIStrat in Amsterdam Next Week
I’m continuing my journey through the session line-up at API Strategy & Practice next week in Amsterdam, next up is the API discovery and trust session, where the conversation will be about API...
Politics of APIs
In preparation for a fireside chat with Tyler Singletary at API Strategy & Practice next week I’m reviewing many of what I consider the political API building blocks, and reading some of my pas...
Main Stage Conversations At #APIStrat Next Week in Amsterdam
We are getting close to the API Strategy & Practice conference in Amsterdam next week. With less than one week left, I’m going to be really turning up the volume on API Evangelist about the con...
Job Postings Provide View Into Internal API Efforts
The API space has been pretty easy to monitor until recently, with most API efforts being public, but lately everything is trending is towards internal APIs, making it a lot harder to track on what...
Its Not Just About Doing APIs, Its About Having Conversation About APIs
Its always funny to come across the hyperbolic folks that exist in technology, that blindly believe that technology will save us. I seem to get attract a lot of these people with my API Evangelism ...
March 17, 2014
I Always Want To See the Data Behind, And So Does Plot.ly
I don’t have a love of infographics, mostly because they more graphic, than info, and I’ve stated before that all infographics should have the data behind them. I’ve been working with data of over ...
March 17, 2014
#Data
I Always Want To See the Data Behind, And So Does Plot.ly
I don’t have a love of infographics, mostly because they more graphic, than info, and I’ve stated before that all infographics should have the data behind them. I’ve been working with data of over ...
March 17, 2014
#Data
API Service Accord
Building off a conversation I had with a fellow evangelist in the federal government today, regarding API service level agreements (SLA), I wanted to talk through some thoughts I’m having about a c...
The Power Of Designing And Deploying API Driven Resources In Containers
One of the transformative experiences of my career was when I worked for SAP, running SAP events as VP of Engineering at WebEvents Global. When I started, I was handed an architecture that was comp...
The 15 Sessions At API Strategy And Practice in Amsterdam
I am getting psyched going through the schedule lineup of 15 sessions at API Strategy & Practice in Amsterdam. In planning the session outline, Steve, Vanessa and I listened to what the #APIStr...
March 13, 2014
#Strategy
API Management: Adding Reciprocity Building Blocks
I’m adding a new grouping to my list of API management building blocks, called reciprocity. If you want to know what I mean by reciprocity check out my earlier post From ETL to API Reciprocity, Loo...
API Talent Agencies
I am watching Airpair and Workmob step up to meet the demand for developer talent in the API space, and can’t help but selfishly want to see the same for API evangelism talent. Along with the grow...
Which Building Blocks Should I Use As Part Of My API Support Strategy
I wish I had more time to take many of the questions I get behind the scenes via email and publish as stories, but with an insane inbox I only can make time for some of the more relevant ones. I ha...
Common Building Blocks of Cloud APIs
I’ve been profiling the API management space for almost four years now, and one of the things I keep track of is what some of the common building blocks of API management are. Recently I’ve pushed ...
March 11, 2014
#Cloud
Viewbook Uses Flickr API Design When Designing Their Own
I am spending time getting to know the APIs coming out of the Netherlands, as we prepare for API Strategy & Practice in Amsterdam March 26-28th, and one API I was checking out is from the Portf...
March 10, 2014
#Design
Expanding An API Designers Horizon Using Apiary
I spent some time developing a hello world product API with Blueprint, RAML And Swagger this last week, and along the way I had several experiences that I think are influential in the API design pr...
March 10, 2014
#Design
What Version Of The API Economy Are You Investing In?
APIs are being used as the pipes that drive mobile apps, and beginning to connect our homes, automobiles, buildings and public space to the Internet. The decision on whether or not this is a good i...
March 9, 2014
#Economy
I Am Up To 34 APIs Out Of The Netherlands
As we gear up for API Strategy & Practice in Amsterdam, March 24-26th, I’m spending my time getting to know API companies across Europe. I published a listing of APIs I found from the United Ki...
March 9, 2014
#4
Hello World Product API With Blueprint, RAML And Swagger
Over the last couple months I’ve been taking a deeper look at the API design space, trying to understand more about the tools and services that are emerging, and the different approaches being empl...
The New Github Developer Program and Integrations Page
Github just announced a new developer program, which will allow Github API developers to receive notifications about upcoming changes to the API, and get early access on some feature releases. As ...
I Have A Valuable API Resource, What Now?
One of the most enjoyable thing about being the API Evangelist is talking to API providers about their strategy, and helping brainstorm what they should do next. I have multiple APIs I do this with...
A Better Understanding Of Government APIs And Their Consumers Before Considering Charging For Use
There is an interesting conversation triggered by a question from Mr. Gray Brooks at the GSA on the federal government API Google Group, regarding whether there are any agencies who are charging fo...
So You Wanna Do a Spreadsheet or Database To API Startup
A question I get regularly at API Evangelist is around the need for spreadsheet to API, and database to API services. Every couple weeks I get DMs and emails from someone who ask what tools are ava...
Jumpstarting the Automobile API Conversation With Carvoyant
I had the pleasure of doing Carvoyant Connected Car Cast today with Bret Tobey and Matt Galvin, hosted by the infamous Mike Maney (@the_spinmd) today. The session was nothing formal, just a convers...
Some Of The Common Building Blocks of Payment APIs
I’m taking a look at the world of payment APIs right now. As with all my other monitoring of the API space, I am only looking for the best approaches, by the most interesting companies in the space...
March 5, 2014
API Badging and Credentialing To Demonstrate Skills
I have a number of APIs that I’ve successfully integrated with, and an even greater number that I’ve just played around with, pulling data, seeing what is possible. If you have spent the time learn...
March 5, 2014
#Skills
Finding Good API Developer Talent Is Hard
The shortage of good API developer talent is something I see regularly, with the constant stream of job and project offers I get via email and LinkedIn. The first place companies and recruiters go ...
March 4, 2014
#Talent
Common Building Blocks Of API Design
Over the last couple months I’ve been taking a deeper look at the API design space, trying to understand more about the tools and services that are emerging, and the different approaches being empl...
March 4, 2014
#Design
APIs Coming Out Of The Netherlands
As we gear up for API Strategy & Practice in Amsterdam, March 24-26th, I’m spending my time getting to know API companies across Europe. I published a listing of APIs I found from the United Ki...
March 4, 2014
API Evangelism Strategy: Landscape Analysis
I’m working with the Cashtie API to pull together an API evangelism strategy for the payments API. As I pull together, it seems like a great opportunity to share with you. Who knows, maybe you can ...
APIs At Your University
I’m spending some time looking at how universities are using APIs across campus. I have been doing research in the area for a couple years, but I feel it is time that we generate more stories and b...
March 3, 2014
API Evangelists Are A Thoughtful Voice That Spreads Awareness And Encourages Participation
I am preparing a job description for an API evangelist position at the Cashtie API, something I do for companies from time to time. When working on a new one, I go out and look at current API evang...
Giving Thanks To The Open Source Software Gods
I spend a lot of time thinking about the politics of APIs, which in my opinion is the soul of the API economy. There are numerous things that go into the politics of an API, including your terms of...
API Evangelism Strategy: Blogging
I’m working with the Cashtie API to pull together an API evangelism strategy for the payments API. As I pull together, it seems like a great opportunity to share with you. Who knows, maybe you can ...
API Design Tooling From RAML
As part of my research in the world of API design, I’m looking into the different approaches by API Blueprint, RAML and Swagger, to provide API definitions, services and tools that assist developer...
APIs Coming Out Of The United Kingdom
I was able to update my API monitoring system to include the location of some of the APIs, allowing me to look at APIs by country and region. In preparation for API Strategy & Practice in Amste...
February 27, 2014
API Design Tooling From API Blueprint
As part of my research in the world of API design, I’m looking into the different approaches by API Blueprint, RAML and Swagger, to provide API definitions, services and tools that assist developer...
Payment APIs That I Am Watching
I’m taking a look at the world of payment APIs right now. As with all my other monitoring of the API space, I am only looking for the best approaches, by the most interesting companies in the space...
February 26, 2014
API Evangelism Strategy: Developer Outreach
I’m working with the Cashtie API to pull together an API evangelism strategy for the payments API. As I pull together, it seems like a great opportunity to share with you. Who knows, maybe you can ...
API Design Tooling From Swagger
As part of my research in the world of API design, I’m looking into the different approaches by API Blueprint, RAML and Swagger, to provide API definitions, services and tools that assist developer...
An API To Make Your Products and Services Available At Walmart, Target and CVS?
It can be pretty difficult to explain exactly what an API does to the average person. Some people think of APIs being associated with databases, where others think they are always attached to onlin...
The Importance Of A Government API Phase
I’m stepping back and trying to understand more about where we are at in the history of APIs. Looking at the API space in terms of our past, provides me with a healthier understanding of where we a...
February 24, 2014
#Government
Showcasing When You Use Your Own API
While looking through hundreds of blogs from API providers, one practice that I’m seeing more of is companies showcasing their own use of their API. Some of you may think this is obvious, but I thi...
Landscape Targeting: Payment APIs
When I want to understand a business sector as part of my overall analysis, or part of a specific API strategy, I kick off what I call a “landscape targeting” campaign. This time around I am intere...
#APIStrat Is Where The Key API Conversations Are Happening
I’m working with Phil Legetter (@leggetter) to put together a panel at API Strategy & Practice in Amsterdam on APIs and realtime, and as I’m working to bring together the leaders from the space...
API Evangelism Strategy: Goals
I’m working with the Cashtie API to pull together API evangelism strategy for the payments API. As I pull together it seems like a great opportunity to share with you. Who knows, maybe you can use ...
What Is The Next Phase Of APIs?
I’ve been polishing my version of the history of web APIs since I started API Evangelist. Through my research it became clear that the world of web APIs had evolved through several key phases that ...
February 17, 2014
Streaming API Strategy & Practice Around The Globe
At API Strategy & Practice in San Francisco last October, we streamed the event online. We are considering doing this again for #APIStrat in Amsterdam this March 26-28th. We had an inquiry fro...
Streaming API Strategy & Practice Around The Globe
At API Strategy & Practice in San Francisco last October, we streamed the event online. We are considering doing this again for #APIStrat in Amsterdam this March 26-28th. We had an inquiry fro...
What Is The Future Of Backend As A Service (BaaS)?
I’ve been tracking on BaaS since 2011, and identified it was an important layer of the API space, dedicated to serving up the resources that mobile developers were needing to be successful. BaaS is...
February 14, 2014
#Backend
Jumpstarting The API Conversation Using Prototypes
For those of us who live and breathe APIs, it is easy to image what is possible when discussing an idea for an API, or what an API could to to transform an existing process or application—however f...
The Schedule Is Up For API Strategy & Practice in Amsterdam
The lineup is coming together for API Strategy & Practice in Amsterdam, and you can find the schedule for the two days of keynotes, fireside chats, panels and sessions publish on the #APIStrat ...
February 13, 2014
#Strategy
The Schedule Is Up For API Strategy & Practice in Amsterdam
The lineup is coming together for API Strategy & Practice in Amsterdam, and you can find the schedule for the two days of keynotes, fireside chats, panels and sessions publish on the #APIStrat ...
February 13, 2014
#Strategy
Do US Government Web APIs Require System Interconnectivity Agreements?
I’m been so busy with work lately, I haven’t been able to maintain my usual rhythm of blog posts on API Evangelist. The good news is I’m doing some interesting work that I’m able to pull stories fr...
CVS And The Role Of APIs In The New Retail Healthcare Landscape
At the same time I am processing the move by CVS to stop selling tobacco products in their over 7,600 retailsstores, making a commitment to being more retail healthcare, rather than just a corner d...
Google Hangouts For Bringing Your API Developer Team Out Of Their Silo
I did a Google Hangout with the Cashtie API development team this morning, which I thought was an interesting enough format to share with all of you. The Cashtie API team is a distributed team, bet...
The Power of API Driven Resources In Securing Your VC Funding
In the days before the Internet when you had access to a valuable business resource, you kept it to yourself as long as you possibly can, hoping to maximize the potential to your business, and limi...
Meaningful Stories Across The API Space
In 2010 I made a deal with my girlfriend Audrey Watters (@audreywatters), I’d run the server infrastructure behind her blog Hack Education, and she’d help me polish my storytelling on API Evangelis...
February 6, 2014
#Stories
Don't Be Afraid To Ask Your API Developers What They Want
While it may seem obvious that you should ask your API developers what they want, many times this is a simple task that can get lost in the shuffle of API deployment and management. API Evangelist ...
Don't Be Afraid To Ask Your API Developers What They Want
While it may seem obvious that you should ask your API developers what they want, many times this is a simple task that can get lost in the shuffle of API deployment and management. API Evangelist ...
APIs Are About Iterating On Not Just The Tech, But Also The Business and Politics Of Your API
I’ve been reviewing the recently released Marvel Comic API, because I’m a comic book geek, wait no, because I’m the API Evangelist—no wait it is both. Properly reviewing an API takes time because y...
Essential Variable in Big Data Algorithm: Transparency
It is easy to get excited about the potential around “big data”. Many individuals and companies feel this latest trend is all about offering up big data solutions with business models that are buil...
The Challenge Of Educating New People To The API Space
One of my biggest challenges at API Evangelist is keeping content accessible for people who have just come into the API space. The most successful aspect of my site is the blog, and while I try to ...
February 5, 2014
#People
Github As The Central Presence, Definition, Configuration, And Source Code For Your API
It is easy to think of Github as a central repository for your open source code—most developers understand that. I have written before about the many ways to use Github as part of your API manageme...
Deploy Instances Of APIs At Heroku Or PaaS Of Your Choice
I wrote about the interesting approach by Plivo the other day around their Voice Chat API, in which one thing they did really caught my eye, and reflects what I think is the future of APIs—the depl...
February 5, 2014
The Voice Chat API Is Great Example Of An Simple, Open, API Driven Resource
A free, open-source, API driven conference solution called Voice Chat API popped up on my API monitoring radar today, as I was going through my feeds. The Voice Chat API is a very cool, dead-simple...
A Simple, Honest Approach to Getting Started With The Marvel Comics API
I’m currently reviewing the Marvel Comics API, and their approach to making their rich content available via a simple web API. They did a great job deploying the API. To start with they published ...
February 1, 2014
#Getting Started
Will API Definitions Be Big in 2014?
I’m a big fan of Traffic and Weather, where in a recent episode John Sheehan (@johnsheehan) definitively answers the questions of “weather” or not API definitions will be a big thing 2014? We ca...
Why Guest Posting Has Gotten A Bad Rap
As a proprietor of a small, successful niche blog, I can easily share some insight into why Google recently started punishing blogs that have guest posts. At API Evangelist I get about two offers ...
The Vision Behind Swagger, API Blueprint and RAML
I am working through some deeper research into the world of API design, and specifically into the world of API definitions. This research involves talking to each of the leading providers, crafting...
10 API Commandments for Providers
I was having one of my regular Google Hangouts with the OG API Evangelist John Musser (@johnmusser) the other day as I was flying back from east coast, and he made a comment about my classic API Ev...
January 31, 2014
#Providers
What Will It Take To Sell My API AS A Wholesale Resource
I’m continuing my exploration of the possibilities of offering up a wholesale version of an API resource. While wholesale is not an option for all types of APIs, there are a subset of APIs that are...
January 30, 2014
#Wholesale
Workshops In Addition To Hackathons For Your API
I recently talked with the AT&T API team about their recent Sabre partnership, which I thought was a pretty interesting approach to evolving your API strategy, by leveraging your partners. As w...
Why Is The Noun Project API Significant?
The Noun Project recently launched their API, and after getting off the phone just now with a publication, I looked to see if I had written it up—I hadn’t. I had a lot of thoughts in an Evernote, b...
January 27, 2014
#Project
Accepting Cash Payments As Part Of Your Web or Mobile Apps Using The Cashtie API
I’m working with a very interesting new API offering from the retail focused InComm, dubbed the Cashtie API. Over the last two decades InComm has worked hard to build relationships with major retai...
Selling Your Digital Goods In Amazon.com Where Amazon Uses Your API To Purchase
Amazon has an interesting new service called Instant Access, which follows a trend I’m seeing in commerce, that allows the sales of digital goods, not just in-app like Amazon’s In-App Purchasing do...
Selling Your Digital Goods In Amazon.com Where Amazon Uses Your API To Purchase
Amazon has an interesting new service called Instant Access, which follows a trend I’m seeing in commerce, that allows the sales of digital goods, not just in-app like Amazon’s In-App Purchasing do...
Sharing Stories From Your API Operations
I’ve done 3 stories over the last week about the Panoptix API from Johnson Controls (JCI). I try to regularly check in with the John Bernd (@jkbernd) and Simone Vigano (@viganosimone) of the Panop...
Interoperability Between Web and Internet Of Things Opening Up To Non-Developers
One of the areas I track on is what I call the API reciprocity space, which is all about interoperability between platforms, but I label it reciprocity as an attempt to capture that it isn’t just a...
Controlling The Internet of Things With Your Voice
Saturday afternoons are great for closing out tabs I’ve had open all week, and the theme this Saturday is APIs and the Internet of Things. This time it is about controlling your Internet of Things ...
Work With Your Partners To Iterate On Your APIs
I received a press release from AT&T last week, about a new partnership with Sabre to develop what is called location information services (LIS). Ben Kepes has a good summary of the partnership...
January 24, 2014
#Partners
Opening Up Internal Opportunities Because You Have An API
Some of the best stories I hear as the API Evangelist, are the internal success stories around API efforts. Everyone wants to be the next Twilio success story with their API, but in reality the API...
Is The Golden Age Of Google Maps API Over?
According to Keir Clark over at Google Maps Mania, we are seeing The Slow Death of the Google Maps API. Who else could read the tea leaves, when it comes to an API, than a blogger who is dedicated ...
January 23, 2014
#Maps
The Evolving Motivations Behind API Definitions
I’m spending more time diving into the evolving world of API design over the next couple of weeks. There is a rapidly emerging community of companies, tooling and approaches to designing and develo...
January 22, 2014
#Definitions
Standard Energy Efficiency Data APIs For Buildings
The team over at Panoptix turned me on to the the Standard Energy Efficiency Data (SEED) platform being developed over at the Department of Energy, which aims to be an API for collecting, storing a...
I Am In Philly This Friday Speaking On Openness, Should We Create a More Transparent World, At The Franklin Institue
I’m heading to Philly this week, to participate in a panel on Openness: Should We Create a More Transparent World, at the Franklin Institute, as part of EduCon. The panel will run from 6-8PM, and ...
Does Your API Have An Account Usage API For Developers?
I was playing with the Noun Project API today. If you hadn’t noticed, I use the Noun Project throughout the API Evangelist network. The simple, black and white icons work very well with my minimali...
A World Where Every Camera Is Connected To The Internet Via APIs
I look at a lot of APIs–some are crap, some make sense, a few are interesting, and every great once in a while you see an API that you know will be one of the next big API platforms. I’m reviewing ...
January 21, 2014
More Meaningful, Niche API Hubs
Right now when it comes to API discovery you have the OG ProgrammableWeb, and newcomers Mashape and APIHub (which also owns ProgrammableWeb). All three of these sites provide you with a large direc...
January 20, 2014
#Hubs
JCI & Panoptix APIs: Write APIs Are Much Harder Than Read APIs
When I last talked with the Panoptix API team over at Johnson Controls (JCI), they were working hard on new features, including the possibility of writing data to the building efficiency API(s). A...
January 20, 2014
JCI & Panoptix APIs: Write APIs Are Much Harder Than Read APIs
When I last talked with the Panoptix API team over at Johnson Controls (JCI), they were working hard on new features, including the possibility of writing data to the building efficiency API(s). A...
January 20, 2014
Are Device Based APIs Where It Is At?
Just exactly what an API is, is always up for debate. APIs have been around since before the Internet. API Evangelist focuses in on what I call web APIs, that were built using the same technology a...
January 19, 2014
The API Between Us And Everything
I was doing some research on a video camera API platform that I’m keeping an eye on, and Google, Nest and the $3.2 Billion API by Roberto Medrano of SOA Software popped up in my curation system. Th...
JCI & Panoptix Internal Evangelism: Selling Not Just The API, But The Overall Approach Internally
I just had a great conversion with John Bernd (@jkbernd) and Simone Vigano (@viganosimone) of Johnson Controls (JCI), who lead efforts at the building efficiency API, Panoptix. They shared several ...
JCI & Panoptix Internal Evangelism: Selling Not Just The API, But The Overall Approach Internally
I just had a great conversion with John Bernd (@jkbernd) and Simone Vigano (@viganosimone) of Johnson Controls (JCI), who lead efforts at the building efficiency API, Panoptix. They shared several ...
An API Design Discussion With API Blueprint, RAML And Swagger Creators
REST head Glenn Block (@gblock) over at Splunk asked a simple question on Twitter Wednesday night, Who is using Swagger? I responded, kicking off a conversation that a day later included Tony Tam (...
What Is Your API Content Licensing Default?
I was taking another look at the Makerbot Thingiverse API the other day, and was very pleased with their developer area overhaul. One feature I noticed when playing with my account settings, was th...
What Are The Common Building Blocks of API Integration?
I started API Evangelist in 2010 to help business leaders better understand not just the technical, but specifically the business of APIs, helping them be successful in their own API efforts. As pa...
January 16, 2014
#Integration
API Design: Do You Swagger, Blueprint or RAML?
I’m spending the next couple weeks going through each of the leading API design approaches: API Blueprint, RAML and Swagger. Even though I still personally use Swagger in my own work, I’m pushing m...
Makerbot Terms of Use in Plain English
API Terms of Use is the single most important building block of any ecosystem, yet it is the least discussed area of API management and integration. I’m working hard to dedicated more time in 2014 ...
January 14, 2014
#ai
Take Another Look At The Thingiverse 3D Printing Community API
Have you taken a look at the Thingiverse developer area lately? It’s been a while since I reviewed it. A couple years ago while working at Mimeo as an API evangelist I had the pleasure of doing som...
API Strategy & Practice Call For Papers Ends This Week
The call for papers is ending this week for API & Strategy & Practice conference, March 26th,27th and 28th, in Amsterdam. So far we have over 25 talks submitted, with numerous slots already...
January 14, 2014
#Strategy
API Strategy & Practice Call For Papers Ends This Week
The call for papers is ending this week for API & Strategy & Practice conference, March 26th,27th and 28th, in Amsterdam. So far we have over 25 talks submitted, with numerous slots already...
January 14, 2014
#Strategy
What Happened With Federal Agencies And Their Data.json Files
I’m playing catchup on some of my projects, and one of them is tracking on the evolution of Executive Order 13642 from last May, which was the White House directive to make open and machine readabl...
What Happened With Federal Agencies And Their Data.json Files
I’m playing catchup on some of my projects, and one of them is tracking on the evolution of Executive Order 13642 from last May, which was the White House directive to make open and machine readabl...
Caching APIs With CloudFormations Or OpenShift
During the recent federal government shutdown this last fall, the concept of API redundancy became much more important for me, and I hope for others as well. The need to ensure public open data and...
Submitting A Talk For #APIStrat in Amsterdam
I had a friend ask me for help with their talk submission for #APIStrat in Amsterdam. He was concerned that his talk was too product pitchy, and wanted help making it something that not just would ...
January 11, 2014
#APIStrat
Experimentation And Iteration Is Good, But Share The Exhaust From Your API Research Ericsson
Ericsson once had around 19 APIs available via their Ericsson Labs platform. After doing a round of looking through all the APIs I track on, I noticed they have ALL gone away. They are still doing ...
January 11, 2014
#Research
New IBM Watson Unit Needs To Loosen Up, Iterate and Incubate To Find Full Potential
The latest tech news to come out of IBM this week is a brand new business group to push innovation around the IBM Watson platform, with IBM committed to spending $1B on the new business group, with...
Lessons In Gov Open Data: Optimize For Consumer
There is an excellent post in GovFresh by former Presidential Innovation Fellow and Githubber Ben Balter (@BenBalter), Why no one uses your government data? Ben is looking to address one of the bi...
Lessons In Gov Open Data: Good Data Narration
Building on my last post, Lessons In Gov Open Data: Optimize For Consumer, I want to share another important lesson for people working on open data in government. This very important lesson is abou...
Another One Acquired: ApiAxle Acquired By Exicon
I got a email today letting me know that cloud platform Exicon, purchase API management provider ApiAxle, further whittling away at all of the original and second wave of API management providers I...
What Is Next For The US Government API Strategy, Getting Technical
Data.gov has continued to evolve, adding data sets, agencies and features. With recent, high profile stumbles like with Healthcare.gov, it can be easy to fall prey to historical stereotypes that go...
The User Experience Will Continue To Fragment As We Evolve To An Internet Of Things
It has taken me a while to respond to a post I read this weekend, by Mike Caulfield (@holden) called Revenge of the OS. In short he points out the fragment world we live in with all of our apps, an...
January 9, 2014
#Experience
One Developer, Two API Providers, Multiple APIs, When Your API Management Has An API
Building on my thoughts around preparing your API for wholesale access, I’m thinking through the problem of developer API access when you have API providers offering up each others APIs, and bundli...
Is Your API Ready For Wholesale?
As the number of public APIs grows well beyond 10K, expecting that developers will discover, let alone come to your developers area regulary will be reduced to just a fantasy. In this new API drive...
January 9, 2014
#Wholesale
Dwolla API Is Switching Dates to UTC, Are Yours?
The Dwolla API sent out an email to developers today, letting us know that, “Effective January 21, 2014, all timestamps returned by REST API endpoints will be in UTC format.” Dwolla is looking to f...
Benefits Of Treating Your Private API Like a Public One
I stopped counting the number of successful applications that have had their private APIs reversed engineered by some savvy users, Most recently Snapchat, and famously the original rogue Instagram ...
January 8, 2014
Are Your API Security Practices In Better Shape Than The Snapchat API?
If you weren’t following the news over the holidays, a rogue group released SnapchatDB, containing the 4.6 million Snapchat user profiles, after exploiting the poorly secured mobile application API...
January 8, 2014
#Security
Will Internet of Things And The SDK Push Out REST?
After watching the API space evolve, I’ve learned one thing, that there are lots of factors that influence the industry, and that the best solution doesn’t always win. As I’m studying the rise of ...
What Is A Hypermedia API?
The time has come. In 2014 I will be spending a lot more energy, helping you understand what a Hypermedia API is, and if you should be considering it as part of your own API strategy. I won’t be in...
January 7, 2014
#Hypermedia
A Wholesale On-Premise Version Of My API For Sale
I was doing some research in the area of harvesting and scraping APs. I was taking another look at Web Scrape Master, a simple scraping API that allows you to pass it a URL and it harvests structur...
January 7, 2014
#Wholesale
What Is Next For The US Government API Strategy
I was asked to provides some thoughts on what is next for the US Government API strategy. I’ve been thinking about it during my work and travels over the last couple months, and I keep coming back ...
State of APIs In Journalism: The Guardian
Major newspapers having APIs is nothing new. We’ve heard stories out of the Guardian, New York Times and USA Today having APIs, but after several years where are these API initiatives headed? What ...
January 6, 2014
#Journalism
Creating My Own Screenshot API
I use screenshots across the API Evangelist network. I take screenshots of stories I curated, companies I track on and API developer areas I’m monitoring. Historically I’ve used a variety of screen...
January 6, 2014
The Holy Grail of APIs
I look at a lot of APIs, I work hard to brainstorm ideas for potential new APIs, and I can’t think of a more important API to not just the API economy, but to the overall economy, than an IRS API t...
December 20, 2013
#ai
Every Form Should Be An API
I’m working on an API design for the free application for federal student aid form, also known as FAFSA, over the last couple weeks. I took the form which had over 150 separate fields, and turned i...
An API Is Research And Development For Your Business Model
I spend a lot of time talking to folks on the phone, Skype, in Google Hangouts and in person about their API business models. Not everyone I talk with is willing to share their story public, so I’m...
API Terms of Service Wizard From Swedish API License
The terms of service for APIs is the single most important building block of an API strategy, one that dictates how developers can access and put API resources to use and sets the tone for an entir...
December 16, 2013
#Terms of Service
Charging For Higher Levels Of Access To Government Data and APIs
The question of whether government should charge for APIs and other digital services came up again this week during a Google Hangout I did with Luke Fretwell(@lukefretwell) of @GovFresh. I began ex...
An API Evangelist Review Of Your API
Over the last 3 years I have looked at all the APIs available in ProgrammableWeb API directory, with about 2500 of which I monitor regularly. Throughout this process I’ve evolved an eye for what bu...
Understanding the French API Economy At API Days
I got back from Paris, France this Sunday, after Audrey (@audreywatters) and I spoke at API Days last Thursday. This was the second annual API event, which kicked off last year around the same time...
December 11, 2013
#Economy
My Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) API Project
I was able to give my FAFSA API project a little more attention in preparation for some data jams later this week. While there is still a lot of work to happen, I feel pretty good about what I have...
December 11, 2013
#Project
It's Between Copyright And Fair Use In Oracle vs Google API Case
I’m just getting time to read through the news coming out of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and the next phase of the Oracle v. Google case, which kicked off December 4...
It's Between Copyright And Fair Use In Oracle vs Google API Case
I’m just getting time to read through the news coming out of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and the next phase of the Oracle v. Google case, which kicked off December 4...
Adding The OpenEd API To The API Commons
We have added the OpenEd API to the API Commons. OpenEd provides open educational resources like courses, videos and games for teachers to use in their classes. Using the API, developers can read ...
PR People For APIs
I’m getting more PR folks reaching out to me trying to get me to review their client’s API program. I’m happy to add these to my list and make time each week to review them alongside the other new ...
November 30, 2013
#People
I Will Be At API Days in Paris This Week, Will You Be There?
I’m pretty excited about heading to Paris this week to speak at API Days. The is the 2nd edition of the original french edition of API Days, and they have organized over 60 talks across two days: D...
Government Services Schemas With JSON-LD
This fall while working in Washington D.C. I was introduced to the concept ofrepresenting government services with JSON-LD. Using the civic services schema.org proposal you can represent common gov...
Early Thoughts on Robots.json
My friend @harmophone, Director of Platform for the Klout API, wrote up a great piece before #APIStrat, called A Short Proposal for Robots.json. This is a topic that I’ve been meaning to make time...
Early Thoughts on Robots.json
My friend @harmophone, Director of Platform for the Klout API, wrote up a great piece before #APIStrat, called A Short Proposal for Robots.json. This is a topic that I’ve been meaning to make time...
University of California Student Senate Submits Bill Stating Student Information Systems Must Have API
On November 6th, 2013 the Associated Students, University of California(ASUC) Senate submitted SB 48: A Bill in Support of Student Information Systems Application Developers, stating that “open dat...
November 21, 2013
#Systems
Generating The Utility APIs I Need For Each Developer Portal
I’m working on an API for Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form. I’m working my way through a document from Department of Education called the 2013-2014 Application Processing Syste...
November 21, 2013
#Portal
Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) API
I was asked to help put some thought into an API for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid iniative. First, what is FAFSA: The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is the for...
An API For Your Github GeoJSON Stores
I’ve been pushing the boundaries of open data and API deployment using Github. I have a project I’ve been evolving since August called Simple API and its sister implementation api.ongithub.com, whi...
Server Side API Templates On AWS Cloud Formation And OpenShift
I created 11 very simple API designs for the launch of API Commons. We needed some API definitions to show the potential of the commons, so I wanted to design a handful of common API patterns to se...
Hypermedia In The Wild: Amazon AppStream API
With the growing number of hypermedia API deployments, hypermedia haters© are going to lose a major argument, that hypermedia is just an academic exercise and will never work in the wild. ;-) The ...
API Search Endpoint Using Solr
I was going through the Free Law Project Court Opinion API today, playing with the API and data, while developing some server and client side tooling. All the API endpoints are pretty consistence b...
November 20, 2013
#Search
The Free Law Projects Launches Court Opinion API
The Free Law Project has launched a U.S. court opinions API as part of the Court Listener project, which currently aggregates 2,204,339 court opinions, from 350 jurisdictions. The Court Listener O...
November 19, 2013
#Project
Tracking On Data.json Deployment Across Federal Agencies
I’m tracking on the evolution of Executive Order 13642 from last May, which was the White House directive to make open and machine readable the new default for government information. The piece tha...
Tracking On Data.json Deployment Across Federal Agencies
I’m tracking on the evolution of Executive Order 13642 from last May, which was the White House directive to make open and machine readable the new default for government information. The piece tha...
420% Growth In DNS API Usage Over At Dyn
The folks over at Dyn who provide traffic, message, remote access and domain services, including a suite of SOAP and REST based APIs, have released some interesting stats on their API usage. Dyn h...
On Losing My Storytelling Voice
photo credit I’m totally thankful for the experiences I’ve had over the last 90 days in Washington D.C. as a Presidential Innovation Fellow, and even more thankful I’m able to keep doing much of t...
Getting Your API Done From the Outside-In
Sometimes no matter how hard you try, you can’t get the buy in for APIs within a company or organization. There are many reasons why API efforts will fail within entrenched companies, organizations...
API Commons Is More Than Just The Definition, Specification or Schema
API Commons is about providing a simple and transparent mechanism for the copyright free sharing and collaborative design of API specifications, interfaces and data models. When learning about API ...
Secure API Deployment From MySQL, JSON and Google Spreadsheets With 3Scale
I’m doing a lot more API deployments from dead simple data sources since I started working in the federal government. As part of these efforts I’m working to put together a simple toolkit that newb...
Modular APIs Driven From Github Blueprints Using OpenShift
I’m working on a variety of ways that anyone can easily deploy API on common cloud platforms. I’m working through a series of open and secure, modular API demos written in PHP, using the Slim frame...
Introducing Data Ongithub
I am a big fan of opening up data in city, county, state and federal government and across companies of all shapes and sizes. One thing I’ve learned in my 20+ years of working with data is that whe...
November 16, 2013
#Data
Deploy Secure API: Public Google Spreadsheet to API
I’m working on a series of simple scripts that help people deploy APIs from some of the most common data sources. I’m starting with a series of PHP scripts, and a couple weeks ago I did a public Go...
November 16, 2013
#Spreadsheet
Deploy Secure API: Private Google Spreadsheet to API
I’m working on a series of simple scripts that help people deploy APIs from some of the most common data sources. I’m starting with a series of PHP scripts, and last week I did a private Google Sp...
November 16, 2013
#Spreadsheet
Deploy Secure API: MySQL to API
I’m working on a series of simple scripts that help people deploy APIs from some of the most common data sources. I’m starting with a series of PHP scripts, and a couple weeks ago I did a MySQL to ...
November 16, 2013
Deploy Secure API: JSON to API
I’m working on a series of simple scripts that help people deploy APIs from some of the most common data sources. I’m starting with a series of PHP scripts, and a couple weeks ago I did a JSON to A...
November 16, 2013
#JSON
PHP Libraries For Smithsonian API to Support Hackathon This Weekend
I have a long list of little projects I’m working on across government, and since I’m not being paid for some of this work now (except for the support of my amazing partners), the publicity and pag...
November 15, 2013
#Support
Interactive Feedback On The FDA Recall API
I have a long list of little projects I’m working across government, and since I’m not being paid for some of this work now (except for the support of my amazing partners), the publicity and page v...
November 15, 2013
#Feedback
Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) API
I was asked to help put some thought into an API for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid iniative. First, what is FAFSA: The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is the for...
APIs Give You The Ability To Define And Execute On The Actions That Are Most Important To You
I am a programmer with a full understanding of how to deploy, consume and put APIs to use. Even with this knowledge and ability I’m continually blown away by the opportunities APIs afford, even wit...
November 15, 2013
#Define
If Gov Then That
I just found an interesting brainstorm going on via Github, about how to make government more efficient and interoperable using APIs, that was created by government consultant Leah Bannon (@leahban...
Deploy API: Private Google Spreadsheet to API
I’m working on a series of simple scripts that help people deploy APIs from some of the most common data sources. I’m starting with a series of PHP scripts, and next up is a private Google Spreadsh...
November 12, 2013
#Spreadsheet
Common Data Sources To API Definition
I’ve been working through several demos of how to go from common data sources like MySQL and Google Spreadsheet to API over the last couple of weeks. So far I have five basic working demos: MyS...
9 Essential Languages For Your API Code Libraries
I was working with Google APIs over the last couple days while building Google Spreadsheet to API tools. It gave me a chance to look around the Google Developers Area and rediscover some of the pos...
November 12, 2013
#Code
Dwolla Open Sources Mobile Payment App
Every API provider should provide code samples in a variety of languages, helping developers get up and running as fast as possible. Dwolla is taking this one step further and providing a fully fu...
Automatic REST API for Databases As Complete Amazon Machine Image
SlashDB aka /db, has recently been added to the Amazon Marketplace, providing a complete database to API solution as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI). Companies can use the /db Amazon image to automa...
APIs Ongithub
I’ve created a new playground for some of my work. Pretty much everything at API Evangelist runs on Github, and each new project I produce starts its life as a Github repository. To support this wo...
November 7, 2013
Open Data And API Efforts Rendered Useless When Privacy Is Ignored
On the second anniversary of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), where we are celebrating a “global effort to encourage transparent, effective, and accountable governance”, and that: OGP has ...
Putting The Open In API With The API Commons
Steve Willmott(@njyx) from API infrastructure provider 3Scale and API Evangelist launched a new partner project yesterday at Defrag, that we are calling API Commons. The mission with API commons is...
Deploy API: Public Google Spreadsheet to API
I’m working on a series of simple scripts that help people deploy APIs from some of the most common data sources. I’m starting with a series of PHP scripts, and next up is a public Google Spreadshe...
October 22, 2013
#Spreadsheet
Deploy API: Github JSON to API
I’m working on a series of simple scripts that help people deploy APIs from some of the most common data sources. I’m starting with a series of PHP scripts, and next up is JSON to API, using JSON s...
API Deployment From MySQL, JSON, Github and Google Spreadsheets
I’m doing a lot more API deployments from dead simple data sources since I started working in the federal government. As part of these efforts I’m working to put together a simple toolkit that newb...
Deploy API: MySQL to API
I’m working on a series of simple scripts that help people deploy APIs from some of the most common data sources. I’m starting with a series of PHP scripts, and first up is MySQL to API. For this ...
October 21, 2013
Deploy API: JSON to API
I’m working on a series of simple scripts that help people deploy APIs from some of the most common data sources. I’m starting with a series of PHP scripts, and next up is JSON to API. For this PH...
October 21, 2013
#JSON
Government API Opportunities: Bureau of Labor Statistics
I’m working to expand my awareness of APIs in our federal government by spending time each week discovering, reviewing and trying to brainstorm ways to expand and evolve existing government API eff...
Shutdown of Government Open Data and APIs Is NOT Government Services Business As Usual
During the recent federal government shutdown many sources of open data and APIs were suddenly rendered unavailable, including the flagship Data.gov. As government workers went home and lights were...
API and OAuth Literacy Is As Important As Financial Literacy in the API Economy
The primary mission of API Evangelist is to spread awareness of APIs amongst the masses, expanding the audience beyond just the IT crowd, and developer community. Initially I wanted to make sure bu...
Foundry Group Makes Investment In The Open Standards, API Driven, JavaScript Approach Of MapBox
On June 29th, 2006, Google launched Google Maps API allowing developers to put Google Maps on their own sites using JavaScript. The API launch was just shy of 6 months after the release of Google M...
Visual Notes From My Talk On APIs And The Future of Education At OpenVA
Audrey and I went up to University of Mary Washington yesterday and participated in the #OpenVa discussion, where I gave a presentation on the importance of APIs and how they will play a significan...
Two Weeks Until API Strategy & Practice in San Francisco
I’m working through the schedule for API Strategy & Practice Conference (#APIStrat) in San Francisco, preparing for the 3Scale / API Evangelist produced event October 23rd through 25th. I’m pr...
October 12, 2013
#Strategy
Two Weeks Until API Strategy & Practice in San Francisco
I’m working through the schedule for API Strategy & Practice Conference (#APIStrat) in San Francisco, preparing for the 3Scale / API Evangelist produced event October 23rd through 25th. I’m pr...
October 12, 2013
#Strategy
From Extract, Transform & Load To Input, Process and Output With Delray
I spend a lot of time finding valuable data sets and manually converting, processing and outputting into more usable formats, so that they can be used in APIs that drive mobile and web applications...
October 12, 2013
#Process
From Extract, Transform & Load To Input, Process and Output With Delray
I spend a lot of time finding valuable data sets and manually converting, processing and outputting into more usable formats, so that they can be used in APIs that drive mobile and web applications...
October 12, 2013
#Process
Access, Interoperability, Privacy and Security Of Technology Will Set The Stage For The Future of Education
In 2010 when I started API Evangelist I saw the technological potential of APIs, but while the rest of the online space was focused on what APis could do for developers, I was focused on what APIs ...
How To Defrag Your Brain and Tech Career In November
I spend the year going from city to city, attending conferences, meet-ups and hackathons–speakng, networking and doing the things that makes my world go around. Every November I find myself a littl...
The Backend As A Service Space Is Maturing
I just got off the phone with a new Backend as a Service provider BizMobify, who is looking to deliver BaaS services to the enterprise. The timing for the call couldn’t be better, as I’m updating u...
October 9, 2013
#Backend
Can We Depend On Federal Government APIs?
The federal government shutdown today. At the Department of Veterans Affairs we are still working through next monday, so it was business as usual today for me. One of my projects is preparing a l...
Providing Access To Services That Help Americans With Their Food Security Using APIs
I had the pleasure to connect with the talented Code for America fellow, Moncef Belyamani(@monfresh) this week and talk about a very meaningful API project, called the Ohana API. “The Ohana API is...
Start With Your Public Website When You Begin Your Inventory For Data APIs
I’m working on taking inventory of data assets at the Department of Veterans Affairs. While eventually this will include private data assets, in the beginning we are focusing on data that can be ma...
Github Can Be the POST and PUT Layer For Federal Government APIs
I’m playing with different approaches to rapidly design, develop, deploy and manage APIs using Github. While about 90% of what I’m building runs on Github, there is still about 10% that runs on Ama...
A Huge Need for Writeable APIs in Government
I asked a question on Twitter last night: Any examples of government APIs that allow for write (POST, PUT, PATCH) capabilities? I’m looking for existing agencies who have implemented already. While...
September 25, 2013
#Government
Excel and CSV Conversion to JSON and XML in JavaScript That Runs 100% on Github
When it comes to building applications within the federal government, there are numerous road-blocks to innovation. I’m currently assisting with the inventorying of open data assets at the Departme...
HTML to Markdown API
I’m slowly getting my blog world in order after the move from my own proprietary blogging platform to using Github + Jekyll hosted using Github Pages. I’ve been using HTML pages for blog posts at ...
IRS Modernized e-File (MeF): A Blueprint For Public & Private Sector Partnerships In A 21st Century Digital Economy (DRAFT)
Download as PDF The Internal Revenue Service is the revenue arm of the United States federal government, responsible for collecting taxes, the interpretation and enforcement of the Internal Revenu...
IRS Modernized e-File (MeF): A Blueprint For Public & Private Sector Partnerships In A 21st Century Digital Economy (DRAFT)
Download as PDF The Internal Revenue Service is the revenue arm of the United States federal government, responsible for collecting taxes, the interpretation and enforcement of the Internal Revenu...
API Monetization In The Internet of Things @ Nordic APIs
I have a panel this week at Nordic APIs called Business Models in an Internet of Things, with Ellen Sundh (@ellensundh) of Coda Collective, David Henricson Briggs of Playback Energy, Bradford Steph...
Using Excel For Crowdsourced Data Gathering And Reporting
I was impressed with some of the data journalism behind the recent NPR story, Playgrounds For Everyone, a community-edited guide to accessible playgrounds. The story is definitely an important one...
September 13, 2013
#Data
The Perils Of API Transport Over The Public Internet
George Reese has a very interesting post from last week over at O’Reilly. It is about an earlier post he did on the unpublished Tesla REST API. I’ll let you read the post, “The Myth of the Private ...
September 13, 2013
A Masking, Scrubbing, Anonymizing API
In government there is a fear of exposing public data via APIs–rightfully so. This is not just a government concern, it exists in all industries within each an every business and organization. We a...
The Spreadsheet Will Play A Central Role In The API Space
The more I immerse myself in government, I’m reminded of the central role that the spreadsheet plays in our business and government operations–primarily Microsoft Excel, but also in some circles, t...
September 9, 2013
#Spreadsheet
Loosely Coupled Services
Building off a similar topic this week, I was asked to dumb down or explain what I meant by “Loosely Coupled Services”, alongside a “Library of Modular Services”. In this case, loosely couple means...
September 7, 2013
#Services
Library of Modular Services
I’m always looking for simpler and more concise language to describe API, while writing stories and white papers for my audience. I recently used the phrase “library of modular web services”, in a ...
I Am Always Amazed At How Little People Understand About Github
I work with some seriously smart people on a day to day basis, virtually across the web, and in person on some of the projects I’m working on in federal government. Much like APIs, Github is fast b...
Building Internet of Things Products? You Better Secure It, Says the FTC
The Federal Trade Commission(FTC) just settled a case with web-enabled camera maker TRENDnet, signaling the government agency’s first action against an Internet of Thing’s company. The FTC’s compl...
API of API Keyword Searches
I was working on series of API endpoints this week, each of them had a basic search parameter, allowing you pass a keyword to filter your API request. Pretty standard stuff. After deploying the AP...
September 5, 2013
#Search
Am I Going to See You @NordicAPIs in Sweden, September 18th & 19th?
There is a growing number of API conferences going on this year in the US, but the hunger for API knowledge isn’t just something going on in this country, we are seeing a demand for API information...
September 4, 2013
Am I Going to See You @NordicAPIs in Sweden, September 18th & 19th?
There is a growing number of API conferences going on this year in the US, but the hunger for API knowledge isn’t just something going on in this country, we are seeing a demand for API information...
September 4, 2013
Private Sector Sharing The Load Through Government APis
When it comes to APIs, people respond to stories about real world examples, even more than solid technological implementations. If you can demonstrate how APIs are actually providing a solution, yo...
Baseline for Federal Government Open Data and API Portals
I have a whole list of projects around open data and APIs at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Additionally I have numerous other open data and API projects I’d like to tackle across other f...
Pick Your Head Up Regularly, Heads Down is Good, But Being Aware Cannot Be Ignored
One important thing I’ve learned while running API Evangelist, is the importance of picking your head up from your work on a regular basis, and tuning into the world around me. When you are running...
Kicking The API Strategy & Practice Conference Into Full Gear
While we officially launched API Strategy & Practice, San Francisco edition back in May, we’ve been pretty quiet during the summer months. Well, now summer is coming to a close, and we are now ...
August 28, 2013
#Strategy
Kicking The API Strategy & Practice Conference Into Full Gear
While we officially launched API Strategy & Practice, San Francisco edition back in May, we’ve been pretty quiet during the summer months. Well, now summer is coming to a close, and we are now ...
August 28, 2013
#Strategy
The API Space Often Seems To More About Money, Intellectual Property and Competition, Than Interoperability Sometimes
I used to think that the API space is resistant to defining standards around REST, data formats, webhooks, hypermedia, api definitions and other key areas of the space, because after the top down, ...
Sitemap for APIs
When it comes to API discovery, as an industry we haven’t been able to find a satisfactory technological solution yet. While I often feel the right approach hasn’t emerged yet, I think we are just ...
August 27, 2013
#Sitemap
API Testing and Monitoring Finding A Home In Your Companies Existing QA Process
I’ve been doing API Evangelist for three years now, a world where selling APIs to existing companies outside of Silicon Valley, and often venture capital firms is a serious challenge. While APis ha...
With APIs In Your Company, Start Small And Read API Evangelist
I thoroughly enjoy the assortment of emails, LinkedIn messages and phone calls I get from people in the SMB and enterprise, letting me know the role my blog plays in them starting, cultivating and ...
August 24, 2013
#Evangelist
View CSV and TSV Data Files In Table Views Directly On Github
Github is really doing some cool stuff to help open data folks manage and share their data. They just launched the ability to render data from .csv (comma-separated) and .tsv (tab-separated) files...
To The Audrey Watters Haters
I’ve had the joy of watching a lot of you bash on my girlfriend, from the misogynistic douche bags telling her to get back in the kitchen because she questions their technology startup, to the rece...
Delivering Value For Developers Is First When It Comes To The Census Bureau APIs
I wrote a piece about providing a full download vs. API last month, where I used the Census Bureau API as an example. The post got the attention of the folks at the Census, and they invited me out ...
Time Tracking Platform Harvest Moves API Docs and App Showcase to Github
Time Tracking API platform Harvest has embraced Github as part of their API ecosystem. I’m always on the hunt for examples of API providers using Github, so I figured I’d showcase Harvest’s creativ...
API Skills Alongside Web In Developers Toolbox
As I immerse myself in the federal government, I have left my private sector world where web APIs have become commonplace. Sure I still worked hard to get outside of Silicon Valley and reach out fu...
What API Documentation Do You Suggest?
As I spend time in Washington DC, I get a lot of questions regarding API design, deployment and management. It is quite likely my writing will evolve here at API Evangelist during the next year. Yo...
August 16, 2013
#Documentation
API Craft - SOA vs API?
This is from a question I answered on the API Craft Forum tonight titled: SOA vs API? I happened to look at the slide and also related video but unfortunately still do not have a crystal clear vi...
August 16, 2013
#SOA
Moving Beyond the Constraints of Commercial API Design With The Public Media Platform
There are just a handful of API platforms that I feel have greatly impacted the world of APIs and were significant in leading the space in important ways. These platforms include, but are not limit...
Simplifying oAuth With oAuth.io
Securely accessing API with oAuth can be one of the bigger pains in the ass for developers. Poor understanding of how oAuth works and often lack of good client libraries, can make API authenticatio...
Simplifying oAuth With oAuth.io
Securely accessing API with oAuth can be one of the bigger pains in the ass for developers. Poor understanding of how oAuth works and often lack of good client libraries, can make API authenticatio...
Have A Bunch Of Documents? Launch An API With Apache Solr
In this computer driven business world its easy to end up with a mess of documents across a company’s network. No matter how much you try to organize, name and add metadata to documents, providing ...
August 13, 2013
#Documents
My First Day in Washington DC As Presidential Innovation Fellow
Tomorrow, will be my first official day in Washington D.C. as a Presidential Innovation Fellow. I’m super excited, yet also very calm about what is happening. It seems like it is so meant to be, th...
August 11, 2013
#Innovation
Overview of API Integration
Overview of API Integration Integrating with a single API can be tough, let alone multiple APIs. I see integration being about on-boarding, exploration, education, authentication, code samples, te...
Evolving Beyond Open: The Runscope Community Projects Model
The word “open” gets thrown around a lot in the API space. So much in fact, the term has lost just about any meaning. We don’t say “open API” anymore, we identify an API as public, partner or priva...
Delivering Your API as a Virtual Appliance
Sentiment analysis and social media analytics API provider Repustate is providing a virtualized, portable, on-premise version of its API--adding a new twist to the concept of API deployment. Using...
All You Can Eat Buffet of Developer Tools at Splunk
During my monitoring of the API space this week, I came across an interesting blog post from data platform Splunk, showcasing the tools they provide for developers who are putting their real-time d...
August 8, 2013
#Tools
The Federal Government Deploys Their Own API Management Solution
Some of the smart people in Washington D.C. have decided to roll their own API management solution, providing their own open source solution to many of the common problems faced by API providers li...
Securing Your API 101
I get a lot of questions from folks about the why, when and how of securing an API. And in keeping in sync with my audience, I wanted to provide a plain english story of securing your API, avoiding...
August 2, 2013
#101
Giving Excel Power Users The API Driven Resources They Need
I’ve been an advocate for non-developers being one of the most important audiences for your API, since I started API Evangelist. I know us developers love to believe we are the primary force behind...
Warming Up With The 100K View of API Management
This is my first blog post, following a very nice week, offline in Maine. I have purposely setup the API Evangelist network to be a mesh network of API research project nodes, allowing anyone to to...
Providing APIs - Design, Deployment, Management
Since 2010 I have had a page on this site dedicated to “API Management”. In 2013 the API universe expanded, and I’ve broken my work in this area into three separate, open source API research projec...
Primary Surface Area of My Online Identity
I am always working to define myself, in both the physical world and the virtual one that has become an increasing part of my identity. As part of this work, I’m spending some time trying to unders...
July 28, 2013
#Identity
Analytics For Both API Providers and Consumers
I’m going through all of my bulding blocks and tools for API management, as I’m updating and expanding this area of the API Evangelist network. After doing this work, I’m surprised that are aren’t ...
The Next Decade is Going to Be A Wild Ride
I turned 41 in June. As I retool, reboot and readjust during what I guess could be called “vacation”, I’m reflecting on the last year and the major shift that has gone on in my world. First off, t...
The Flickr API Will Be Unavailable
I received an email from Flickr today about a planned API outage later this month. I’m an afficinado of the interesting ways API providers communicate around maintenance and outages within their ec...
July 19, 2013
#ai
Take That Data Dump Access To Your Organizations Database And Build Your API
I have a long, winding history of database administration in my past. I’ve been managing databases since my first job working on school district databases in the State of Oregon in 1988. So I’ve be...
Providing Full Data Download vs API
I’ve had so many discussions on this topic, I felt like I had written a post on it, but when the topic came up again today, I realized I hadn’t. This is a regular conversation I get into with open ...
July 19, 2013
#Data
A Glimpse At The Future of API Driven Analytics
I’m rapidly expanding the areas I track on in the world of APIs, trying to understand the myriad ways APIs are influencing interoperability between companies and platforms, being applied alongside ...
July 19, 2013
#Analytics
From Github Issue To Story to Resource
As an evangelist, your responsibility is to get the word out about an API, and provide users with the resources they will need to be successful. While executing on your evangelism strategy, there ...
July 17, 2013
#Github
The Next Iteration of Government Data
Our federal government is working on the next iteration of Data.gov, and just published a first look at what is being called Next.Data.Gov. This next version is meant to build off the momentum of t...
Stories Are Essential To Success of Open Data in Government
When I first started API Evangelist, I quickly saw that there was more to this whole API game, beyond just the technology. Simple, logical, technological solutions like REST and JSON are essential,...
Virtual Containers, Stacks, APIs And Application Management
I’ve been trying to organize my thoughts around emerging trends in using virtualized app containers, that are providing a much more modular approach to deploying and managing application backends. ...
Dropbox As Default File Storage API For Apps
I was working my way through all the Dropbox news that came out of the DBX Conference over the weekend. There was some pretty savvy moves by the cloud storage provider, continuing its evolution tow...
July 15, 2013
#Storage
Simple API Example: Company Listing
I’m always looking for dead simple examples of what an API is to help average folk understand what APIs are, and how they can be applied in their worlds. My current research on backend as a servic...
Hacker Storytelling: Open and Machine Readable By Default
The primary reason I’m switching all of my 35+ research projects in the API space to my new Hacker Storytelling format, is to make everything I do open and machine readable by default. Every proje...
Building Blocks
Building Blocks At API Evangelist I define things in terms of building blocks, meant to establish, easy to understand modules you can pick and choose from as part of any strategy, including API ma...
APIs Will Expose Toxic Material Behind Firewall
After looking back at 2012, I wanted a January 1, 2013 blog post for my blogs. My first blog post of 2012 was my tour schedule for January, 2012. While it was a pretty busy time for evangelizing an...
July 12, 2013
#Toxic
Balancing Commercial, Non-Commercial, Privacy and Ownership In The World of APIs
I just spent 30 minutes on the phone with an important group in the European Union called OPENi, which is aiming to be an open-source, web-based, framework for integrating applications with cloud-b...
Deploying Your API From PaaS Using Salesforce and Heroku
The world of API management is expanding, and to support this growth I’ve broke up my research into three separate buckets: API design, API deployment and API management. Zooming in on API deploym...
Another Embeddable Tool That Will Go Down In History: Github Ribbons
Simple, embeddable tools can be one of the most powerful tool in an API evangelists toolbox. While there was a wide variety of forces that were at play in the social API evolution, contributing to ...
APIs Provide Much Needed Oxygen and Sunlight In Our World
APIs are providing much needed access and visibility into the backend technology that is increasingly driving our desktops, laptops, mobile phones and beginning its migration into our homes, cars a...
July 9, 2013
The Continuing Netflix API Story
I have written about the well publicized failure of the Netflix public API before, and how in the API space things are often not what they seem. By my measurement Netflix is a massive API success s...
API Evangelist, Healthcare.gov and Hacker Storytelling
I’ve been slowly evolving API Evangelist from a single site, into an interconnected network of individual API projects. API Evangelist started as a research project back in July 2010, making its sh...
API Evangelist, Healthcare.gov and Hacker Storytelling
I’ve been slowly evolving API Evangelist from a single site, into an interconnected network of individual API projects. API Evangelist started as a research project back in July 2010, making its sh...
The Resource Stack
I’ve been organizing much of my research around APIs into groupings that I call “stacks”. The term allows me to loosely bundle common API resources into meaningful “stacks” for my readers to learn ...
July 1, 2013
The Expanding API Evangelist Network
As the API universe expands, I’m trying my best to stay in tune with where its going and try to help people understand the space, whether you are a newbie or API veteran–I want you to find what you...
Trends in API Aggregation
One trend in API usage I’m closely watching is the aggregation of APIs by a new wave of startups. As the world adopts more cloud services, the need to aggregate content across multiple APIs is grow...
June 29, 2013
#Aggregation
Webhook as a Service
While I was at API Days this weekend in San Francisco, I managed to catch a handful of talks Saturday afternoon after I landed at OAK. While listening to each talk, I kept hearing one technical API...
June 27, 2013
#Web
InstructureCon Keynote: [Kin spoke here about the history of APIs and what APIs do.]
I had several important things happen over the last week. One of them was sharing the stage for the first time with my partner in crime, Audrey Watters (@audreywatters). Although I spent most of t...
June 26, 2013
InstructureCon Keynote: [Kin spoke here about the history of APIs and what APIs do.]
I had several important things happen over the last week. One of them was sharing the stage for the first time with my partner in crime, Audrey Watters (@audreywatters). Although I spent most of t...
June 26, 2013
API Evangelist Goes to Washington
The news is finally out. I will be heading to Washington DC to spend a year as a White House Innovation Fellow. APIs, open data and our government has been a passion of mine for my whole career, so...
June 24, 2013
#Evangelist
A Great Time At API Days San Francisco
I went to API Days SF yesterday. Unfortunately, due to an unexpected obligation on the other coast I was unable to make it in time for the Friday kick-off. But after my plane landed at OAK yesterda...
June 23, 2013
#Time
APIs As The Default for Companies by 2015
APIs are quickly moving into the mainstream. In 2012, companies, organizations and government agencies all took notice of the need for deploying and consuming APIs. In 2013 there is still a lot of ...
June 22, 2013
Connect With Linguistics API Apicultur While They Are In San Francisco
I went to Spain at the beginning of the month to speak at API Days. While there I had the pleasure of connecting with the team from Apicultur. If you are not familiar with Apicultur, they are a pla...
Updated API History White Paper
Understanding our history is critical to understanding where we are going. I have been studying the history of web APIs for the last three years. Even though I have been through the API strategies...
June 17, 2013
#History
My First Keynote With The Infamous Audrey Watters
I’m doing a keynote this weekend with the infamous, edtech rabble-rouser Audrey Watters (@audreywatters) at InstructureCon in Park City Utah, this Wednesday June 19th. Audrey and I will be talking...
June 17, 2013
Are You Going To Be At API Days in San Francisco? I Am!
Coming on the heels of API Days Mediterranea in Madrid Spain, is the next event in the series, API Days San Francisco. We kicked off the API Days event series in Paris, at the end of last year, and...
History of APIs - Twilio
In 2007, Twilio launched as a groundbreaking API-as-a-product platform, introducing a voice API that enabled developers to make and receive phone calls through any cloud application. Over the next ...
API Providers Guide - API Design
Download as PDF In the early days, APIs were just about deployment and consumption–you were doing one or the other. Then from 2006 to 2012 API management was introduced from providers like Masher...
History of APIs - Mashery
In November 2006, API the first API service provider Mashery came out of “stealth mode” to offer documentation support, community management and access control for companies wishing to offer public...
June 10, 2013
#History
Box Opens Up Revenue Sharing For API Developers
Enterprise content sharing platform box launched a new developer revenue sharing program for its API developer ecosystem, called $rev. Box $rev is pretty straightforward. You just integrate the Bo...
A Book API Platform
In the last two years I’ve seen the emergence of cloud platforms that focus on helping data administrators, owners and stewards, generate APIs from their data sources. The new cloud services like...
June 10, 2013
#Platform
History of APIs - del.icio.us
Del.icio.us was a social bookmarking service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. It was founded by Joshua Schachter in 2003. Del.icio.us implemented a simple tagging system that al...
June 9, 2013
#History
API Management Using Github
There are plenty of tools and services you can use to manage your API and its developer community. But there is no platform that provides as much benefit and versatility as Github. Github is a soc...
In The End API Providers Will Only Sell Bandwidth
I got an email from IFTTT last night, simply stating: As of today, IFTTT has stopped supporting the Posterous Channel. The Channel has been removed, along with any Recipes that made use of Poster...
June 6, 2013
#Providers
The Build-Up To #APIStrat in October
After just a couple months of REST and relaxation, the build up to API Strategy & Practice SF is kicking into gear. We officially launched the new site for San Francisco last week, featuring th...
June 5, 2013
#APIStrat
APIdays Mediterranea Is A Wrap
I just got back from Madrid, Spain, where I spoke at APIdays Mediterranea. I really enjoy the API Days format, because the events are small, intimate API learning and networking opportunities. Whi...
Helping EFF Urge The Courts to Block Copyright Claims in Oracle v. Google API Fight
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently filed a a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, urging the court to block copyright claims in the Oracle v. Google legal batt...
Helping EFF Urge The Courts to Block Copyright Claims in Oracle v. Google API Fight
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently filed a a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, urging the court to block copyright claims in the Oracle v. Google legal batt...
Have You Checked Out Webshell Lately?
Have you checked out what the Webshell.io team is up to lately? I know I haven’t been in there for a couple months, and it looks like they’ve been heads down making some interesting improvements. ...
May 29, 2013
#Web
API Aggregation For Federal Government with FedAPI
I’ve been tracking on what I call API aggregation for some time now. I started seeing the API aggregation trends in 2010, then I saw this pick up in 2011 with the emergence of providers like Singly...
The API Stack for May 20th, 2013
Expansion is in the air. Quarterly reports are in, we are moving into summer and companies like Twilio, Evernote, Salesforce and Foursquare are expanding and growing at healthy, steady paces. Mobi...
May 28, 2013
Signals I Use To Monitor Companies In The API Space
Over the last year I’ve worked hard to standardize and automate as much of my monitoring of the API space as I can. The amount of information I was monitoring daily was getting overwhelming–I neede...
New Features From BaaS Provider AnyPresence
I’m adding some new BaaS features I found in a recent press release from BaaS provider AnyPresence titled, “AnyPresence Launches 4th-Generation Mobile Backend-as-a-Service Platform with Unparallele...
API Management Using APiphany
I’m working my way through all the API management providers, making sure I’m up to speed on what service each provider is offering these days. As part of this work I’ve been playing with the Apipha...
Github Can Be More Than Code
I have been using Github to manage my code for a couple years now, but in the last year I’m using Github more often for a variety of projects that don’t always have code involved–examples ranging f...
Quick Demonstration Showing The Benefits of The White House Digital Strategy
I wanted to share a quick visualization of the beneifts of Barack Obama’s Presidential directive that every Federal Government agency should have an API, following Executive Order 13571, and part o...
IRS Needs To Use White House Open Data Policy For Guidance
I’m reading IRS: Turn Over a New Leaf, Open Up Data, from the Open Knowledge Foundation blog. I’ll let you read it in its entirety, but these are the points that are sticking with me: One of Mr...
Salesforce Adds Sandbox Templates
Salesforce is doing some pretty interesting stuff with the sandbox environment for DeveloperForce. Using the DeveloperForce sandbox you can create copies of your data, allowing you to develop, tes...
Multi-Tenancy with WSO2 API Manager
I just had a demo of some of the new features in the WSO2 API Manager. Since WSO2 is one of my partners, I have a regular call with them to discuss the space and I often get demos of their new prod...
Dropbox As Your Apps Default File System
Cloud storage of documents is becoming commonplace. Individuals, companies, government and non-government organizations have increasingly seen the potential of storing files in the cloud using serv...
DataSift's Open Source World
I’m increasingly finding a company’s approach to using Github, a vital signal of the health of a company, their team, and the products and services they are delivering. An example of this is with ...
DataSift's Open Source World
I’m increasingly finding a company’s approach to using Github, a vital signal of the health of a company, their team, and the products and services they are delivering. An example of this is with ...
An Open Source Code Catalog for your API
I’m working through the wave of API innovation coming out of our Federal Government recently. During normal days at API Evangelist, I’m pulling private sector API usage examples and crafting them i...
Ember, Angular, Backbone, Single Page Applications and APIs
I was looking through Steve Willmott’s slide deck from his talk at GlueCon this week, called The API- & App-ification of the Web. He talks about the evolution towards Single Page Web Applicati...
May 23, 2013
#Applications
APIs in DFW
I just got back from the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I visited Dallas last night to help kick off the first gathering of the DFW API Professionals Meetup. We got together at Microsoft around 6PM and I...
May 15, 2013
The Dark Matter That Make APIs Work
I encounter many enterprise folks who dismiss APIs as nothing more that just one of the technical building blocks of SOA. Folks who, no matter how much I explain, will never see APIs beyond a techn...
May 13, 2013
Potential for API Aggregators to Provide Valuable Industry Data
I’ve been tracking on a trend in the API space that I call API aggregation. Companies like Singly and Adigami are aggregating APIs into more meaningful API stacks, than any single API provider can ...
My Talk Tomorrow Night at the Dallas-Forth Worth API Professionals Meetup
After looking through the list of folks who have RSVP’d for the DFW API Professionals Meetup in Dallas tomorrow night, it looks like an interesting mix of tech and business folk. The tech group is ...
May 13, 2013
Adding API Broker Under Monitoring for API Aggregators
As I’m monitoring the API space I’m trying to create meaningful grouping for companies to belong when tracking API trends. My groupings are sometimes in alignment with what we hear in the tech blog...
When API Success Signals Begin Working Against You
Curently I’m immersed in discovering, vetting and tracking on signals that show me which companies are trending in the API space. I’m looking for signals that will tell me which companies are makin...
May 10, 2013
#ai
Twitters Developer Area is More Embeddable Than API
Does anyone else notice the evolution of the Twitter developer area? The site has taken a page from the LinkedIn playbook and become more about embeddable buttons, badges and widgets than about API...
Overview Of Backend as a Service (BaaS) White Paper
Space”) I’ve been working on expanding the amount of research and writing I can do via API Evangelist lately. In the last couple weeks I rolled out new projects in three areas: API Toolkits, API T...
Get To Know Which Languages Your API Developers Are Using
Accounting API platform Xero has been taking a deeper look into the languages that their developers are using when integrating with the Xero API. Currently there are 1,600 active applications commu...
May 8, 2013
#Developers
Make Sure And Have Multiple KPIs For Your APIs
In the API space, we have to be constantly measuring and looking for signals that will help us understand where we should be focusing our resources, as part of an overall strategy. One of the ways ...
May 7, 2013
API Enabled Toys For Our Children
When it comes to the Internet of Things, APIs have a bright future. I tend to focus on the greater good when showcasing APIs, but occasionally I get tripped up by the market potential of APIs. I ca...
The Future Is About Virtualized Operating Systems
BaaS stacks have the potential to be the operating of the next generation of computing. BaaS has a lot of the characteristics of what we have historically defined as an OS, but tailored for apps th...
May 5, 2013
#Systems
Summing It All Up
BaaS is an evolution. Its not a revolution, gamer changer or ground breaking new technology. It is a logical response to the demand for mobile applications and how to logically bring together ind...
Investment in BaaS
As BaaS evolves, we are seeing the huge investment from numerous start-ups, as well as grabbing the attention of a handful of larger tech companies, but we are also seeing the first signs of major ...
May 5, 2013
#Investment
Who Are The Top BaaS Providers?
The definition of what is a BaaS provider has not just an evolving meaning, but also means different things to different people. API Evangelist is looking to help define the space, and formulate a ...
May 4, 2013
#Providers
Who Are The Other BaaS Providers?
While there are clearly leaders in the BaaS movement, there are 37 other companies working to make their mark on the space and serve the mobile app developer community. Each of these providers have...
May 4, 2013
What Makes BaaS Relevant to APIs?
Unless you are a BaaS provider or a mobile application developer, the linkage between BaaS and APIs may not be immediately clear. But once you study the space, you quickly notice that APIs are the ...
May 4, 2013
What Are The Other Approaches to BaaS Pricing?
API calls and passing on cloud storage costs are the most common ways to approach BaaS pricing. But beyond these two areas, there are numerous other ways BaaS providers are pricing BaaS services f...
May 4, 2013
#Pricing
What Are The Opportunities in BaaS?
API Evangelist doesn’t focus on market or investment opportunities. I keep an eye out for product and innovation opportunities, which are a much different beast. These represent places where there ...
What Are The Common Building Blocks of BaaS?
After reviewing the top BaaS providers like Appcelerator, Appery.io Kinvey, Parse and StackMob, a pattern of building blocks begin to emerge. Building blocks that BaaS providers are using to assemb...
What Are the Common Approaches to BaaS Pricing?
The approaches to BaaS pricing are still evolving. Most of the providers have gone with an API call or storage cost approach to pricing, but there still is much debate about just which pricing mod...
May 4, 2013
#Pricing
Watch Out As 1000lb Gorillas Set Their Sights on BaaS Space!
The mobile app development space has grown into such an opportunity, it has begun to attract the attention of some of the heaviest hitters in the API space, Amazon Web Services, SalesForce and Rack...
Overview Of The Backend as a Service (BaaS) Space
Prepared By Kin Lane May 2013 Table of Contents Backend as a Service What is BaaS? How Does BaaS Differ From IaaS and PaaS? What Are The Benefits of BaaS? What ...
What Does The API Evangelist Do?
I sent three emails this morning to people, explaining what it is that I do and how they can get involved. This process reminded me that I need to do the same here via the blog on a regular basis, ...
May 2, 2013
#Evangelist
Startups Need To Work Together on API Definitions
I am tracking on 2000 APIs that I have deemed worthy enough to pay attention, out of the 9000 on ProgrammableWeb, 13,000 in APIHub and numerous APIs in Mashape’s marketplace. In addition to these A...
I Am Speaking At The Dallas-Forth Worth API Professionals Meetup May 14th
Hey everyone. I’m heading out to the Dallas-Fort Worth area the week after next, Tuesday, May 14, to kick off the DFW API Professionals Meetup. TheRightAPI team were so kind to invite me out to sp...
How Much Do You Spend Attracting and Supporting Freemium API Developers?
I had a question from an API owner land in my inbox. It is regarding the amount of attention and resources that should be spent on on-boarding new customers. Directly from the email: How would ...
Parse Is Successful By Truly Solving Problems for Mobile Developers
I don’t personally use Parse or any other backend as a service (BaaS) provider to build mobile applications. I’m just playing role as analyst when it comes to the backend as a service space, but I ...
API Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Forego Talking to a Person
Listening to an episode of Traffic and Weather yesterday, renewed a concept that John Sheehan(@johnsheehan), founder of Runscope made in an article he wrote for NextWeb back in March. In the post, ...
Have You Taken A Look At AT&T APis Lately?
Have you taken a moment and looked at the APIs AT&T is offering through their developer program lately? I think it is an interesting spread of API resources for a leading telco to offer, and is...
Have You Taken A Look At AT&T APis Lately?
Have you taken a moment and looked at the APIs AT&T is offering through their developer program lately? I think it is an interesting spread of API resources for a leading telco to offer, and is...
API Trends
I study the API space. I want to understand how we got where we are at, and try to understand where we are going with our usage of APIs. To do this I monitor the best of the existing and new APis...
API Priorities
I spend a lot of time on API Evangelist getting excited about APIs. Going on three years doing this, I’m getting a little more hardened in my view on what is “good” in the API space. Along with tha...
Helping People Understand APIs Through Real World Examples
I’m always looking for easy, dead simple approaches to explaining APIs to people. Having real world examples, that folks can relate with, go along way in helping people wrap their heads around the ...
Evolving Beyond API Service Providers and Tools to Goal Based API Toolkits
As the universe of APIs expands, I’m working to find new ways that I can discover, educate myself, then organize information around the most meaningful areas in the API space. As part of this effor...
APIs & The Federal Government
It is has been a while since I updated any of my research around APIs & the Federal Government. In May 2012, I started monitoring the progress of the White House Digital Strategy, where I setup...
APIs & The Federal Government
It is has been a while since I updated any of my research around APIs & the Federal Government. In May 2012, I started monitoring the progress of the White House Digital Strategy, where I setup...
After Last Couple of Weeks, It's Clear There Is Big Opportunity In The API Space
There was a lot of buzz in the API space over the last two weeks. I’m not a big on being first with news from the world of APIs, I leave this approach to the tech blogs like Techcrunch, RWW, GigaOm...
After Last Couple of Weeks, It's Clear There Is Big Opportunity In The API Space
There was a lot of buzz in the API space over the last two weeks. I’m not a big on being first with news from the world of APIs, I leave this approach to the tech blogs like Techcrunch, RWW, GigaOm...
From CPU to API for Intel
Intel is reportedly buying API service provider Mashery for “a range of $120 million to $180 million”, according to ReadWrite(Web). As I reflect on this, two main questions come to mind: Was it...
I Like Individually Priced API Resources That Flex and Scale
On a regular basis I review my API consumption to evaluate how I’m using various APIs, and what I’m paying for them. I depend on around 20 APIs to make API Evangelist work, and I need to make sure ...
Conflicting Emotions About API Providers
I’m a walking conflict most of the time. You should try being me, it can be tense about 40% of the time. I’ll give you a couple of example of what I mean to help bring you a little closer to what I...
April 17, 2013
#Providers
Initial Thoughts About #ReclaimYourDomain
Obligatory spider web photo, because Jim and Audrey did too! The ability for me to own kinlane.com, point it at a server, host a website and a blog has been an critical part of my online world and...
Some Suggested Elements for Online API Education Platforms
I wrote yesterday’s piece on API education with Codecademy back in February. I didn’t publish because I wanted to do more research on suggested areas of improvement for the Codecademy team to balan...
Imagine What Would Be Possible If Twitter Cards Were Open?
Last week Twitter expanded its Twitter Cards initiative to allow 3rd party app developers to include links to download apps within Tweets, opening up new opportunities for app discovery via Twitter...
How To Get Your Grandma, Mother, Daughter and Sister to Understand APIs
How To Get Your Grandma, Mother, Daughter and Sister to Understand APIs? You stop using gendered approaches when explaining what an API is. I’m not going to cite any of the past or recent examples ...
April 9, 2013
API Education With Codecademy
As I do with many of my stories, I’ve been stewing on the news that online education platform Codecademy started offering API programming lessons for popular APIs like Twilio and NPR back in Januar...
#APIStrat Videos - Laura Merling - 3 Things You Need to Turn Your Enterprise Into A Platform
The first #APIStrat video is here! For those of you who couldn’t make it to the APIStrat in New York last February, or in case you missed some of the sessions, the videos are finally starting to c...
Moving Beyond API Pricing to API Price Reduction
I get a lot of inquiries from API owners about how they should price their API access in a way that will make sense to developers, but also help them generate revenue from their valuable API resour...
April 3, 2013
#Pricing
Usually When Developers Are Mean, It Is About Power
I’ve been programming professionally since 1988, so I’ve been around quite a few developers in my career. There seems to be a lot of moments lately that cause me to look back at this career, reasse...
Providing Plain English Version Of API Terms of Service
I read your Terms of Service is one of the biggest lies on the Internet. We agree to terms of service for each and every service we use online, without ever reading and understanding exactly what w...
The Noun Project API
The Noun Project is soliciting feedback on their upcoming API. If you aren’t familar with The Noun Project, it is a innovative visual language project, that is creating a library of icons that will...
March 28, 2013
#Project
Migrating My Automation Services Beyond Free
I depend on If This Then That (IFTTT) to move data around the cloud. I syndicate blog posts from API Evangelist to Blogger and Tumblr. This isn’t just blind syndication, it is SEO and also plan B...
City of Philadelphia Shares Its Open Data Roadmap
A roadmap is an essential part of a healthy API ecosystem. The transparency and communication that come with providing a roadmap for your API and open data initiative will go a long way in building...
Embeddable API Conversations with Adam of Iris Media
I spent some time drinking IPAs and talking education technology with Audrey (@audreywatters) and a friend of ours Adam Wendt (@skinnyblimp), the COO of Iris Educational Media last week. IRIS Educa...
NASA Challenges Devs to Create Space Object Tracking API
NASA has a pretty cool challenge going on, to create an API for SkyMorph, a database of optical images and catalogs generated by the Near Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) program. According to the NA...
Interactive API Documentation With Swagger
It is becoming more common for API providers to deliver documentation using what’s known as interactive API documentation, instead of the usual static API documentation. Understanding how to use an...
I Support You Adria Richards
Way to go brogrammers. You made sure a bright light in evangelism was partially dimmed tday. Really? With all the shaming that goes on targeted at women, you don’t have balls to take a little sha...
March 21, 2013
#Support
App Design With An Acquire, Process, Publish API Architecture
I’m tracking on a new wave of application frameworks and API centric architecture patterns, that are not just helping deliver the next wave of web & mobile apps, but also bridging, aggregating ...
API Evangelist API
It was inevitable. API Evangelist now has its own API. I had a couple partners ask for more sophisticated access than provided by RSS or JSON dumps out of my platform. So I launched a handful of A...
March 20, 2013
#Evangelist
Web Harvesting to API with Import.io
I had a demo of a new data extraction service today called Import.io. The service allows you to harvest or scrape data from websites and then output in machine readable formats like JSON. This is v...
Web Harvesting to API with Import.io
I had a demo of a new data extraction service today called Import.io. The service allows you to harvest or scrape data from websites and then output in machine readable formats like JSON. This is v...
Startup API Pricing
I wrote about the web to API service Import.io earlier today, and before I close the Evernote for this story, I wanted to highlight something else I thought they did interesting, on their pricing p...
March 19, 2013
#Pricing
Incentivize API Developers With A Mozilla Open Badge Program
Last week Mozilla launched their new Open Badges platform, as an open standard to recognize and verify learning. I immediately started thinking about how it could be applied to APIs for incentivizi...
Google Launches Real Time API and JavaScript Library
Google launched a Realtime API for the Google Drive Platform today. It is the API version of the same functionality available on Google Drive, that allows for you and other collaborators to type, e...
APIs as Art
Audrey (@audreywatters) forwarded a very interesting series of tweets to me yesterday from software artist, writer, and educator Jer Thorp (@blprnt): Has anyone written about APIs as art object...
March 19, 2013
#Art
Database to API With SlashDB
I would say the most common path to an API is from your company’s database. This makes database to API connectors, tools and services a pretty valuable area of the API space. While there will alway...
The API Pipes, From Resource to Last Mile
This post is more rant, and about me working through my thoughts on this subject, which is why its on kinlane.com and not apievangelist.com or apivoice.com. This post is an aggregation of ongoing ...
BeyondGET or OtherVerbs, an Augmented API Platform
I have a idea for a new API platform. Since I do not have any startup aspirations, I prefer setting my ideas free, for anyone to use, instead of acting on them myself. This idea is an evolution fr...
Using The Crunchbase API
Audrey came to me last night and said she had a project that she wanted to tackle, using the CrunchBase API. She wanted to pull a list of education startups that were founded in 2010-2012, showing ...
Braintree Launches JS Library to Help Developers With PCI
Next generation payment provider Braintree just launched a new JavaScript library that helps merchants reduce their PCI scope in a flexible and testable way, which they are calling appropriately Br...
Real-Time Notification Layer Within Your API
This story comes from Phil Leggetter (@leggetter) over at Pusher. Its about a client of theirs, cisimple, which provides continuous delivery services for mobile developers. cisimple just released a...
Pinboard API Tax Proposal
Maciej Ceglowskiis, the founder of popular social bookmarking platform Pinboard,made an interesting proposal over on the Pinboard Google Group: I’ve been thinking about imposing an API tax, the pr...
Business of APIs 2nd Edition
In May 2011 I released a book called the Business of APIs. The book was intended to be an introductory walkthrough for non-technical people, to the world of APIs. I wanted to educate business, orga...
API Badges, Logos and Stickers
I ended up at the Punfork API today for some reason. Full disclosure: “Punchfork has been acquired by Pinterest! Read the announcement. Site shutdown: March 31st, 2013”. Just getting that out of th...
March 15, 2013
#Logo
An Essential Stack of Existing API Resources
I see a lot of new API platforms emerge, and often times you see them deploying their own solutions to problems that are actively solved by top API platforms, and are already adopted by common mobi...
March 14, 2013
#Resources
Top API Platforms Deliver More Node.js Resources for Developers
Node.js, the server-side software system designed for writing scalable Internet applications in JavaScript, seems to be getting more attention lately from top API providers because of its event-dri...
Top API Platforms Deliver More Node.js Resources for Developers
Node.js, the server-side software system designed for writing scalable Internet applications in JavaScript, seems to be getting more attention lately from top API providers because of its event-dri...
An API That Scrubs Personally Identifiable Information From Other APIs
One of the best aspects of being the API Evangelist, is I get to hang out with smart folks, doing gaming changing things across all business sectors. Last week I was able to make it to the API Soci...
March 13, 2013
#Personal
Work On The Next Version Of The Crocodoc API
It looks like the HTML5 document embedding platform Crocodoc is starting to plan the next version of their API. The are being very transparent about the process (which I like), and putting out the ...
Netflix API Is Much More Than A Public API
Netflix has entered the final stages of shuttering its public API last week. Its been coming for a while now, starting in June of 2012, and now is official with the platform no longer accepting new...
March 12, 2013
Five Separate API Event Series In 2013
When it came to API focused events, the only conference there was to attend was the Business of APIs Conference, from Mashery. They have been putting on the conference(correct me if I’m wrong) sinc...
March 12, 2013
#Strategy
#APIStrat Slide Decks Added To Session Page
I added the slide decks for the keynotes and sessions we have so far from API Strategy & Practice to the conference session page. As soon as we get videos, I will be linking them on the session...
March 12, 2013
#APIStrat
SOA vs API - The Humans Win
As the API movement marches forward, it continues to grind against the enterprise and its legacy of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), which increases the frequency at which people ask me, What i...
VCS, How Does Your Portfolio Rate When It Comes To APIs?
As the API Evangelist, I’ve made it my mission to go outside of the Silicon Valley bubble and educate the “normals” about the potential of APIs. In doing this I have conversations with a wide range...
March 7, 2013
Let's Talk APIs In Scandinavia With Nordic APIs
Are you ready for more discussions about APIs? I know I am. :) This time its from our Scandinavian friends, with four events in 2013. Nordic APIs is a series of conferences and events held across S...
March 7, 2013
Let's Talk APIs In Scandinavia With Nordic APIs
Are you ready for more discussions about APIs? I know I am. :) This time its from our Scandinavian friends, with four events in 2013. Nordic APIs is a series of conferences and events held across S...
March 7, 2013
API Driven Voice Architecture
I’m working through lists of APIs and API service providers who I’ve rated pretty highly because of their work in the past, but red flags have gone up because I’ve haven’t seen a blog post, tweet o...
March 6, 2013
#Voice
Mobile and Web Advertising Will Heat Up in 2013 With Heavyweight Advertising APIs
It was interesting to see Amazon step up in the advertising game with the beta release of the Amazon Mobile Ads API this week. I wouldn’t want Amazon getting into my space, when it comes to any API...
Judging an API At First Glance
I’m a little behind in working through my list of new APIs to review. So I’m spending about 3 hours each day going through my list of new APIs accumulated from ProgrammableWeb, Tweets, Bookmarks, G...
Gather Feedback For Your API With UserVoice
I’m looking at new and innovative ways companies are building analytics and visualizations on top of APIs, and one of the new tools I’ve come across is ImpactStory. ImpactStory aggregates altmetric...
Short Sighted Silicon Valley Limits Potential of Data Markets
I’ve been following the great coverage by Paul MIller over at Cloud Ave about whether Infochimps running from the Data Market business, and Discussing Data Markets in New York City. He’s touched on...
Next Generation of API Driven Analytics and Visualizations
API driven analytics and visualizations is one of the new areas of API usage I’m tracking on. There are many “big data” platforms emerging these days, but I’m looking for dead simple tools and serv...
Learn the Mogreet MMS API with GUI API Construction Tool
Hands on, interactive tools are proving to be the most useful way to learn about an API–empowering users to see it in action, and witness the value it delivers. Many companies are doing this by pro...
API Pricing On Complexity, Speed and Support At Apicultur
How to structure pricing for an API is one of the top 5 questions I get from people who are currently planning their API strategy. In my opinion, there is, and never will be a one size fits all API...
A 3rd Party API Showcase for Your API
I stumbled across the Twitter Counter API in my monitoring for the API Stack this morning. The Twitter Counter API allows you to retrieve key metrics on any Twitter account like username, url and a...
March 4, 2013
#Showcase
NYC Evangelist Meetup - February 2013 #APIStrat
During API Strategy & Practice in New York City, there was an awesome gathering of developer evangelists at the Tumblr offices, for the NYC Evangelist Meetup. I got the chance to hang out with...
Services Available From API Evangelist
I’ve had a lot of questions lately about how I make money, and how companies can either support what I do, and / or take advantage of services I offer. So I wanted to take some time to outline the ...
I Want An API
I feel we have done a good job explaining what is an API, why people need APIs, and providing services to manage APIs, but we are falling short on delivering information, tools and services for dep...
Heroku Status and Incident Report Site
Heroku was down for a little while today. I saw the status report and for some reason actually clicked through to the web page. I don’t actually use Heroku, so it doesn’t impact me directly, but I’...
March 2, 2013
#Status
MySQL, PostgreSQL and RDS to API With Emergent One
There are numerous companies, with existing IT infrastructure, who are looking to deploy APIs in 2013. These companies will be deploying APIs using their existing technology teams, or depending on ...
March 1, 2013
API Trends I Am Watching
Photo Credit: AVnet I try to keep API Evangelist a place where API newbies and API experts can both find what they are looking for. To meet this demand I’m constantly moving the site around, tryin...
API Deployment as a Service
APIs are all the rage, anyone should be able launch an API from CSV, Microsoft Excel, Google Spreadsheet or the common databases such as MySQL, PostGres, Amazon RDS, Microsoft SQL Server. Right? I...
March 1, 2013
#Deployment
From ETL to API Reciprocity, Looking at 20 Service Providers
I spent time this week looking at 20, of what I’m calling API reciprocity providers, who are providing a new generation of what is historically known as ETL in the enterprise, to connect, transfer,...
Continue With My API Service As A Guest
Making onboarding with an API as frictionless as possible is one thing I like to study and educate my readers about. While I was studying what I call the API reciprocity space currently, which is a...
February 28, 2013
What Is A Better Word For Governance When It Comes To APIs?
There is a great post by Lorinda Brandon (@lindybrandon) of SmartBear on ProgrammableWeb today called Governance vs Innovation: Do They Have to be Enemies?. She continues a conversation, from API ...
February 27, 2013
#Governance
Merging API Automation and Interoperability Into API Reciprocity
While I’m wading through dictionaries and thesauruses in an effort to find a more appropriate term “governance”, when looking at SOA governance through the API lense--I figured I’d flush out anothe...
API Transparency Report as Essential Building Block
After reading about Google’s release of their transparency report last month, I decided I would be addding API transparency reports to my list of essential building blocks for API owners. Since I w...
February 26, 2013
#Transparency
Which Of The Three OAuth Legs Is The Most Important?
We closed up the API Strategy & Practice Conference (#APIstrat) last friday with a panel called APIs, Platforms and Ecosystem, where I moderated a healthy discussion with Tyler Stalder (@tylers...
February 26, 2013
#OAuth
Freemium API Tools Can Drive Experimentation And Innovation
I’m a firm believer in the power of the freemium model when it comes to APIs. Nothing is as it seems when you are deploying managing or consuming APIs. You have to have room to innovate and iterate...
BaaS Provider Quickblox Offers Unlimited API Calls and Push Notifications
Backend as a Service (BaaS) provider QuickBlox announced new pricing plans, which includes a free tier up to 10GB in traffic and storage, with unlimited API calls and push notifications. The BaaS ...
February 26, 2013
#Offers
75 Features From Across 31 BaaS Providers
I’m currently tracking on 31 backend as a service providers, in an effort to better understand how this new breed of platforms are helping developers build web and mobile apps. After looking at all...
The BaaS Reality TV Show Panel at APIStrat
One of the lively discussions at the API Strategy & Practice conference in NYC last week was the backend as a service (BaaS) panel I moderated towards the end of the first day. We brought toge...
February 25, 2013
#APIStrat
Get A List Of All Classes At UC Berkeley With API Call
I see a lot of dead simple, yet meaningful uses of APIs come across my desk (I don’t have a desk, why do I keep saying this?) each day. One I saw today is something every school, whether K-12, coll...
Exactly the API Strategy & Practice Conference I Envisioned
Its the Monday morning after the API Strategy & Practice Conference. The conference went off without a hitch, and was exactly the conference I envisioned when 3Scale first contacted me seven mo...
February 25, 2013
#Strategy
Exactly the API Strategy & Practice Conference I Envisioned
Its the Monday morning after the API Strategy & Practice Conference. The conference went off without a hitch, and was exactly the conference I envisioned when 3Scale first contacted me seven mo...
February 25, 2013
#Strategy
Stripe Adds Jquery Tools To Its API Embed Strategy
The payment API provider Stripe released a jQuery payment tool, a general purpose library for building credit card forms, validating input, and formatting numbers. The library was developed to supp...
Salesforce Plans to Move Code Share to Github
Salesforce has a pretty cool Code Share area within the DeveloperForce ecosystem, which allows developers to share code snippets with the rest of the community. Its a pretty cool way for anyone to...
Google Launches HTML Game Development Course with Udacity
Google is using the online learning platform Udacity to teach developers about game development. The new HTML Game Development course (CS255), is the online classroom for the programming class, cou...
AWS API Reference Architecture
I was checking out the updates to the AWS Reference Architecture, where they provide blueprints for how you can use AWS. In this version AWS provides an e-commerce architecture reference–providing ...
The 72 Companies Speaking At API Strategy & Practice
The API Strategy & Practice Conference is happening next week in NYC. I have had so much fun pulling together the schedule of keynotes, panels, sessions and the talks on the 429 - Too Many Req...
February 12, 2013
The 72 Companies Speaking At API Strategy & Practice
The API Strategy & Practice Conference is happening next week in NYC. I have had so much fun pulling together the schedule of keynotes, panels, sessions and the talks on the 429 - Too Many Requ...
Public Library Operations Machine-Readable By Default
Palo Alto has opened up city data, including operational data about the Palo Alto City Library. Using the Palo Alto City open data portal you can access machine-readable data sets about various asp...
Open Source BaaS Project In The European Union
The Backend as a Service (BaaS) space is picking up momentum in 2013. I’m tracking on 20 BaaS providers, in hopes of better understanding what is being offered in this space. Today I came across an...
Facebook Launches a New Video Channel for Developers
Facebook launched a new video channel last week, dedicated to keeping developers up to date on the latest news, tutorials, speaking sessions from the Facebook developer ecosystem. Facebook is goin...
Bringing ETL to the Masses with APIs
I’m spending a lot of time lately thinking about emerging trends in API usage. One area I’m tracking on, is around companies that are offering simple services that provide interoperability and auto...
February 10, 2013
Which BaaS Pricing Model Is Better?
I’ve been processing a conversation over at Branch, that was triggered by a story in TechCrunch by Sarah Perez(@sarahintampa) called, “StackMob Ratchets Up The Competition: Makes API Calls Free, La...
February 7, 2013
#Pricing
White House Announces Round Two of the Presidential Innovation Fellows
The Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) program, launched last year, bringing in talented individuals from the private sector, to Washington DC for 6-12 month “tours of duty” in the Federal Gover...
February 5, 2013
#Innovation
Augmenting Popular Platforms With New Features Using APIs
There is an interesting post on the Parse blog about instaDM, which is a service built using Parse, the BaaS platform, that provides private messaging in the Instagram ecosystem. This is a very in...
Salesforce Discusses Its Eclipse Plugin Release Approach
Salesforce talked a little bit about its strategy around the development and release strategy around the Salesforce Eclipse plug-in. Providing a little transparency into how they stagger its API r...
Google Adjusts Adwords API Access Tiers
Google is adjusting their pricing model for the Adwords API, acknowledging that having a free usage tier is important. Making the API easier to access, while also ensuring a certain QOS. Google h...
February 4, 2013
#Access
Open By Default for New Generation of API Integrators
I did a presentation at the DC API Meetup, when I was in Washington DC last week. My talk was some of my usual material around the history, business and politics of APIs, but included a section on ...
Deploy and Manage API on Amazon Web Services (AWS)
For the longest time I would get asked, “Which API service provider should I use to deploy my APIs?”. This was a tough question, because historically the API management providers don’t help you dep...
The Scientific Archive of Biodiversity Audio and Video Recordings Needs an API
I was listening to Did You Hear That? I Think It Was The Sound Of A Walrus, on NPR this morning. It is about the Macaulay Library, which is: …the world’s largest and oldest scientific archive o...
February 2, 2013
#Video
The API Evangelist Toolbox
I’ve spent a lot of time lately looking for new tools that will help you plan, develop, deploy and manage APIs. My goal is to keep refining the API Evangelist Tool section to provide complete API ...
One API Discovery Definition to Rule Them All
When I talk about API discovery, in-person at events, or on my blog(s), I notice people automatically default to thinking I mean a universal API discovery language that will work for all web APIs. ...
Method to the Madness
I’m always working to find a way to organize my world, to help me better keep track of my wealth of content and information, while also assisting people in navigating my sometimes chaotic world of ...
Individual API Deployments Will Get Smaller and More Numerous
Master API architect at Layer7 Technologies Mike Amundsen (@mamund) has a great post this week on Four Tech-Related Trends That Will Shape 2013. One of the predictions that caught my eye was that ...
February 2, 2013
#Deployment
API Server Mashups Will Increase But Client Mashups Will Decline
Master API architect at Layer7 Technologies Mike Amundsen (@mamund) has a great post this week on Four Tech-Related Trends That Will Shape 2013. One of the predictions that caught my eye was that ...
February 2, 2013
#Client
Traffic and Weather - Virtualized API Stacks
I recently added the Traffic and Weather podcast to the right hand menu for everyone to enjoy. What John Sheehan (@johnsheehan ) and Steve Marx (@smarx) are doing on the podcast is SO needed in the...
February 1, 2013
Storytelling Is Essential Companion To Open Data and APIs at World Bank
I had the pleasure of being on stage with Tim Herzog (@tgherzog), a Open Data Specialist from the World Bank yesterday at the DC API meetup at NPR. During the QA panel, at the end of the meetup, a ...
New Open Source Backend as a Services Platform for Game Developers
A new player in the Backend as a Service (BaaS) space has emerged, from former OpenFeint co-founder Peter Relan–called OpenKit. The new BaaS platform is targeting game developers, providing cross-...
A Conversation About APIs in Washington DC
I came to Washington DC this week for meetings with a couple federal agencies and a handful of private companies who contract with our government–including a conversation last night at the DC API M...
February 1, 2013
Protecting Your Brand With API Branding Guidelines
One of the top five concerns I hear from companies considering APIs is regarding losing control of their brand. With APIs being about access to raw data and resources, companies immediately think t...
App.net File API And The Opportunity for Private Label BaaS Resources
App.net has just released a File API to add to their messaging and communication stack, allowing any App.net account to natively store files via the social platform. Each App.net account will be g...
January 29, 2013
#Resources
App.net File API And The Opportunity for Private Label BaaS Resources
App.net has just released a File API to add to their messaging and communication stack, allowing any App.net account to natively store files via the social platform. Each App.net account will be g...
January 29, 2013
#Resources
Virtualized API Stacks
Up until now we tend to think of APIs individually–we approach integration in terms of the Twilio API, Twitter API or the Facebook API. But as the number of public APIs has grown beyond 8K, and an ...
January 28, 2013
Does Your API Have a Built in Incubator or Accelerator Program?
API ecosystems are all about research & development, and an opportunity for incubating ideas and apps in a way that invites 3rd party developers and companies to develop innovative ways of usin...
Traffic and Weather Now Available on API Evangelist
I just added a new feature to the right hand menu, for the podcast Traffic and Weather, a podcast about APIs and the cloud from John Sheehan (@johnsheehan) and Steve Marx (@smarx). I’m big podcast...
The Next Generation of API Discovery
For the last seven years, when you wanted to find an API you went to ProgrammableWeb. It has been the definitive way to discover new APIs, and responsible for all the buzz in the space that has got...
I Am Speaking at NPR for the DC API User Group Next Thursday in Washington DC
I am invited to speak at the Washington DC API User Group, next Thursday January 31st 2013, at the NPR offices in Washington D.C. It looks like a pretty sweet linup of people, gathering for API me...
January 24, 2013
#Speaking
Google Goes All In With Github, You Should Too With Your API
Google is migrating samples and tools for App Engine, BigQuery, Compute Engine, Cloud SQL, and Cloud Storage to a new Github account, they are calling the Google Cloud Platform. Google is going al...
January 24, 2013
#Github
Estimating the Number of Non-Public APIs
This post comes from the SDK Bridge newsletter. I find so much value from what Peter and Jonathan do over at SDK Bridge, I always have to post their newsletter here and share with all of you. Pro...
January 24, 2013
Making Transparency Reports Standard Operating Procedure
Google released an update to the Transparency Report today, showing information regarding government requests for users’ data on the Google Network. Google’s transparency report proves details on ...
January 23, 2013
#Transparency
Hacker Storytelling
I love to write. My girlfriend has really help me kindle this passion. Thank you @audreywatters. After 2.5 years of telling stories on API Evangelist, I’ve gotten pretty good at organizing my idea...
January 23, 2013
#Storytelling
Google Drive SDK Early Access Program
Google has an SDK early access program setup for the Google Drive platform, and is inviting a select group of dedicated Google Drive developers to join the program. Giving them access to upcoming G...
WSO2 Now Has API Reporting With Google Analytics
WSO2’s open source API management platform for creating, managing, consuming and monitoring APIs, now has the ability to track API usage through Google Analytics. Since APIs are deployed using HTT...
January 21, 2013
#Analytics
API Strategy & Practice Conference in New York is SOLD OUT!!
It is 30 days until the API Strategy & Practice conference in New York City, February 21st and 22nd, and the event is now sold out! The event will be a 275 person conference focused on discuss...
January 21, 2013
#Strategy
API Strategy & Practice Conference in New York is SOLD OUT!!
It is 30 days until the API Strategy & Practice conference in New York City, February 21st and 22nd, and the event is now sold out! The event will be a 275 person conference focused on discuss...
January 21, 2013
#Strategy
Digital Strategy: 20 Federal Agencies, 76 data API and 75 Mobile API Initiatives
It has been a while since I provided an update on the White House Digital Strategy. I monitor the progress of federal agencies participation programmatically, using JSON reports published by each ...
Six Backend as a Service(BaaS) Providers Discuss the Industry at #APIStrat in NYC
Backend as a Service (BaaS), sometimes called Mobile Backend is a Service (MBaaS) is a growing trend I’m monitoring at API Evangelist. I’m tracking on 20 providers in the space, with two newly adde...
Moving From API Area to API Stack
Finding APIs that compliment your API, and talking about the mutual benefits is nothing new. When I worked with the print API Mimeo, I would write code that used Mimeo API in conjunction with Box A...
January 18, 2013
Markdown APIs and Future of Reporting on Data
I just posted a story on how I like the Guardian’s approach to data journalism, and spending time evolving on last nights thoughts about the possibilities of Markup APIs. As I’m migrating much of ...
January 17, 2013
#Data
API Management Platform Emergent One Launches Free Tier
Emergent One, one of the newest API management players on the block, just announced a new free development tier. The Emergent One platform provides simple, cloud-based tools for connecting to your...
An MMS API For The Next Generation of Mobile Apps
I am a big fan of APIs that do one thing and do it well, like Twilio. I had lunch with the team from a similar API yesterday, called Mogreet. The Mogreet API lets you send and receive text or mult...
Markup APIs and API Scripting Platforms
Over the holidays I added a new section to API Evangelist called “trends”. One of the areas I’m tracking on is what I’m calling “scripting platforms”. While you can program against any API using th...
Googles Embeddable Approach to the Civic Information API
I stumbled across the Google Civic Information API today, which allows developers to build applications around civic information including polling place, early vote location, candidate data, and el...
January 16, 2013
#Embeddable
Netflix Storytelling And Why You Should Tell Stories of Your Platform
The mission of API Evangelist is centered around telling stories from the API space, shedding light on the innovative things developers and API providers are doing across all business sectors. Ove...
In API We Trust
If you’ve met me in person, you know I always wear my logo on my t-shirt. I’m not a graphic designer, and when I needed a logo for API Evangelist, I just wrapped the words in JSON and called it go...
January 9, 2013
#rust
Make Sure You Are At API Strategy & Practice in February
I’m rebooting the marketing and PR for the API Strategy & Practice conference after the holidayz. After finding a new date for the event on February 21st and 22nd, we’ve gone through the sessio...
January 7, 2013
#Strategy
Make Sure You Are At API Strategy & Practice in February
I’m rebooting the marketing and PR for the API Strategy & Practice conference after the holidayz. After finding a new date for the event on February 21st and 22nd, we’ve gone through the sessio...
January 7, 2013
#Strategy
API Voice in 2013
After looking back at 2012, I wanted a January 1, 2013 blog post for my blogs. My first blog post of 2012 was my tour schedule for January, 2012. While it was a pretty busy time for evangelizing an...
January 2, 2013
#Voice
API Voice in 2013
After looking back at 2012, I wanted a January 1, 2013 blog post for my blogs. My first blog post of 2012 was my tour schedule for January, 2012. While it was a pretty busy time for evangelizing ...
January 1, 2013
API Evangelist in 2013
After looking back at 2012, I wanted a January 1, 2013 blog post for my blogs. My first blog post of 2012 was my tour schedule for January, 2012. While it was a pretty busy time for evangelizing an...
January 1, 2013
#Evangelist
History of APIs: ProgrammableWeb
While writing about the history of APIs, it is easy to be so focused on just APIs, that you overlook the single most important player in the entire history of the web API–ProgrammableWeb. In July ...
The Secret to a Successful API is Internal from #APIDays
Here is a video of one of my talks from API Days in Paris, France where I walked the internal side of APIs. This talk is derived from my post, the secret to amazons success is internal and stories ...
December 28, 2012
#Internal
Insights From API Pioneers: Salesforce Developer Highlights of 2012
You can learn a lot from the history of APIs, and following what the pioneers are doing. Salesforce isn’t the coolest API within the Hacker News community, but when it comes to building an API eco...
New API Stories in 2013
Storytelling in the API industry is critical to the healthy growth of the space. John Musser and ProgrammableWeb have been telling great stories in the tech industry, since way before APIs were all...
December 27, 2012
#Stories
Five Areas of Collective Action Around Personal Data
I’m immersed in deep thought around my personal data, asking some important questions about my digital self--which includes the state of my online personal data. After reading 14 big trends to wat...
Hello IPA Evangelist
My name is Kin Lane, I am the API Evangelist. While traveling the globe, dedicating my life to API evangelism, I only drink one beer--IPAs. Coincidence? I think not! This blog is dedicated to dis...
December 26, 2012
A Time to Reflect and Ask Questions of 2012
The end of the year is a great time to reflect–looking back at the year with a desire to quantify and understand ourselves. With our increasingly digital (social, cloud, mobile, APIs) lives, there...
December 26, 2012
#Time
Amazing Visuals, But Lack of API Imagination
I was scrolling through my feeds today and I came across, “Earth As Art” from NASA. I clicked on the homepage and didn’t think much, and moved on. Then I came across Earth as Art book from NASA on ...
You Can't Spell Capitalism Without API
I like a good API shirt. If you’ve ever seen me in person you’ve seen my API Evangelist shirt(s). At least you guys hope its multiple shirts, otherwise…ewwwee! I recently started a new design - ...
December 21, 2012
#Capitalism
You Can't Spell Capitalism Without API
I like a good API shirt. If you’ve ever seen me in person you’ve seen my API Evangelist shirt(s). At least you guys hope its multiple shirts, otherwise…ewwwee! I recently started a new design - ...
December 21, 2012
#Capitalism
Top 10 Posts on API Evangelist in 2012
2012 has been a great year to be in the API space. We saw some pretty amazing growth, and everyone is talking APIs going into 2013. I wrote 243 blog posts on API Evangelist in 2012. The top 10 pos...
December 21, 2012
#Evangelist
API Trends
In addition to helping people understand the history of APIs, I’m looking to help people grasp what the future holds, when it comes to APIs. So, while tracking on the API industry, I’m always on th...
History of APIs
The history of APIs is something I discuss a lot. The history of modern web APIs is something I include in all my talks, and I’m always surprised by how little people understand some of the more p...
December 20, 2012
#History
Business Models For Your API as Startup from API Days
Here is a video of one of my talks from API Days in Paris, France where I walked through potential thoughts on business model for a hypothetical startup. I had a separate talk prepared, but after ...
December 20, 2012
#Business
Taking APIs To Next Level With API Scripting Platforms
I’m working hard to understand the emerging patterns of of how APIs used, work through the details, and grasp the differences in competing approaches–in hopes of identifying what is next when it co...
API Driven 3D Printing and Manufacturing Supply Chain
I’m working on a new trends section of API Evangelist. One area i’m tracking on is the opportunities around 3D printing and APIs. I did some fun research, and laid down some interest thoughts o...
The Need for More Domain Experts in the API Space
The number of available APIs is growing at a neck breaking speed. I have trouble keeping up with individual APIs, and I feel I am losing touch with the nuances and trends within specific areas like...
December 18, 2012
#ai
Making An Impact On Environment With Building Management APIs
I had a chance to talk with the Johnson Controls, Panoptix API team this last week. The Panoptix® community offers: a combination of software and services that easily and cost-effectively helps...
API Questions for Wade Foster of Zapier over at Startup Juicer
Some great API questions for Wade Foster, Co-founder & CEO of Zapier over at Startup Juicer today. Zapier is a company that couldn’t have existed even a few years ago as API’s were not commonp...
December 17, 2012
#Zapier
APIphany Adds Support for Github, Facebook and Twitter in all API Developer Portals
API service provider APIphany followed some of my advice this last week, and added support for Github, Facebook and Twitter in all of their developer portals. Using oAuth from Twitter, Facebook an...
Get My New Che P.I. T-Shirts
While I was in France, the art director at Faber Novel did some cool sketches of me. Since I’m so graphically challenged (see my logo), I’m stoked to have the artwork to work with. I’ve been play...
December 13, 2012
Get My New Che P.I. T-Shirts
While I was in France, the art director at Faber Novel did some cool sketches of me. Since I’m so graphically challenged (see my logo), I’m stoked to have the artwork to work with. I’ve been play...
December 13, 2012
Exploring a New Way of Planning and Executing Hackathons
I started tracking on Hackathons full time in 2011, as part of my API Evangelism toolbox. In 2012 I’ve watched Hackathons explode and become a popular way for API owners to engage and build a relat...
What Does Singly's AppFabric Mean?
Singly is continuing its quest to easily explain what it does for developers. The San Francisco startup has re-launched defining itself as, fabric for connected apps, or AppFabric. Singly puts ...
What Does Singly's AppFabric Mean?
Singly is continuing its quest to easily explain what it does for developers. The San Francisco startup has re-launched defining itself as, fabric for connected apps, or AppFabric. Singly puts ...
Mulesoft Launches API Discovery Hub
API Discovery is becoming an increasingly troubling problem. As an analyst, I see a dizzying amount of APIs each month. When I get asked to find a particular type of API, or group of APIs in a part...
December 11, 2012
#Discovery
Hack Weekends Directory, Hackathon Guide and Site Template
Hackathons have been a big part of current web API movement. They are one of the most meaningful ways API owners can connect with developers in person. Twilio, Amazon and Facebook have all used ha...
December 10, 2012
#Directory
API Evangelist Drawings
While I was in Paris speaking at API Days last week, a drawing of me was circulated on Twitter. I was a little speachless when I saw them on Twitter. I am always looking for new graphics to use i...
December 10, 2012
#Evangelist
Some Thoughts For the Enterprise Embracing Web APIs
At the Gartner AADI Conference in Las Vegas, NV last week I discussed the “grass-roots web API movement” with quite a few enterprise folks. Walking through the exhibit floor, where I did my buildin...
Open Sourcing Hack Weekends Using Github
I’ve been maintaining a calendar of hackathons for all of 2012. Originally it was just a section off of API Evangelist, but eventually the site needed to be its own project. Up until now its just b...
The Secret to a Successful API is Internal #APIDays
I had the pleasure of speaking at API Days in Paris, France this week. The organizers originally asked me to do one talk, but after some speaker shuffle, I ended up with three separate talks on API...
December 7, 2012
#Internal
Business Models for Your API as a Start-Up #APIDays
The organizers of APIs Days asked me at the last moment if I’d like to do a third talk at the European API event, due to last minute cancellations. Of course, I jumped on the opportunity to genera...
December 7, 2012
#Business
Building Blocks (Bricks) For Your Developer Portal #APIDays
I gave a talk at API Days in Paris, France this week. This talk was using some of my usual material around the building blocks of an API. As I always do, I omitted some slides and evolved my prese...
December 7, 2012
#Portal
#APIDays in Paris France Wrap-Up
I got back last night from France, where I spent the week at the #APIDays conference, billed as the first international event on APIs in Europe. The two day event was organized by faberNovel, who h...
Start-Up Offers Blueprints For 3D Printed Parts
I read a great post recently about how a company called Teenage Engineering has started providing 3D CAD files that allow their customers to 3D print replacement parts for the products they make. ...
Spectagram Rolls Out Instagrams Embeddable Strategy for Them
There was a great post last week on ProgrammableWeb from Curtis C. Chen (@sparCKL), on how a company called Spectagram has launched a new JavaScript library built on top of Instagram. Spectagram u...
My API Building Blocks Workshop With Intel at the Gartner AADI Conference
I conducted two workshops this week in partnership with Intel at the Gartner AADI Conference in Las Vegas. Working from my Building Blocks of a Successful API material, I put together a 30 minute w...
November 30, 2012
LearnSrout Says IlluminateEd API is Best Student Information System API So Far
I got an email from Anthony Wu over at LearnSprout yesterday. If you are not following what LearnSprout is up to, they are bridging legacy student information systems (SIS) and providing easy to us...
Facebook Provides Developers with Platform Alerts
Right before the Thanksgiving holiday, in an effort to make the Facebook platform more responsive and dependable for developers, Facebook announced Developer Alerts. Developer alerts are a way for ...
Does Your API Showcase Its DOers?
Poster boy for how to properly run your API ecosystem properly, Twilio, recently updated their DOer Gallery to highlight developers in the Twilio ecosystem that build cool stuff on the popular voic...
November 30, 2012
#Showcase
Adigami Aggregates Analytics APIs Into Single Interface
In 2012 the number of APIs has grown significantly. We are transitioning from “there aren’t enough APIs” to “how do we more intelligently use many APIs”. As I track on this and the future of web AP...
November 30, 2012
#Analytics
Where To Have Your API Sticker Swag Printed?
Swag can be a critical tool in any API evangelist toolbox. And stickers are one piece of swag that if possessing the right design, can be something developers will take home and put to use. Earlie...
November 29, 2012
#Print
Managing API Terms of Service, Privacy, and Branding with Github
The legal building blocks of an API can be just as critical as the technical and business building blocks. It makes sense to version and communicate your API terms of use (TOS) , privacy policy and...
Join Me For AngelHack Los Angeles This Weekend with Singly
I’m going to head over to AngelHack Los Angeles this weekend (Saturday, December 1, 2012 at 9:00 AM - Sunday, December 2, 2012 at 5:00 PM) with Singly. AngelHack Los Angeles is part of 11 city hac...
I Will Be At API Days in Paris France Next Week
I am heading to Paris, France next week for API Days. API Days is December 3rd and 4th in Paris and is dubbed as the “First National Event on APIs in Europe”. The two day event is organized by fabe...
Chartboost's API Driven Approach to Application Development
The team over at Chartboost have a pretty forward thinking blog post about what they see as the next generation of web application development. They feel that the future is about creating web appl...
Chartboost's API Driven Approach to Application Development
The team over at Chartboost have a pretty forward thinking blog post about what they see as the next generation of web application development. They feel that the future is about creating web appl...
PeopleBrowsr Wins Temporary Injunction To Keep Twitter From Shutting Off Firehose
Social analytics provider PeopleBrowsr has won a temporary injunction against Twitter today, with a complaint filed in San Francisco Superior Court. It reads: PeopleBrowsr seeks a preliminary and ...
3Scale Launches Open Source API Proxy Built On NGNIX
Those of you who follow my blog, know my favorite API management service provider is 3Scale. It’s no secret I’m a fan of what they are doing. We share a vision of the API space and what a healthy A...
Where Are The APIs For State Health Insurance Exchanges?
I was listening to a story about Nevada quietly starting their implementation of health insurance exchanges, as part of what everyone loves to call Obamacare. I’m not even going to get involved in ...
November 13, 2012
#Insurance
Using Github For Your Hackathon
Hackathons are a fertile environment for generating code based upon the ideas of its attendees. However, much of the innovative programming that occurs at these events is forgotten the day after th...
November 13, 2012
#Github
The API Fabric for the Next Generation of Apps
I’m always on the hunt for meaningful API analogies, to stock my evangelism toolbox. Ways that I can relate the potential of APIs, in a way that anyone can understand, even non-developers. In my o...
November 13, 2012
#Generation
Socrata Planning Open Source Government Data Server
Socrata announced today that they are preparing to release an open source, cloud-based, open data system, called the “Socrata Open Data Server, Community Edition.” If you don’t already follow what ...
BandPage Connects Bands To Their Fans Using An API
BandPage, a hub for musicians to manage and control their online presence, just expanded their reach with BandPage Connect, an API, allowing developers to build apps for the music industry. I wrote...
Axway Acquires API Management Service Provider Vordel
I don’t know if you saw the big news last week, but software publisher Axway announced intent to acquire API service provider Vordel. I’m not a big fan of covering funding, acquisition or launch pr...
Communicate Your API Roadmap with Github
When you operate an API, you need to make sure and communicate with your developer community about what your plans are for the future, so developers can plan their own roadmap, and keep in sync wit...
November 12, 2012
#Github
Still Looking for Evangelists in Portland, Seattle and Austin
I started actively looking for evangelists, advocates and ambassadors in multiple cities last week. I got a great response from quite a few folks who were already evangelizing in their communities ...
November 12, 2012
#Evangelist
CloudMine + Singly = Rapid Mobile App Development With Social Baked In
Backend as a Service (BaaS) provider CloudMine and aggregated social API platform Singly announced a partnership today, to make sure the mobile applications developers are building using CloudMine ...
API Strategy & Practice Reboot, February 21st, 22nd 2013
It’s been 2 weeks since New York City was hit by hurricane Sandy, and while things aren’t back to normal, everyone is beginning to look to the future, and starting the process of moving past the de...
API Strategy & Practice Reboot, February 21st, 22nd 2013
It’s been 2 weeks since New York City was hit by hurricane Sandy, and while things aren’t back to normal, everyone is beginning to look to the future, and starting the process of moving past the de...
API Evangelist Development Partner, Concentric Sky
Mobile app development is at the center of API deployment in 2012. Much of the interest in designing, developing and deploying APIs is so that you can successfully launch one, or multiple mobile ap...
November 12, 2012
#Evangelist
API Issue Management Using Github
Github should be the center of your API operations, with the most obvious use being for SDK repositories, but Github offers a lot of other valuable tools that you can use to manage your API platfor...
Preparing for the Defrag Experience
I was trying to explain the experience of being at the Defrag Conference, to a friend the other day. We are both gearing up for the event, next week (November 14th & 15th), in Broomfield Colora...
November 8, 2012
#Experience
API Issue Management Using Github
Github should be the center of your API operations, with the most obvious use being for SDK repositories, but Github offers a lot of other valuable tools that you can use to manage your API platfo...
November 8, 2012
Publish Your API Presentations and Guides to Github
Github isn’t just for code. Github can be used for HTML documents and PDF’s as well. This opens up endless possibilities for management of documents you wish to share with your developer ecosystem....
Gil Speaking at Techonomy on The Meanings of Data
I’m digging on this statement from Gil Elbaz @ Factual. Gil is participating on a panel “The Forest for the Trees: The Meanings of Data” at the Techonomy Conference on Sunday, November 11th in Tuc...
API KPIs Should Be Optimized for Developer Success
When it comes to measuring the success of an API, we often experience a lack meaningful metrics, with many companies only tracking the number of new developers and quantity of API calls. Going beyo...
Evangelists Needed in New York, Chicago, Boston, Seattle, Denver, Austin and Portland
I call it being an evangelist, but it has other names, such as advocate or ambassador. Someone who is good at evangelism, in my opinion, starts with a love of hacking but is also having a love of h...
November 3, 2012
#Evangelist
API Developer Profiling Using Github
One very powerful way to use Github within your API strategy is for developer profiling. This approach requires the deployment of another Github solution, API Developer login using Github. After y...
Make Your Own About.json File For Your Company Website
I spend a lot of time trying to find company logos and a little blurb about what a company does. You’d think in this cloudy API driven world there would a simpler way. I decided to create my ow...
November 2, 2012
#Web
Make Your Own About.json File For Your Company Website
I spend a lot of time trying to find company logos and a little blurb about what a company does. You’d think in this cloudy API driven world there would a simpler way. I decided to create my ow...
November 2, 2012
#Web
Help EFF Make Case For No Copryight on APIs
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) needs our help to explain to the Federal Circuit Court on why there should NOT be copyrights on APIs. As EFF published today: Earlier this year, we appl...
November 2, 2012
Discuss the API Strategy & Practice Session Lineup in a Live Hangout
We are wasting no time getting the API Strategy & Practice conference back on track, after being put on hold because of hurricane Sandy. With the current status of New York City, it’s subways, ...
November 2, 2012
#Strategy
Discuss the API Strategy & Practice Session Lineup in a Live Hangout
We are wasting no time getting the API Strategy & Practice conference back on track, after being put on hold because of hurricane Sandy. With the current status of New York City, it’s subways, ...
November 2, 2012
#Strategy
About API Evangelist .JSON
I spend a lot of time looking for a quick description or logo for companies. Finding a good quality logo is a pain in the ass! To be the change I want to see in the world, I created an about....
November 2, 2012
REST Web Services & API Security with Intel
When it comes to API service providers, there is one brand that I would say is widely known, but when we are talking about APIs, often gets overlooked. That company is Intel. In addition to a whol...
REST Web Services & API Security with Intel
When it comes to API service providers, there is one brand that I would say is widely known, but when we are talking about APIs, often gets overlooked. That company is Intel. In addition to a whol...
API Developer Login Using Github
As with most social platforms, Github provides oAuth for their platform, allowing developers to provide secure credentials and authentication for their users via a Github account. Service provider...
Pearson Sets Example For Other Publishing APIs
One API I’ve been watching grow and evolve from day one is the Pearson Developer Community. I first wrote about them when Peasron announced a new initiative to build an API platform that give devel...
October 28, 2012
#Publishing
API Code Samples via Gists
Code samples in a variety of languages are how API owners help developers understand an API in the language that makes the most sense to them. Not all developers will understand REST, HTTP and oth...
SDK Management for Your API with Github
The most common use of Github by API providers is to publish API SDK’s to the popular social coding platform. If you look at most of the the top API providers in operation today, you will find they...
Next Generation of API Service Provider: APIphany
I get so busy sometimes my stories pile up. Some only seeing the light of day when I get caught up on research, projects, travels and speaking. On story I’ve been meaning to write for almost 3 mont...
October 25, 2012
#Generation
APIs Can Save Money and Make Government More Efficient
While I was out in Washington DC this week, one of the Presidential Innovation Fellows in my workshop was from the Department of Energy, and shared one of the best examples of APIs delivering value...
October 25, 2012
#Government
Version Control Your API Documentation with Github
Out of date API documentation is by far the most common mistake API providers make, and also the number one pain point for API developers. It makes sense that you will want to keep your API documen...
My Presentation to the Presidential Innovation Fellows
I spent two hours with a handful of the Presidential Innovation Fellows in Washington DC yesterday. They were some super savvy folks from a wide variety of agencies and backgrounds including educat...
October 24, 2012
#Innovation
A Problem With Finding API Owners in Government
I had a great discussion with a friend who works in federal government yesterday. We were talking about various ways to “successfully” deploy APIs within the federal government. She gets APIs, unde...
October 24, 2012
#Government
A Hackathon Philosophy From Warren Wilbee of Microsoft
While doing the weekly hackathon roundup in September, I noticed an uptick in the number of Windows 8 hackathons that are going on. I decided to reach out to Microsoft and see if I can get more inf...
October 24, 2012
#Micro
Open Source Your API With Github
Github is a frequently used service in the toolbox of API owners. The most common use of Github is for publishing API SDKs in a variety of languages and platforms. But when it comes to truly being ...
Alcatel-Lucent's Laura Merling at API Strategy & Practice
When 3Scale and I first decided to do the API Strategy & Practice Conference in New York, one of the first people I reached out to about speaking and sponsoring the event, was Laura Merling (@m...
October 22, 2012
#Strategy
Alcatel-Lucent's Laura Merling at API Strategy & Practice
When 3Scale and I first decided to do the API Strategy & Practice Conference in New York, one of the first people I reached out to about speaking and sponsoring the event, was Laura Merling (@m...
October 22, 2012
#Strategy
The Right Partnership for the API Strategy & Practice Conference
The API Strategy & Practice Conference is kicking off in 12 days in New York City. The event will be keynotes, sessions and panels from over 60 leading individuals across all sectors of the API...
The Right Partnership for the API Strategy & Practice Conference
The API Strategy & Practice Conference is kicking off in 12 days in New York City. The event will be keynotes, sessions and panels from over 60 leading individuals across all sectors of the API...
A 100% Open API Industry & Conference
When I set out to put on an API industry event in early 2012, I had grand visions of what it would be. Getting everyone together to discuss the best ideas, approaches the industry has to offer–whil...
A 100% Open API Industry & Conference
When I set out to put on an API industry event in early 2012, I had grand visions of what it would be. Getting everyone together to discuss the best ideas, approaches the industry has to offer–whil...
A Rock'n Speaker Lineup for API Strategy & Practice
I finished updating the speaker lineup for the API Strategy & Practice Conference this weekend. While we still have a couple of panels to finalize and keynotes to announce, the speaker lineup i...
October 14, 2012
#Strategy
A Rock'n Speaker Lineup for API Strategy & Practice
I finished updating the speaker lineup for the API Strategy & Practice Conference this weekend. While we still have a couple of panels to finalize and keynotes to announce, the speaker lineup i...
October 14, 2012
#Strategy
Thoughts On Running a Successful Meetup From Jeremia Kimmelman of Mobile Mondays
As part of my research into how to create healthy developer communities, I’ve been spending time reaching out to organizers of developer meetups in different cities so I can get some insight into w...
October 13, 2012
#Mobile
Heading to Washington DC to Talk APIs with Innovation Fellows
I was honored this month to receive an invitation from Todd Park (@todd_park), the U.S. Chief Technology Officer, on behalf of the Presidential Innovation Fellows Program, to come out to Washington...
October 13, 2012
#Innovation
Does The Way I Look Make You Uncomfortable? Ok Now You're Ready for APIs!
Lots of big news coming out of Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC2011) in San Francisco today. We saw major enhancements coming down the pipes with IOS 5 and Mac OS X Lion. What really ...
October 13, 2012
Does The Way I Look Make You Uncomfortable? Ok Now You're Ready for APIs!
Lots of big news coming out of Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC2011) in San Francisco today. We saw major enhancements coming down the pipes with IOS 5 and Mac OS X Lion. What really ...
October 13, 2012
The API Evangelist Mission
Many folks who encounter API Evangelist think I’m working to evangelize a single API. I field so many questions about this I thought I would address by publishing an API Evangelist mission stateme...
October 12, 2012
#Evangelist
NPR Adds Content Permission Control to their API
NPR is defining new models for content distribution. One that other media providers can follow, when designing their API driven content delivery platforms. The NPR Story API provides digital acces...
October 10, 2012
#Content
Developers Resist API Evangelism
Marketing to developers is no straightforward task, and with the growth in the number of APIs, platforms, tools and active evangelists and advocates, it is only going to get harder. Developers jus...
Join Me and WSO2 for a Webinar on API Management Building Blocks and Business Value
I will be doing a webinar with Chris Haddad (@cobiacomm) of WSO2 on October 9th, where we discuss API management best practices for digital business ecosystem. WSO2 is one of my partner API server...
Github is the Social Network of the Future
There is a lot of news about social networks in the last couple of weeks, with Facebook reaching 1B users, a brand new look for MySpace giving people hope for the struggling social network, the gre...
Hack the Process
Hackathons are a popular way for developers to come together and hack on mobile and web apps, in hopes of winning prizes and getting noticed for their innovation. Silicon Valley has done a great jo...
October 4, 2012
#Process
Just a Few of the People Speaking at the API Strategy & Practice Conference
The API Strategy & Practice conference added 15 speakers to their API industry event November 1st and 2nd in New York City: Jakub Nestril from Apiary (@jakubnesetril) Mike Reich from Cumu...
Just a Few of the People Speaking at the API Strategy & Practice Conference
The API Strategy & Practice conference added 15 speakers to their API industry event November 1st and 2nd in New York City: Jakub Nestril from Apiary (@jakubnesetril) Mike Reich from Cumu...
Tumblr Launches New Github Site
The Tumblr engineering team has been hard at work on a new Github page, showcasing the open source projects they’ve released. Tumblr has also added a coming soon section, highlighting open sourc...
September 25, 2012
#Github
The Best Team Page Ever!!
When it comes to any business, you want to showcase your team, and the value they bring to the table. One of the things I do here at API Evangelist, is showcase great examples of technology acro...
API Strategy & Practice + Defrag
When you spend a lot of time going to conferences, hackathons and events, you start really getting picky about which events you go to. To disrupt my regular routine, I need an event that will alway...
September 25, 2012
#Strategy
API Strategy & Practice + Defrag
When you spend a lot of time going to conferences, hackathons and events, you start really getting picky about which events you go to. To disrupt my regular routine, I need an event that will alway...
September 25, 2012
#Strategy
API Issue Management With Github
Github should be the center of your API operations, with the most obvious use being for SDK repositories, but Github offers a lot of other valuable tools that you can use to help manage your API pl...
Pulling a Federal Agencies Digital Strategy
Back in May, when the White House CIO has released a strategy, entitled “Digital Government: Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People”, which directs all federal agencie...
Will Your Company Be Found In a Siri Search?
I’m currently processing several discussion I’ve had with folks about APIs and the future of search when it comes to voice enabled apps, like Apple’s Siri. It started with a discussion with the We...
September 18, 2012
#Search
Simple API Developer Tracking Framework
When you have an API, you track two things: 1) Number of Developer Registrations and 2) Number of API requests. This is how we determine a successful API, right? You should track those two things,...
September 18, 2012
#Tracking
Generate API Server, Docs and Client Code Using Swagger
We all have our own approaches to API design and development, many of which will never see the light of day. In the API space we hear a lot about API management and API success stories, but not muc...
YouTube Moves API QA to Stack Overflow
YouTube has decided to cease support for Youtube API QA via dedicated Google Group, and exclusively use Stack Overflow for developer QA support. Every developer knows that Stack Overflow is where ...
September 17, 2012
An API Driven Quantified Self
I’m immersing myself into the fascinating new world of the Quantified Self (QS). If you are not familiar with what QS is, according to Wikipedia: Quantified Self is a movement to incorporate techn...
Twitter Rumored to Remove Third-Party Image Services From Clients
I was just reading a post via Buzzfeed, that Twitter was going to remove third-party image services from its apps. “According to a person who was briefed on the company’s plans”, the changes will b...
Twitter Rumored to Remove Third-Party Image Services From Clients
I was just reading a post via Buzzfeed, that Twitter was going to remove third-party image services from its apps. “According to a person who was briefed on the company's plans”, the ...
September 14, 2012
Steve Klabnik Added to Speakers at API Strategy & Practice
I’m stoked to announce that Steve Klabnik will be speaking at the API Strategy & Practice conference, November 1st & 2nd in New York City. I just added him to the homepage and speaker line-...
September 13, 2012
#Strategy
Steve Klabnik Added to Speakers at API Strategy & Practice
I’m stoked to announce that Steve Klabnik will be speaking at the API Strategy & Practice conference, November 1st & 2nd in New York City. I just added him to the homepage and speaker line-...
September 13, 2012
#Strategy
Fireside Chat with Albert Wenger at API Strategy & Practice
We are at an exciting time right now with the API Practice & Strategy conference, where we get to orchestrate the best lineup of speakers, sessions and panels possible. I just added Steve Klab...
September 13, 2012
#Strategy
Fireside Chat with Albert Wenger at API Strategy & Practice
We are at an exciting time right now with the API Practice & Strategy conference, where we get to orchestrate the best lineup of speakers, sessions and panels possible. I just added Steve Klab...
September 13, 2012
#Strategy
Twitter's Embed Strategy Gets Priority in API Developer Area
I’m a big supporter of API providers having a healthy embed strategy. I bundle any widgets, buttons and any API driven tool that allows enables users to take advantage of APIs, under the label, “AP...
Twitter's Embed Strategy Gets Priority in API Developer Area
I’m a big supporter of API providers having a healthy embed strategy. I bundle any widgets, buttons and any API driven tool that allows enables users to take advantage of APIs, under the label, “AP...
Rank My API Developers Who Authenticate With Github
I’m updating the login and authentication for my content management system, APIs and other tools to provide authentication using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Github by default. I’m using Singly ...
API Automation is the New SDK
I’m seeing a lot of talk about API automation using platforms like IFTTT and Zapier these days. It’s one of the fastest growing areas of my future of web APIs series. A sign of this growth can b...
SOA Cloud 2012 Service Technology Symposium
I’m happy to be a media partner for the SOA Cloud 2012 Service Technology Symposium, the largest international conference dedicated to the exploration of SOA, cloud computing and modern service tec...
NASA Adds a Little Extra Github To Their Digital Strategy
I’ve been tracking the adoption of the White House CIO’s digital strategy, trying understand each agency’s mobile and API plans. Today I noticed that NASA, in addition to publishing their digital ...
What If APIs Should Be Finding Developers Instead of Developers Discovering APIs?
I was spending time thinking about API discovery methodologies this afternoon (I know…I have issues), but with ProgrammableWeb approaching 8K public APIs, its a very real problem. Currently, as an...
What Drives Me Crazy When Integrating With a New API?
I was directed to an API question today, that needs to be asked constantly in the space: What’s your biggest web API pet peeve? What drives you crazy when integrating with a new API? — Wynn ...
API Can Be a Liability Without Proper BizDev Process
At first glance, APIs seem like something very technical, and the REST pundits do a good job of maintaining this perspective. Even though at the core of what we currently know as a “web API” there ...
September 8, 2012
#Process
Ok, Geoloqi Has the Coolest Platform Pricing Page
Many providers don’t offer a clear pricing page for their services, sticking to old school concepts of software sales where they can change and adjust pricing, depending on who they are talking to....
Introducing the Next Generation of Communication Using APIs
APIs are everywhere. The number of public APIs available on ProgrammableWeb are growing at a dizzying pace, with current count being at 7,207. The number of API service providers and tools supporti...
The Next Generation of API Programming Using Temboo and Webshell
I’m exploring the future of web APIs, and have come to what I feel is what of the most fascinating areas of evolution in the usage of web APIs. An approach that is very developer centric, which is...
API Strategy & Practice Conference NYC
The API industry has come of age in 2012. ProgrammableWeb has rolled over 7000 public APIs available, President Obama has mandated that all federal departments and agencies deploy APIs, and there a...
September 6, 2012
#Strategy
API Strategy & Practice Conference NYC
The API industry has come of age in 2012. ProgrammableWeb has rolled over 7000 public APIs available, President Obama has mandated that all federal departments and agencies deploy APIs, and there a...
September 6, 2012
#Strategy
Alcatel-Lucent Open Sources their API Management Platform
Following the creative commons release of their API lifecycle methodology, telco API service provider Alcatel-Lucent has open sourced the “underpinnings” of their Open API Platform(OAP). The API m...
Alcatel-Lucent Open Sources their API Management Platform
Following the creative commons release of their API lifecycle methodology, telco API service provider Alcatel-Lucent has open sourced the “underpinnings” of their Open API Platform(OAP). The API m...
Providing API Developers with Github Login Using Singly
I’m building a small API that I want to allow developers to register for. I don’t want to make it a complicated registration process, I just want them to provide some sort of credentials and I will...
Mobile Application Builder Platforms
In my quest to understand the possible future of Web APIs, I’m trying to understand the opportunities available for APIs when it comes to latest wave of mobile app builder platforms. I’m the most ...
How an API Strategy can Create an Innovation Engine for Engineers and Scientists
This is a case study sent to me from National Instruments. I just had to post it as is, because it just shows the serious potential of APIs. If cloud computing and mobile hasn’t convinced you tha...
Why Don't I Have Easy Access to all My Online Personal Data
I was just downloading all of my Facebook data. You can go under your account settings and there is a little link that lets you download everything. It takes some time to generate a full archive, ...
Why Don't I Have Easy Access to all My Online Personal Data
I was just downloading all of my Facebook data. You can go under your account settings and there is a little link that lets you download everything. It takes some time to generate a full archive, ...
Crowdsourced API Terms of Service
API terms of service (TOS) is one of the most critical, yet one of the most silent links for developers who are building apps and business on top of APIs. Terms of service determine what you can or...
August 30, 2012
#Terms of Service
146 Planned APIs from 19 Federal Depts and Agencies as Part of their Digital Strategy
Three months after the White House CIO mandated that all federal departments and agencies have a digital strategy, we are getting closer to having access to some high value APIs, across almost twen...
Efficient Social API Development with Singly
Last week I announced that API Evangelist and Singly were partnering, and while I’m helping Singly with their API Evangelism strategy and they are providing me with some vital data on some of the m...
August 29, 2012
#Social
Open Source Mobile Backend as a Service
A very interesting comment left on the post was about MBaaS vendor lock-in: The big problem, IMHO, using a BaaS provider is the so called “vendor lock in”. What if my backend provider changes t...
Mobile Backend as a Service Roundup and the Future of Web APIs
I’m continuing my research into the future of web APis, and after watching leading Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) provider Kinvey start building APIs into their platform, I think MBaaS provide...
Landscape Analysis and Monitoring as Part of Your API Evangelism
One very important aspect of API Evangelism is landscape analysis. When you launch an API, you need to have an intimate understanding of the landscape where you will be evangelizing your API and en...
API Automation Platforms
I’ve been doing lots of research into the future of web APIs lately, and one area that is definitely gaining more traction is the ability to automate tasks, by defining triggers and actions on top ...
11 More Federal Departments and Agencies Have Published Their API Digital Strategies
I’ve been running a monitoring script every night, so that I could tell when any of the federal department and agency have launched their digital strategy pages, per Barack Obamas Presidential dire...
API Evangelist Partners Up with Singly To Evolve The Social and Personal API Space
The world around us is being redefined and a new currency is taking shape. Tweets on Twitter, wall posts to Facebook, pictures on Instagram, files on Dropbox and health data via Fitbit are emblemat...
This Week Is First Milestone in White House Roadmap for an API Driven Digital Strategy
It will be 3 months since the White House CiO Steven VanRoekel released a federal API strategy, entitled “Digital Government: Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People”, ...
My API Talk at Montgomery County Java User Group in DC
While out in Washington DC last week I was invited to speak at the Montgomery County Java User Group in Rockville, MD. Without much of an understanding of who my audience was I chose to talk about ...
August 18, 2012
API Craft Washington DC
Continuing my API Craft road show, I landed in Washington DC for the second week in August. As I planned my trip to the nations capital, I planted the seeds for an API Craft DC version. I chose a ...
API Craft San Francisco
On the heels of the successful API Craft meetup in Portland during OSCON, I was landing in San Francisco for a few days and at the request of SFO API folk, quickly organized a meetup at the Chiefta...
The Building Blocks of a Successful API
When I started API Evangelist two years ago, I noticed some common practices by API owners, in how they tailored their API areas, and I started calling these API building blocks. I started a sectio...
Thirty APIs To Look At When Planning Your API
When planning an API, I always tell people to go look at as many of the top APIs as they can before crafting their own API strategy. I’m always surprised how many API owners I talk to don’t actuall...
August 8, 2012
#Planning
The APIs That I Depend On For My Business
I maintain an active list of online services I depend on for my business, in Evernote. Each month I spend an hour or two maintaining this list, to make sure it is complete and actively change my lo...
August 2, 2012
#Business
Disqus Uses Twitter #HashTag to Support Developer FAQs
I’m always on the lookout for extremely simple ways API Evangelists can support their developers without rolling out complex tools or platforms. The latest approach comes from the Disqus API, and h...
API Driven Twitter Advertising
I’m playing around with my Twitter Advertising account, trying to understand Twitter’s path to monetization. The Twitter Advertising interface is pretty clean and simple, allowing me to promote my ...
What is the Future of Web APIs?
Photo by Nicholas_T APIs are about to enter a new phase, one where developers can easily program using multiple APIs at once, and non-developers can easily introduce API automation into both their...
July 27, 2012
#Web
Update Once, Publish Everywhere with an Embeddable API Strategy
Embeddable tools like widgets, gadgets and buttons built on top of an API are nothing new. A healthy embeddable strategy was behind the success of popular platforms like Youtube, Google Maps, Twitt...
Definition of API Craft
The current API development space is very self-ruled, in that web API developers have freed themselves of earlier SOA attempts to rigidly define and ultimately constricted API growth, into a more g...
July 20, 2012
#Definitions
Let Developers Register for Your API with Their Github Profile
I was playing with Singly, a unified social API last night. One of the first things I saw, after landing on the home page, were two choices for signing up as a developer–one with Facebook or the ot...
A Unified Interface for Social APIs with Singly
Web APIs come in all shapes and sizes. The differences between API authentication, interfaces and data types can be a big challenge when developers work with multiple social networking APIs like Tw...
July 18, 2012
#Social
Dwolla's New Developer Area is Not Just for Developers
Next generation payment platform Dwolla just revamped the home page of their developer center to speak to the widest audience possible. When you land at developers.dwolla.com you are given two opti...
July 16, 2012
#Developers
Dwolla's New Developer Area is Not Just for Developers
Next generation payment platform Dwolla just revamped the home page of their developer center to speak to the widest audience possible. When you land at developers.dwolla.com you are given two opti...
July 16, 2012
#Developers
Don't Forget About the API Pioneers When You Think APIs Won't Work
As we continue to stress over all the news of API ecosystem battles, and how APIs owners are evil, and once a business grows up, it has to choose between being a hobby developer platform or real gr...
July 12, 2012
Don't Forget About the API Pioneers When You Think APIs Won't Work
As we continue to stress over all the news of API ecosystem battles, and how APIs owners are evil, and once a business grows up, it has to choose between being a hobby developer platform or real g...
July 12, 2012
Two Years of API Evangelism
According to Techcrunch, Twitter suspended Mobber, a platform that rewards users for distributing promoted content through their social media accounts, from using the Twitter API. Mobber’s service...
July 11, 2012
#Evangelism
Twitter Acquisitions
Acquisition of technology startups by companies is a regular part of business today, providing a way for these companies to get the technology, talent, as well as user and market share they need to...
Where Do I Learn More About APIs?
I’m closely following the Oracle v Google case playing out in a court of law right now, and more specifically the Tweet stream of Wired writer, Caleb Garling. According to Garling: “A jury has...
July 10, 2012
Twitter Acquisitions
Acquisition of technology startups by companies is a regular part of business today, providing a way for these companies to get the technology, talent, as well as user and market share they need t...
July 9, 2012
How to Run a Successful Hackathon for Your Open APIs
Hackathons are exploding in popularity and open API publishers are quickly realizing the power they have to attract developers. For API publishers, hackathons represent one of the most powerful mea...
July 9, 2012
#Open
Not All APIs Are Bad
When covering the API space, it is easy to talk about the APIs that are doing it wrong. When Twitter gets ready to screw over developers, Facebook breaks something or Google changes their approach–...
July 1, 2012
Twitter Continues to Restrict Access to Our Tweets
Twitter has become a global communication platform, allowing anyone in the world to express anything, from simple everyday thoughts, to ideas that some say have the potential to be the seeds of rev...
The API Economy Welcomes Its Early Trade Wars
I’m on a roll tonight, writing about tension between API owners and consumers. After some driving around California this week, I’ve had time to ponder three recent episodes with Netflix, LinkedIn a...
June 29, 2012
#Economy
What Does Your API Do?
After looking at over 6000 APIs, the most irritating thing for me when reviewing an API, is when I have to work to figure out what an API does. Many APIs just don’t communicate what their API does...
Tension Between API Owners and Consumers
We’ve had a couple of new API ecosystem flare ups in the last week. one from LinkedIn and the other from Netflix. I’m still working on my thoughts about both of these, but in the meantime I can’t h...
The 100% Open Source API Platform I Was Looking For
This is a much quicker follow-up to last week’s post, Where Is The Open Source API Platform, than I anticipated. I just finished a demo of WSO2 API Manager, a completely open-source API management ...
Launching APIs One Book At A Time
Last May, Pearson Publishing began the roll-out of their new API platform, by doing initial tests using their DK’s Eyewitness Travel Guide material, before moving on to a wider range of subjects. B...
Roundup of 20 API Service Providers in 2012
Its been over six months since I did my roundup of 11 API service providers on ProgrammableWeb. I’ve been seeing enough new entries into the space, I think its time to do another roundup, providin...
Everyone is an API Evangelist in an API-Driven Company
I’ve had some amazing feedback on my post about the demand for API and developer evangelists. One great perspective was from the team over at Iron.io, who do cloud messaging, event handling, worker...
June 15, 2012
#Evangelist
Everyone is an API Evangelist in an API-Driven Company
I’ve had some amazing feedback on my post about the demand for API and developer evangelists. One great perspective was from the team over at Iron.io, who do cloud messaging, event han...
June 15, 2012
#Evangelist
Where Is The Open Source API Platform?
Every couple weeks I get posts that really strike a chord with my audience, like Barack Obama Directs All Federal Agencies to Have an API, which has received 40K+ page views and 1000+ tweets. When ...
The Demand for API and Developer Evangelists
I just got off the phone with a recruiter of a major API management company, looking to recruit me as a developer evangelist, and last week I talked with two companies looking for developer evangel...
June 11, 2012
#Evangelist
RESTGit - Deploying APIs from My Github
I have a workflow for dealing with the steady stream of ideas that fly out of my arse on a daily basis. First, I write them all down in Evernote. If an idea sticks with me and keeps nagging on me i...
Brand Control Within An API Ecosystem: Twitter Edition
Right after security, controlling your brand is the biggest concern I get from companies interested in deploying APIs. They are worried about being able to control their brand and overall message p...
iContact Developers Area Landing Page Delivers
I look at a lot of APIs, the first page you land on makes a big impression, and I can always tell when someone cares enough about developers to craft a simple, quality API Area landing page. I’ve ...
June 5, 2012
#Developers
0 People Found This API Useful, Be the First!
I just wrote a post on how the iContact Developer Area delivers, and now for an API area that doesn’t quite deliver. Notice the text in the bottom corner, 0 people found this useful. - Be the fi...
June 5, 2012
#People
Rise of Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) API Stacks
Mobile is fueling a lot of API growth right now. Or is it APIs fueling a lot of Mobile growth right now? Either way, APIs and Mobile go together like chocolate and peanut butter (or Nutella as my g...
Tracking Federal Agencies Progress on API Deployment
I’m excited about Barack Obama directing all federal agencies to have an API. The President has given federal agencies 90 days to create a page on its website, located at www.[agency].gov/digitalst...
Thoughts For Federal Agencies About to Deploy Web APIs
I wanted to publish some thoughts, on what Federal Agencies responding to the Executive Order 13571 issued on April 27, 2011, and the White House CIO’s, “Digital Government: Building a 21st Century...
Self Service vs Sales Oriented Web APIs
I’m doing some big data work. Ok it isn’t really, but feels like I should use that label. What I’m actually doing is analyzing the Twitter activity of top APIs. I have the twitter handles of 100 o...
Is Your API Big Data Ready?
Many “public APIs” are launched with well, very “public” intent–to extend the reach of the brand and platform. Many of these APIs are setup to pull data, enabling developers to use it in their appl...
June 1, 2012
#Data
Barack Obama Directs All Federal Agencies to Have an API
As a follow-up to the Executive Order 13571 issued on April 27, 2011, requiring executive departments and agencies to identify ways to use innovative technologies to streamline their delivery of se...
June 1, 2012
#Agencies
Provide Release Valves for API Rate Limits
In my effort to better understand API access, I’m studying how API owners control access to their APIs, with most recently being around Rate Limiting. The other day I asked, why do we limit API acc...
May 31, 2012
#Rate Limits
Healthcare Imaging API
There is a new API edition to the healthcare industry this week. lifeIMAGE launched an API that can be used by developers of healthcare applications, to enable the secure exchange of medical images...
May 31, 2012
#Healthcare
Be a Feature in Other Platforms with an API
I talk with a lot of entrepreneurs in my travels to conferences, hackathons and online with my API evangelism. I get a lot of ideas pitched to me, asking me for feedback, and ultimately if I think ...
API Monetization: API Affiliate Network API + Google URL Shortener API
In my quest to understand the monetization opportunities via APIs, I’m studying the possibilites around tracking, and now monetization of content and URL’s served up via APIs. The other day I cons...
An API Could Be The Fancy's Kill Move Against Pinterest
Pinterest and The Fancy are locked in a deathmatch, if you hadn’t heard? Compete wrote back in February that The Fancy was poised to take over a chunk of Pinterest’s traffic with their new webstore...
May 31, 2012
#ai
An API Could Be The Fancy's Kill Move Against Pinterest
Pinterest and The Fancy are locked in a deathmatch, if you hadn’t heard? Compete wrote back in February that The Fancy was poised to take over a chunk of Pinterest’s traffic with their new webstore...
May 31, 2012
#ai
API Management Platform for Universities
I recently stumbled across the University of Washington’s Web Services area, where they are working to create a single place to learn about, discover and connect with various APIs that are availabl...
Why Do We Limit API Access for Developers?
I am putting a lot of thought into why we limit API access for developers. I understand requiring keys to access APIs, and tracking who has access to your API, so you can understand how they are u...
University Information Services with APIs
APIs are making information more accessible across many industries and sectors, but one area I haven’t seen a lot of movement, until recently, is at Universities. Last month, Harvard openly licens...
May 29, 2012
#Services
Twitter Rolls Twitter.com Back to a Server-Side Architecture
Twitter just rolled back their architectural approach for Twitter.com back to a server side implementation. If you remember back in September of 2010, Twitter rebuilt Twitter.com to use a web appl...
May 29, 2012
#Twitter
Twitter Rolls Twitter.com Back to a Server-Side Architecture
Twitter just rolled back their architectural approach for Twitter.com back to a server side implementation. If you remember back in September of 2010, Twitter rebuilt Twitter.com to use a web appl...
May 29, 2012
#Twitter
Wrapping URLs for Another Layer of Metrics in Your API
I’m documenting Twitter’s process of wrapping the URLs contained within tweets, using a shorter URL like t.co. I’m interested in understanding the opportunities around URL wrapping (aka URL shorten...
May 26, 2012
#Metrics
The API Driven Life of Your Facebook Mobile App
One of the best ways to explain what APIs are to someone sitting next to me on the plane is to find something the user does every day, that is driven by an API, and explain how an API drives the fu...
Lack of Pinterest API is a Lack of API Business Strategy
Here we are going into June, and I still don’t see a publicly available Pinterest API. Jay Yarow wrote in Business Insider back in February, “Pinterest’s API Is Coming Soon, And VCs Are Super Excit...
Visions from the API Economy
I’m always looking for solid examples of how more and more of our every day world is being driven by APIs. Examples I can use to help explain APIs to every-day business folks. I came across one ex...
Developer Insights Into Facebook Open Graph API Usage
Facebook provides an interface for Open Graph API developers to better understand how users are interacting with content via their applications, called Insights. With Insights you can monitor the ...
Nike Sustainable Products Index API
Nike is working on a new API as part of their Nike Better World initative. The API provides access to a materials sustainability index, which evaluates the environmental impact of materials used by...
Google Updates the API Explorer
Google just released an update to their API Explorer. Some of the new features include: Indexed history of API calls API request body editor Search box for search APIs and methods Indica...
How Are We Going to Track Private APIs?
Image Credit - Wiki Noticia Adam Duvander (@adamd) reported at ProgrammableWeb today that they rolled over 6,000 public APIs in the directory. The pace at which companies are launching public APIs...
May 22, 2012
Find Your Hackathon Venue with EventUp
I am going through all my notes from organizing the CityGrid Los Angeles Hackathon and trying to publish as many stories as I can, about how I planned and organized the hackathon. One service that...
May 19, 2012
#Twitter
Products and Commerce with APIs
I am really starting to see my early visions of the Internet coming together. In my mind I see an interconnected world of products and commerce, where every business has an API. APIs finally seem ...
App Center Best Practices
Last week Facebook announced a new App Center where developers can submit applications they’ve built. Like any API owner, Facebook is looking for high quality applications to list in its directory...
May 16, 2012
#Best Practices
PeopleBrowsr API Restructures to Deliver More Meaning for Developers
Explaining to developers, what an API does, can be hard. How you describe your API, the underlying endpoints, can make or break user adoption. You shouldn’t be afraid to evolve, and keep trying to ...
Developing More Meaningful API Metrics
API metrics are an essential, but what should we measure? There are two metrics that seems to dominate discussions about success of the API industry: Number of New API Registration Number of ...
May 15, 2012
#Metrics
USDA Releases API for Mandatory Livestock Reporting Data
USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) has released a new, publicly available web API for its Livestock Mandatory Reporting (LMR) system, offering access to all historical LMR data, allowing u...
May 14, 2012
#Data
Business and Politics of APIs
This summer its been 2 years since I started API Evangelist. API Evangelist started as my research project into the Business of APIs, and became a full time career. While over the last two years I...
APIs Have Been Copyrightable for 22 Years
I attended a great webinar put on by the folks at Apigee last week, where they discussed APIs & Copyright. A very timely discussion with the recent API copyright decision in the EU, and from th...
May 14, 2012
#Copyright
API Innovation at the Edinburgh Festivals
I’m always on the hunt for API stories that capture the power of APIs, showcasing how they are transforming industries and businesses around the globe. Today, my global API monitoring platform pick...
May 14, 2012
#Innovation
Making Your API Accessible to the Masses
There are a lot of high value APIs emerging these days, APIs with access to essential business data, resources and intelligence. When designing your API you want to make the interface as intuitive...
May 10, 2012
#Access
The Flora and Fauna of the Twitter Ecosystem
Twitter has an innovative approach to presenting the objects that make up the Twitter Platform. They have built a field guide to Twitter Platform objects, designed like an Audubon Society field gui...
Curated API Industry News Feeds
In my Google Reader I curate hundreds of articles pulled from 600+ blogs and 25+ real-time Google Alerts, on a daily basis. Everything I star in my Google Reader or Tweet about daily ends up in my ...
APIs Help Deliver on Early Visions of the Internet
As my professional career moved online during the years between 1995 and 2000, I had numerous visions about what the World Wide Web could do for businesses. I think I shared these visions with mill...
May 3, 2012
#Vision
Tools of the CityGrid Los Angeles Hackathon
We have a pretty awesome line-up of tools, platforms and APIs for people to use when building their local web and mobile apps this weekend at the CityGrid Los Angeles Hackathon: 3Scale (@3Scale) -...
April 25, 2012
#Tools
Developers, Take 10 Seconds to Respond When Your API Evangelist Reaches Out
The best thing about owning API Evangelist is I get to write about whatever I want. I have full editorial control, and because of my unique view on the API space I tend to write about APIs from thr...
API as the Deliverable at the Hackathon
At most hackathons, the end goal is building a web or mobile application, using various platforms and APIs. Even though I’ve seen this evolve to data visualization, or mashing up SaaS platforms at ...
APIs Are Forever, Wait No...They Can Go Away at Any Time!!!
One of my self-appointed roles in the API industry is to shed light on, and discuss the business of APIs when many other API owners and evangelists tend to keep their strategy and business closer t...
APIs Are Forever, Wait No...They Can Go Away at Any Time!!!
One of my self-appointed roles in the API industry is to shed light on, and discuss the business of APIs when many other API owners and evangelists tend to keep their strategy and business closer t...
Will a Self-Service API Area Ever be Enough?
One of the essential ingredients of a successful API, is a self-service area to support your API developers. In my opinion this is a no-brainer. You have to have registration, documentation, code s...
April 17, 2012
#Self-Service
Profiling API Developers
For the last couple weeks I’m neck deep in getting to know the developers who already use the CityGrid APIs. I want a better understanding of who a developer is, what kind of business they have and...
Finding Sponsors for my Local Hackathon Tour
I’m currently planning a 9 city hackathon tour, starting with the CityGrid Los Angeles Hackathon, and following up with Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, NYC, Baltimore, New Orleans, and Aus...
April 17, 2012
#Sponsors
Why Every Education Company Needs an API (& Why Educators Should Care When One Doesn't)
When I was a tech blogger for ReadWriteWeb and API-related news broke, we writers would often shudder. “Well, you can’t use API in the headline,” the argument in the newsroom went. It’s the page-vi...
April 13, 2012
#Education
Why Every Education Company Needs an API (& Why Educators Should Care When One Doesn't)
When I was a tech blogger for ReadWriteWeb and API-related news broke, we writers would often shudder. “Well, you can’t use API in the headline,” the argument in the newsroom went. It’s the page-vi...
April 13, 2012
#Education
What Happens to Instagram API Developers After Facebook Acquisition?
I was going to write this story when I got an email from Qwerly after they got acquired by Fliptop, then after SimpleGeo was acquired by Urban Airship, then when I got the email from LinkedIn annou...
CityGrid LA Hackathon
The future of the World Wide Web is local. As we spend more of our lives on our mobile phones, local data and apps become critical in helping us find the restaurant for a lunch meeting, the bar whe...
Hacker Storytelling
A big part of API evangelism, is storytelling. Storytelling about the API, the value it delivers, and the solutions it provides. Through my own hacking on an API, engaging with developers via email...
April 4, 2012
#Storytelling
Should You Consider API Starter Kits for 3rd Party Platforms
While assembling the building blocks for a successful API ecosystem, one of the requests I get from developers is for tools to help them build successful integrations with existing platforms like W...
Why Tech Bloggers Suck and Not APIs
I read a post over at Cloud Ave today by Martijn Linssen, Why API’s suck, and what they lack. I’ll start by saying, everything he says about APIs, can be true for some APIs, but the post has more ...
March 30, 2012
#Blog
Keep Your API Area Active So Developers Feel Like Someone Is Home
The largest portion of my time as API Evangelist is spent keeping the area around an API active. Your developer’s first impression when they enter your API area is critical, and if they see signs t...
March 28, 2012
#Developers
Some Positive News After Last Weeks Silicon Valley Sexism
With all the attention sexism in silicon valley has gotten, I wanted to make sure and showcase some positive news on the Hackathon front this week. There was a great article in the Oregonian out o...
March 26, 2012
#News
Reach Corporate API Devs On LinkedIn, Independent API Devs On Twitter
Every Monday I generate a list of all new API developer who registered for the CityGrid API the week before. This list has the name and email address for each developer, and I manually go down the ...
March 23, 2012
#Twitter
Using Github For Your Hackathon
I’ve spent a lot of time trying to track on what gets created at hackathons. Some innovative programming occurs at these events and I’d say 98% of it is forgotten by Monday morning. I think a lot...
March 21, 2012
#Github
Learning from Sqoot: Making Hackathons Accessible to EVERYONE!
Boston API Jam organizer Sqoot just got themselves into a lot of hot water with some very sexist comments on their hackathon home page (now removed): From what I can tell, Sqoot was called out b...
Is The Blog for Your API Up to Date?
As a building block, a blog is a very valuable tool for building awareness of your API, keeping your developers informed and give a personality to the team beyond an API. My recommendation to API ...
March 20, 2012
#Blog
Qualifying for the API Stack
I’m going through hundreds of APIs and curating a list of APIs, for what I’m calling the API Stack. The API Stack consists of APIs that provide clear value for developers and have demonstrated rea...
March 15, 2012
Knodes Announces $250K Fund to Invest In Their API Developers
Social Data Analyzing API Knodes has just announced a $250K startup fund that will invest in the best products, websites and applications built on top of the Knodes API platform. Knodes Social Dat...
March 14, 2012
#Developers
Andreas Krohn - API Evangelist
Andreas Krohn (@andreaskrohn) first saw the potential of APIs when he in 2005 started working with enterprise web scraping solutions at Kapow Technologies (now Kapow Software). Conceptualizing the ...
March 14, 2012
#Evangelist
Automated Documentation for REST APIs
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) – **READ MORE** kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com This post comes from the SDK Bridge newsletter. I find so much value from what Peter and J...
Turning API Forum Posts into Blog Stories
I’m always looking for new, relevant ideas to write blog posts on for the CityGrid Developer blog. I have several topics I write about regularly including new projects I’m working on, new releases ...
Overview of 11 Places Data APIs
Since starting as API Evangelist here at CityGrid, I have been asked a couple of times how we stack up against other places APIs. So I went through the 11 other places APIs, gathering info, in an a...
Follow Terms of Service to Get Increase in Number of API Calls
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I am going through the Foursquare API, and found their section about how to get an increase in the number of calls you can make against the Foursquare API in...
March 3, 2012
#Terms of Service
What is API Evangelist?
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com API Evangelist has grown beyond being just a research blog. It is time for me to update the about us page, and its time for me to tell the story of what is “...
February 26, 2012
#Evangelist
Role of Social Media in Managing An API Ecosystem
When new users sign up for the CityGrid API, I immediately get an email with their name, email and phone number, which are required for registration. The API is self-service, and I rely on the esse...
Garrett Willkin - API Evangelist
Garrett Wilkin (@garrettwilkin) has been working with complex, high-performance, financial software systems for more than 6 years. During this time he has learned to analyze and understand large s...
February 26, 2012
#Evangelist
Hackathons Until End of March
This is a list of hackathons coming up in the near future. I’ve only done the data entry for events until the end of March. So far there are 156 hackathons accounted for. Some pretty staggering num...
February 23, 2012
#Hackathons
Measuring the Success of a Public Web API
I’m a member of a Google group called API Craft. There are some really smart API folks talking about everything from API deployment to API business strategies there. The other day someone in the g...
February 17, 2012
#Web
Interactive API Documentation Now Available with 3Scale
I first wrote about interactive API documentation with Posterous’s new API area in June 2011, then the follow-up when Mashery deployed their own version called I/O Docs in July 2011. Smart, intera...
CityGrid Places, Reviews, Offers and Advertising API Review
Much of the work I get as an API Evangelist starts with a review of an API area. I have evolved a way to look at API areas, and identify which building blocks are present or missing, all contributi...
Are There Enough Do-ers For This API Vision to Work?
I am an eternal optimist, especially when it comes to APIs. I really feel that APIs can decouple businesses assets and resources, making these companies much more efficient. We’ve seen the power o...
February 13, 2012
#Vision
Let's Remake Libraries as Hacker Spaces and Community Innovation Centers
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I was reading several stories yesterday about the State of California cutting funding for libraries across the state. These kind of budget cuts really make m...
February Hackathon Schedule
Here are the hackathons I’m tracking on for February. I’m adding new ones as I find them, make sure and checkout the hackathon events calendar for more information. OPF Hackathon - A Practical App...
Where Are the Girl Hackers at Hackathons
I brought my 11 year old daughter Kaia, to the Trojan Hack at USC Friday night and Saturday, which was a new experience for her. I wouldn’t say she is on a track to be a hacker like her dad, but sh...
February 5, 2012
#Hackathons
Should the Government Subsidize and Profit from Data Markets
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I’ve been having a lot of discussions with folks around the country about how to make money from data. There is a lot of data being pushed out there from fed...
Mashery Plays API Match Maker with Developer Connect
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com One of the biggest areas around APIs I think needs attention in 2012 is more tools that focus on developers. There are plenty API services and tools focusing...
Four Potential Levels of an API Business Ecosystem
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I’m working on a framework for the City Grid API that helps define the different types of developers that are using our APIs, helping me understand how to be...
Review of APIs: A Strategy Guide from O'Reilly Books
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I had the pleasure of getting an early copy of the APIs: A Strategy Guide, Creating Channels with Application Programming Interfaces, by Daniel Jacobson(@dan...
Why We Write API Documentation
This post comes from the SDK Bridge newsletter. I find so much value from what Peter and Jonathan do over at SDK Bridge, I always have to post their newsletter here and share with all of you. I r...
January 28, 2012
#Documentation
Engaging My API Developers Immediately with Rapportive
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com When new developers register for the CityGrid API, I get an email with their name and email address. I want to make sure each developer knows I’m here, and a...
January 23, 2012
#Developers
API Evangelist Strategy for CityGrid
When I started with CityGrid as their API Evangelist, I wanted to make sure and share as much of my strategy with my audience here, in real-time. Of course I’ve been so busy executing I have forgot...
HTML5 Developers Dominate at the Facebook Hackathons
I just wrapped up two separate Facebook Hackathons, one in New York and the other in Boston. Both events started with presentations from various Facebook team members, demonstrating different aspe...
How Do You Make Money From Your Apps?
One of the areas of API development I’m focusing a lot of energy on in 2012 is around monetization. I want to help define the playing field, of how API owners make money from their APIs, as well as...
AT&T's new Cloud API Platform
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com This is a guest post by Travis Spencer, a Software engineer specializing in federation, SSO, cloud computing, Web services, & enterprise architecture. T...
Email as a Content API
I think email is highly underrated as a content API. I know its not what we traditionally think of as an API, but has a lot of potential as a basic interface into an application. An example of thi...
The Secret to Amazon's Success--Internal APIs
Last year there was an accidental post from a Google employee about Google+. The internal rant was accidentally shared publicly and provides some insight into how Google approached APIs for their ...
Building Hyp3rL0cal Web and Mobile Apps
I needed a way to tell the story of the CityGrid API from the perspective of cities across the United States. The way I tell stories is through programming and hacking on APIs, so I needed a proje...
Rules for Hackathon Organizers, by Ravi Singh
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I just wrapped up the AT&T Mobile App Hackathon in Las Vegas. I had a great time hanging out with developers at the Palms Hotel, and watching everyone co...
January 11, 2012
#Rules
Definition of Hack
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I’m spending a lot of time traveling around the country going to hackathons. I find myself constantly explaining what the term hack means. I’m blown away by...
January 10, 2012
#Definitions
Hashtag For Your Hackathon
There are a lot of reasons for throwing a hackathon, and what value you get out of a hackathon will vary depending on who you are. As I explore the hackathon phenomenom in 2012, I’m trying to trac...
January 8, 2012
#tag
API Evangelist Tour Schedule for January
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com In 2012 I will be stepping up my coverage, participation and sponsorship of Hackathon events across the United States. In January I will be attending 9 even...
January 5, 2012
#Evangelist
Service Offered by Local, Social, Mobile API Providers
To kick-off my role as API Evangelist at CityGrid, I took a quick walk through the world of location and places API. The CityGrid API centers around places API which provides rich local business d...
Top 10 API Evangelist Posts for 2011
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com 2011 was an interesting year for APIs. I wasn’t as good as I wanted to be at covering all major API events, but I got some traction with some posts I didn’t ...
December 31, 2011
#Evangelist
Government Opened Data via APIs in 2011
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com One of the most important fronts of API development is Government. All of us API and data guys have all been screaming for city, county, state and federal g...
2011 APIs as a Tag Cloud
I pulled a list of the 2023 APIs that were added to the ProgrammableWeb API directory in 2011. I took the description column and used Wordle to generate a tag cloud for 2011. I think tag cl...
December 31, 2011
APIs Can Decouple Business Information and Resources
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I’m reading The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood right now. So far its a great read. Very thought provoking stuff. I just read this passage on how ...
API Management Service Provider Roundup for 2011
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com As 2011 comes to an end, I’d like to take another look at what I learned about the API management service provider space in 2011. I started the year engaging...
Quick Walk Through the World of Location & Places APIs
Photo Credits I took a walk through what I am calling the locations and places API landscape today. Most of these APIs I’m familiar with, but as the CityGrid API Evangelist, I’m getting an opportu...
December 22, 2011
#Location
Quick Walk Through the World of Location & Places APIs
Photo Credits I took a walk through what I am calling the locations and places API landscape today. Most of these APIs I’m familiar with, but as the CityGrid API Evangelist, I’m getting an opportu...
December 22, 2011
#Location
Facebook Mobile Hack Coming To Boston and New York
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Facebook just announced that they are hosting Mobile Hacks in Boston and New York: Facebook Mobile Hack - New York on January 18th Facebook Mobile Hack...
Business of Google APIs 2011
ProgrammableWeb says Google has 94 APIs. I roughly count about 75 going through Google Code. I’m more concerned with public web APIs, and Google has Android, Chrome and other non-web APIs, so its h...
December 21, 2011
#Business
The FCC Lanches API Curation Platform Called MyFCC
The FCC just launched a new platform that allows anyone to create, save and manage a customized page, built from widgets that pull content from FCC APIs, called MyFCC. At first glance MyFCC might...
December 20, 2011
#Platform
Google Affiliate Network API
Google just launched their new Google Affiliate Network API, which allows publishers and advertisers to automate various tasks related to the Google Affiliate Network. The Google Affiliate Network...
December 17, 2011
#Network
RESTful Business Architecture
In my quest to fully understand the underlying principles of Representational State Transfer (REST), i’m re-reading Roy Thomas Fielding original dissertation, Architectural Styles and the Design of...
Google Deploys a Single, Centralized Terms of Use for APIs
Google has made another step towards a more common API infrastructure in line with their API Discovery Service, API Explorer, and API Console by launching a single terms of service for all Google A...
December 12, 2011
What Does a World with 100K Open APIs Look Like?
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I recently pulled the title, description and tags for all the APIs in the ProgramableWeb directory into a local MySQL database. At the time of this writing t...
December 2, 2011
#Open
Zappos Opens Up Their Internal Hackathon to Public
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Hackathons are growing into a popular way to spark innovation around hardware, data and APIs within developer and hacker communities. I count over 40 hackath...
The Mainstream New York Times Audience is Ready for APIs
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com There was a post a couple weeks back in the New York Times Bits Blog called, “TaskRabbit Looks to Expand Cities and Offer an A.P.I.” Its a pretty straightfo...
Twitter Advertising Will Push the Boundaries of Online Advertising
There was a post in the Atlantic about Twitter’s advertising network called, No One’s Noticing Twitter’s New Ad Experiment, Which Is a Good Thing. Twitter is dropping what they call “promoted twee...
Are API Service Providers Relevant?
“Are API service providers relevant? Will they remain relevant?” Thats the question asked by Ben Kepes at this years Defrag Conference, while moderating a panel with Apigee’s Sam Ramji and Mashery...
Can Swagger Deliver a RESTful API Discovery Service?
Swagger is now Open API Definition Format (OADF) – **READ MORE** kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com There is a lot of discussion around the growth of APIs, and what the future will look like....
Google Launches OAuth 2.0 Playground
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Last March Google started support OAuth 2.0 for all of their APIs, and has been pushing all developers to switch to using OAuth 2.0 in all applications. Tod...
November 8, 2011
#OAuth
"Google Launches OAuth 2.0 Playground"
Last March Google started support OAuth 2.0 for all of their APIs, and has been pushing all developers to switch to using OAuth 2.0 in all applications. Today they announced the OAuth 2.0 Playgrou...
November 8, 2011
#OAuth
Zypr API Provides Siri-Like Voice Tasking for Any Developer
Pioneer Corporation just announced the availability of Zypr™, a new voice-powered API that provides a conversational, voice-control command API allowing developers to integrate Siri like functional...
November 7, 2011
#Voice
New Enterprise API Management Solution Called Atmos.phe.re
I first reported on service oriented architecture (SOA) pioneer SOA Software’s entry into the API management arena back in June, today at the Cloud Computing Expo in Santa Clara, CA they are announ...
New Enterprise API Management Solution Called Atmos.phe.re
I first reported on service oriented architecture (SOA) pioneer SOA Software’s entry into the API management arena back in June, today at the Cloud Computing Expo in Santa Clara, CA they are announ...
Can API Platforms Ensure Access to Federally Funded Research?
I came across this on the White House blog today, “Request for Information on Public Access to Digital Data and Scientific Publications”. The America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010, signed b...
An API Driven Government Regulatory Framework
I wrote a piece yesterday on the FCC Open Commission recent proposal to require that television stations make their “public inspection file” available online called, “Opening Up Information is Not ...
November 3, 2011
#Government
Verizon API Delivers Faster Internet for Those Who Pay
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com According to PCMag.com, Verizon will publish an API that could allow consumers to “turbocharge” the network bandwidth on their smartphone, for a small fee. ...
Tru.ly Launches Age Verification API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Tru.ly just launched an age verification API that authenticates the age of an online user based by cross-referencing user-submitted personal information with...
"Tru.ly Launches Age Verification API"
Tru.ly just launched an age verification API that authenticates the age of an online user based by cross-referencing user-submitted personal information with data points from Tru.ly verification pa...
Opening Up Information is Not Enough, Its Needs to be Accessible
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com The FCC Open Commission recently proposed to require that television stations make their “public inspection file” available online. The public inspection fil...
Open and Freemium API Access and Rate Limits
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I’m spending some time getting to know the Topsy Labs API today. Topsy Labs offers access to its proprietary metrics, social content, and influence data via ...
Researching 166 APIs for My Development Team
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I try to pay attention to how APIs are transforming as many industries as I can. I usually carve out at least an hour each day, to evalute a specific industr...
November 1, 2011
#Research
Twilio Rolling Out Twilio Voice API Into Europe
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Twilio just made their first move into Europe by offering Twilio Voice service in the United Kingdom. The Twilio Voice API is now available in the UK, allow...
Mashery Now Runs On-Premise or in the Cloud
Last week Mashery rolled out a new on-premise version of their API management proxy. A solution meant to address a common concern of IT and API owners, that when using Mashery, all of their data a...
October 26, 2011
#Cloud
The API Service Provider I Missed, Vordel
I have done a lot of research lately on the API service provider landscape. My goal is to understand who provides API delivery and management services, what they offer and help API owners understan...
How Do I Convince My Managers of the Importance of Having Internal APIs?
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com One of the ways I develop content for this site is by talking through my day to day experiences as an API Evangelist. I feel that talking through what I’m le...
October 25, 2011
#Internal
A Walk Through Data.gov with Some Thoughts on Whats Next
Data.gov for me is like being a kid in a candy store. My experience with data goes back to High School when I got my first programming job right out of Mr. Smiths computer class. I built Cobol data...
October 25, 2011
#Data
A Walk Through Data.gov with Some Thoughts on Whats Next
Data.gov for me is like being a kid in a candy store. My experience with data goes back to High School when I got my first programming job right out of Mr. Smiths computer class. I built Cobol data...
October 25, 2011
#Data
Incentivize Your API Developers to Contribute with Lower Pricing
As the number of APIs grow, the number of ways in which API owners control and incentivize their developers ecosystems evolves. APIs are your business development 2.0 platform, and it is up to you ...
Bringing Awareness to Data.Gov with Grassroots Evangelism
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I just finished a four week roadshow that included three Startup Weekend EDU events – one in Seattle, one in San Francisco and one in Washington DC – as well...
"Bringing Awareness to Data.Gov with Grassroots Evangelism"
I just finished a four week roadshow that included three Startup Weekend EDU events – one in Seattle, one in San Francisco and one in Washington DC – as well as two versions of the Business of APIs...
Open Access to Your Drupal Site with a Content API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Last spring when I started writing for ProgrammableWeb, my first post was “Everything Should Be an API,” Says FCC. The story was about the new FCC web site, ...
Self-Service and Freemium Are Important to the Success of APIs
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com At a recent presentation at the Business of API conference in San Francisco, Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson argued that two of the ways APIs can be successful in cou...
October 20, 2011
#Self-Service
Considerations When Planning Endpoints for your RESTful API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Someone asked me recently for some advice regarding what they should consider when constructing the URL and endpoints for their RESTful API. I thought I’d s...
Business of APIs Conference in New York
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I am getting ready for the Mashery, Business of APIs Conference in New York tomorrow. BAPI is in its 5th year of bringing together the big players in the AP...
USA Today Announces Commercial Terms of Use for Its API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com USA Today has announced that they now support the commercial access of articles, reviews and census data through their content APIs. Any developer can reque...
October 14, 2011
#Commercial
New Data API Around NASA Data Sets
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com NASA just launched a new Data API around its online archive of NASA data sets, that they launched back in August. The data.nasa.gov API provides a RESTful in...
Getting Ready for the X.Commerce Innovate Developer Conference in San Francisco
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I’m getting ready for the X.Commerce Innovate Developer Conference 2011, at Moscone Center in San Francisco this week. X.Commerce is the merging of Paypal, ...
October 9, 2011
#Commerce
"Getting Ready for the X.Commerce Innovate Developer Conference in San Francisco"
I’m getting ready for the X.Commerce Innovate Developer Conference 2011, at Moscone Center in San Francisco this week. X.Commerce is the merging of Paypal, eBay and Magento’s developer ecosystems ...
October 9, 2011
#Commerce
Unlocking Government Data with Socrata
I was introduced to the API service provider Socrata last week. Socrata has a government data platform that exceeds anything I’ve envisioned. In the past, I have said that every state should have a...
Learning Management Systems (LMS) Integration with Instructure Canvas API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I had a great response to my Learning Management System (LMS) APIs round-up last week after Startup Weekend Seattle EDU. After posting I quickly updated with...
Factual Launches App Gallery to Showcase Data Apps
Factual has launch a new application gallery to showcase the diverse number of applications built using data provided by Factual. You can search for apps, browse by category, and filter by open so...
Distributed and Seamless API Management Using 3Scale APIs
I just added four new API to my API stack series. I’m considering breaking the API Stack series into a separate feed, they kind of clutter the main feed. Anyways, the four new APIs are from 3Scale:...
API Stack - API Service Management with 3Scale Service Management API
3scale provides scalable API Infrastructure as a Service to control, manage and monetize the distribution of data, content or services for devices, mobile and web applications. The 3Scale Service ...
API Stack - API Billing with 3Scale Billing API
3Scale provides scalable API Infrastructure as a Service to control, manage and monetize the distribution of data, content or services for devices, mobile and web applications. The 3Scale Billing ...
API Stack - API Analytics with 3Scale Analytics API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com 3scale provides scalable API Infrastructure as a Service to control, manage and monetize the distribution of data, content or services for devices, mobile an...
API Stack - API Account Management with 3Scale Account Management API
3scale provides scalable API Infrastructure as a Service to control, manage and monetize the distribution of data, content or services for devices, mobile and web applications. The 3Scale Account ...
The Business of Klout's API
I attended Mashery’s Business of APIs Conference in San Francisco last week. There were a lot of great API presentations, but I thought one really told a great story in-line with the focus of the e...
October 7, 2011
#Business
The Business of Klout's API
I attended Mashery’s Business of APIs Conference in San Francisco last week. There were a lot of great API presentations, but I thought one really told a great story in-line with the focus of the e...
October 7, 2011
#Business
Internal API Evangelism - Demo Fridays
At Mimeo we have demo Fridays where anyone can demo what they’re working on. For demo Fridays I tend to build prototypes showing different ways to integrate with the Mimeo Document Printing APIs. A...
Easy API Development with apiary.io
I’m spending a lot of time lately evaluating the various API management service providers like 3Scale, Apigee, Mashery,and Mashape. One thing that I have to explain a lot to people about these API...
Easy API Development with apiary.io
I’m spending a lot of time lately evaluating the various API management service providers like 3Scale, Apigee, Mashery,and Mashape. One thing that I have to explain a lot to people about these API...
Ryan Sarver at the Mashery Business of APIs Conference
A video of the fireside chat with Twitter Director of Platform Ryan Sarver at the Mashery Business of APIs conference in San Francisco this month. Some interesting insight into Twitters approach t...
October 6, 2011
Business of APIs Conference in San Francisco - Wrapup
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I finished up the Mashery, Business of APIs Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. After a days rest and reflection on the event I wanted to capture my tho...
Business of APIs Conference in San Francisco
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I am getting ready for the Mashery, Business of APIs Conference in San Francisco tomorrow. BAPI is in its 5th year of bringing together the big players in t...
What Does It Mean To Be A Google Developer?
With over 100 APIs, and an army of developer advocates, Google is one of the top API ecosystems in the world, alongside Twitter and Facebook. Google is stepping back and rethinking how they intera...
Learning Management System (LMS) APIs
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com At Mimeo I get approached by a lot of customers who use various learning management systems, and ask if they can print training and classroom materials from ...
API Evangelism is Equal Parts Internal, Partner and Public Outreach
Historically APIs are deployed to provide data and resources to business partners. However, in the last 5 years we have seen a shift in focus to also delivering more open, publicly focused APIs, ba...
Identify Influencers with the Klout API
Klout just updated their API area. The Klout API was originally released in 2009, but the new API area has several improvements including faster response times for the API, better documentation and...
Advertising Network Dedicated to APIs and Developers
One of the things I do here at API Evangelist is review APIs for their owners and provide suggestions for how they can improve the technology, ecosystem and better monetize their API. When it come...
Tiny Speck is Changing How Games Are Built Using APIs
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Audrey introduced me to a very cool gaming company the other day called Tiny Speck. The company, the latest project of Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield,...
September 27, 2011
A Single Provider for High Quality Transit Data and APIs
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I wrote about the need for more Transit APIs a couple weeks ago, and the opportunity for some company or organization to step up and coordinate transit APIs ...
Twilio Connect is NOT OAuth for API Billing
During TwilioCon last week I covered the release of Twilio Connect in two posts, starting with, “Twilio Introduces Twilio Connect, Its New In-App Billing Model” on ProgrammableWeb, and on API Evang...
Sorry SalesForce.com, but Database.com is not Open
I’m working on reviewing various APIs as part of my database industry overview, where I’m trying to understand the different approaches to delivering database platforms using web APIs as the primar...
Making APIs Accessible to Regular Users with Widgets
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I was reviewing the Recovery API yesterday, which gives you a RESTful API for exploring where all the money went as part of our governments Recovery Act. I h...
September 25, 2011
#Access
What to Include in API Reference Documentation
This post comes from the SDK Bridge newsletter. I find so much value from what Peter and Jonathan do over at SDK Bridge, I asked them if I could repost their newsletter here and share with all of ...
Twilio Connect is OAuth for API Billing
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Twilio just announced a new API billing solution called Twilio Connect. The new billing solution enables developers to offload charges for Twilio API usage ...
Google Introduces a Google+ Hangout API
Not even a week after Google rolled out the long awaited Google+ API, they launched the Google+ Hangouts API, enabling developers to build collaborative apps that run inside of a Google+ Hangout T...
Providing Code Libraries is Not Enough for Your API
Code libraries have been a staple of open API communities for quite a few years now. API owners provide developers with working samples of code in a variety of programming languages, to get starte...
September 17, 2011
#Code
Google API a Technology Review
I was happy to see Google launch an API for Google + this week. I’m not chomping at the bit to build anything social on it, but I’m glad they made it public. I wanted to take some time to review...
Can You Build an API Using Scraped Data?
I’ve come across several APIs lately that rely on getting their data from web scraping. These API owners have written scripts that spider page(s) on a regular schedule, pull content, parse it and ...
September 14, 2011
#Data
Unified Data APIs for Geo, Weather and Beyond
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Last week I covered Centralized Geo Data with New InfoChimps API, and talked about how I felt it was a Look at the Future of Data. After writing I started thi...
September 13, 2011
#Data
Printing and Publishing APIs
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com As the API Evangelist for Mimeo, I spend a lot of time looking for other print related APIs. I spent some time today to update my list, and here what I found...
API Automation for the Masses with If This Then That
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I believe that REST and JSON are breaking up the web, into smaller more understandable, re-usable, mashable pieces that potentially anyone can use, even non-de...
September 13, 2011
#Automation
Weather Underground Launches New API Platform at TechCrunch Disrupt
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com At TechCrunch DISRUPT, this week in San Francisco, the Weather Underground launched a new Weather API platform that provides developers with real-time access t...
September 12, 2011
#Platform
OneBusAway as a Model for Other Transit APIs
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com The response to Sundays post about the Need for More Transit APIs was impressive. I receive quite a few emails and tweets about other APIs, and it started a g...
September 12, 2011
#Transit
Mashery Business of APIs Conference 2011
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Mashery has announced the 2011 Business of APIs event series in October. The Business of APIs Conference discusses winning strategies for API businesses, how ...
API Stack - Document Merging with Drawloop API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com DrawLoop provides a SOAP and REST API for merging data together into a single documents, using a User ID and Password combination for authentication. Using th...
September 12, 2011
API Stack - Document Conversion with Drawloop API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com DrawLoop provides a SOAP and REST API for conversion of documents in various formats, using a User ID and Password combination for authentication. Using the D...
September 12, 2011
#Conversion
The Need for More Transit APIs
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I’m working on some more stories around municipal data APIs, based upon two stories I found recently, where developers took it upon themselves to scrape data, ...
September 11, 2011
#Transit
Other API News I Did Not Get a Chance to Write About
Here are a couple news stories from the week that I didn’t get a chance to write about. Google APIs Client Library for PHP - Google launches a new set of PHP Client LIbraries that work across m...
September 10, 2011
#News
Beyond the Social Experiment Jonathans Card is the New Gift Card Economy
I followed the Jonthan’s Card Socal Experiment closely. The whole time I had an entry on my to do list, to write a story about it. I never successfully found an angle I could get behind, then Audre...
My ProgrammableWeb Roundup for 9/9/2011
I made time for three posts on ProgrammableWeb this week. I provided some more coverage of Dreamforce, and their latest mobile platform. Then I covered the US invasion of Viadeo Social Network, an...
September 9, 2011
#Web
A Flood of APIs Just Waiting to Happen
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Someone asked me about APIs dealing with water and utilities a couple weeks ago. So I dove in to see what I could find related to APIs for city, county and st...
September 9, 2011
#ai
Every City, County and State Should Have an API
I have a personal obsession for finding, crunching and making sense out of local, state, and federal government data. I’m willing to do a lot of work to derive meaning about how our government wor...
API Marketplace Mashape Raises $1.5M Seed Round
Mashape, the upcoming, self-service marketplace for APIs, which provides a platform to distribute, consume and manage cloud based APIs, has just closed $1.5M in seed funding. The round was led by ...
Virtualized Document Printing APIs
Even though I cover the entire industry around APIs here on API Evangelist, I also am the API Evangelist for Mimeo Connect. Mimeo is a printing API that allows you to print a wide variety of busi...
September 5, 2011
#Print
Deploy and Manage a RESTful API with CodeIngiter and 3Scale
At Mimeo, my API developers were running into problems integrating with our cloud print API, I needed a fast way to virtualize and deploy an API built on top of my existing REST API. A quick and d...
API Stack - Single Sheet Printing with the Mimeo Connect Flyer & Brochure Printing API
The Mimeo Connect Flyer & Brochure Printing API allows developers to submit PDF files, and order commercially printed flyers and brochures with different folds, color, paper, coating and hole p...
September 5, 2011
#Print
API Stack - Single Sheet Printing with the Mimeo Connect Flyer & Brochure Printing API
The Mimeo Connect Flyer & Brochure Printing API allows developers to submit PDF files, and order commercially printed flyers and brochures with different folds, color, paper, coating and hole p...
September 5, 2011
#Print
API Stack - Large Format Printing with the Mimeo Connect Poster Printing API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com The Mimeo Connect Poster Printing API allows developers to submit high resolution PDF files, and order commercially printed posters with different sizes, paper...
September 5, 2011
#Print
API Stack - Card Printing with the Mimeo Connect Card Printing API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com The Mimeo Connect Card Printing API allows developers to submit PDF files, and order commercially printed cards in different sizes, paper and coatings from wit...
September 5, 2011
#Print
API Stack - Bound Document Printing with the Mimeo Connect Spiral Notebook Printing API
The Mimeo Connect Spiral Notebook Printing API allows developers to submit PDF files, and order commercially printed spiral notebooks in different sizes, paper and coatings from within your web and...
September 5, 2011
#Print
API Evangelist 2.0
Sorry about the flood of 25 API Evangelist posts. It was due to the fact I switched to a new blogging system today. I was out growing what I could do with Wordpress, and had too much data and oth...
September 5, 2011
#Evangelist
UK National Archives Launches API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com The National Archives has published a new API, as part of an ongoing program to get more public records online, according to ComputerWeekly.com. The National ...
How Do You Run Your Developer API Community?
The guys over at Developer Think Tank are conducting a survey to measure developer program performance. Developer Think Tank wants to create a platform to discuss the way to create and run a succe...
September 1, 2011
#Community
Centralized Geo Data with New InfoChimps API
Infochimps has delivered a new Geo API that brings together geographic data from multiple sources, connects it with a standardized schema, and delivers it to developers through a single API. When ...
September 1, 2011
#Data
A Look at the Future of Data APIs
I finally made some time to write up a review of the new Infochimps Geo API, and I think their approach gives us a glimpse at the future of data APIs. With the new Infochimps Geo API, Infochimps p...
September 1, 2011
#Data
SSL Required for Twitter Streaming API by End of Month
On September 29th, Twitter will be making the Streaming API support only SSL. The Twitter Streaming API currently supports HTTPS requests, but will completely discontinue HTTP support by the end of...
Paid Version of Google Translate API
Back in May Googledeprecatedthe free version of the Google Translate API, and pissed off a lot of people along the way. I talked about building your business around Google or any other APIs, and ev...
August 25, 2011
#ai
Conditional API Documentation
I was just reading a post at Mindtouch on having conditional documentation using MindTouch TCS. MindTouch TCS is a social knowledge-base, that can be used in building help systems and support commu...
August 24, 2011
#Documentation
Re-inventing Pearson Publishing using APIs
We hear about the struggles of newspapers, magazines, and book publishers to stay relevant in the digital age on almost a daily basis these days. Many of these publishers are sitting on a treasure ...
August 16, 2011
#Publishing
API Stack - Optical Character Recognition with WiseTrend OCR API
The WiseTrend OCR API allows developers to submit images in PDF, TIF, PNG, JPG,BMP, PCX and DCX formats, and get back textual results in TXT, PDF, RTF, Word, Excel, XML and CSV formats. WiseTrend ...
August 16, 2011
United States Farmers Market API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I’m always on the lookout for innovative data sets and examples of APIs that provide value in ever-day life. APIs are often a very geeky thing, and I’m always ...
Google+ APIs Released to Small Group of Devs
Google just put up a new Google+ Platform blog today, to support the growing demand around their new social platform. Developers have been waiting for the release of the Google+ API, so they can g...
August 11, 2011
Deeper Connections Between Apps with Web Intents
With all of the technology available to us, the way we express ourselves online and interact between web applications is still in its infancy. The two most common examples of online interaction are...
August 10, 2011
#Web
Centralized Places Data with Factual CrossWalk API
Factual just launched a new API that will centralize how physical places are represented within Factual data-sets, and across 3rd party APIs, dubbed the Factual Crosswalk API. Data about physical ...
August 9, 2011
#Data
Hackathons See Growth, But We Need More
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Hackathons are becoming a popular vehicle worldwide for identifying talent, sharing ideas, tackling big data, building apps, and providing a forum for develope...
API Stack - Domain Whois with DomainTools API
The DomainTools API provides research and monitoring web services for domains. Using DomainTools you can perform whois lookup, history, reverse IP, name server reports, domain suggestion and searc...
Facebook API Changes to Be in Sync with OAuth
In order to be compliant with the OAuth spec, Facebook is making changes to their auth APIs. As part of this update, they will be deprecating ‘code_and_token’ and need developers to use ‘code%20tok...
API Stack - Image to CSS Conversion with Img to CSS API
The IMG to CSS API lets you convert images to html/css using a RESTful interface, with API keys for authentication, and responses in JSON and XML. The HTML / CSS code that is returned can be prett...
August 6, 2011
Does API Value and Reliability Trump Docs and Code Samples?
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I’ve written about the essential building blocks necessary for a successful API, and there are other great posts like, What Developers Say About API Documentat...
API Terms of Service Predict an Unsure Future
I was just working on a piece for ProgrammableWeb about the new Yahoo WebPlayer, which is amedia player that can play video and audio from any site or service, and be distributed across the web. W...
August 5, 2011
#Terms of Service
More Government Data with the Federal Register API
Each day Federal agencies publish documents in the Federal Register. These documents include proposed rules, final rules, public notices, and Presidential actions. The print-based version of the Fe...
Mashery Open Sources Their API I/O Docs
Last week at OSCON, I wrote about Mashery’s release of their new I/O Docs. Mashery I/O Docs are a combination of API documentation and an API explorer, allowing developers to make requests on an AP...
API Stack - Full-Text Search with IndexTank API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com The IndexTank API provides full-text, website search, using a RESTFUL interface, with private URLs for security, and responses in JSON. The IndexTank API prov...
August 2, 2011
#Search
How Open Should We Be With Our API Road-maps?
I just finished reading two great posts about battles within API ecosystems.Convoluted TOS and “Open” APIs Will Be the Death of Us by Shion Deysarkar and Topify to Go Dark as Twitter Claims Another...
August 1, 2011
#Open
My 3D Printed Junk Drawer
I had a discussion yesterday with Audrey Wattersabout the infamous junk drawer(s) that exists in every house. That end of the counter drawer that seems to accumulate everything from around our hous...
August 1, 2011
#Print
A Market for Selling API Code Libraries
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com One of my Google Alerts picked up on something interesting today. A PHP code library for the Github Gist API, for sale on the code marketplace CodeCanyon for $...
August 1, 2011
#Code
Bootstrapped API Management Like the Moodstocks API
I was reviewing the image recognition API from Moodstocks, for a story on ProgrammableWeb today, and discovered another API management story I feel should be told. Its a story about bootstrapping y...
New OAuth Toolkit from Layer 7 Technologies
Layer 7 Technologies introduced a new OAuth Toolkit, ageneralized framework for handling a broad range of OAuth scenarios across cloud, web and mobile applications. OAuth is a simple way to publis...
July 28, 2011
#OAuth
API Stack - Audio Transcription with Quicktate API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Quicktate provides an XML-RPC API audio transcription, using API keys for authentication. Using the Quicktate API, developers can transcribe .wav or .mp3 audi...
July 28, 2011
INRIX Raises $37 Million to Deliver Traffic Data
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com INRIX�, an international provider of traffic information, and driving services, announced a commitment of $37 million in funding led by Kleiner, Perkins, Caufi...
Deploy and Monetize Amazon SimpleDB Data with API from WebServius
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Amazon SimpleDB is a highly available, flexible, and scalable key-value data store built in the clouds. WebServius provides self-service API deployment and ma...
Could you be an API Evangelist?
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com In the summer of 2010 I was looking to reinvent my career. I was looking for a new direction. Somewhere I could apply all my strengths, and stay relevant and a...
July 24, 2011
#Evangelist
API Stack - Text Analysis with Saplo API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Saplo provides an RESTful API for text analysis, using oath for authentication. Using the Saplo API you can perform text analysis such as entity tagging, rela...
July 23, 2011
#Analysis
Moving the File Open Dialog Box to the Web with Google Picker API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com The file open dialog box is an important tool that we use every day, but we very rarely notice it or think much about it. On the Windows platform, using the f...
Building API Developer Business Models
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com API business models are still in its infancy. Many API owners are in experimental mode when it comes to how they make money with their API. Beyond the fuzzy p...
July 22, 2011
#Business
Tracking and Harnessing Innovation at Hackathons
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com A lot of innovation occurs at hackathons. Seems like every hackathon I attend, there are discussion about how to better harness the talent available at these e...
API Stack - Faxing with Phaxio
Phaxio provides a RESTful API for developers to send faxes from their applications. Using Phaxio you can send and receive faxes, with all responses formatted in JSON. All outgoing and incoming fa...
July 20, 2011
API and Embed Strategy for Visual.ly
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com It is hard for me to imagine why someone would launch a web application these days, without immediately launching an API, or at least having plans for an API s...
July 20, 2011
#Strategy
Partial Response and Updates with Google APIs
Last year google launched support for partial response and updates to a couple of the Google APIs. The goals was to significantly reduce network, memory, and CPU resources needed to work with Googl...
July 19, 2011
Building the Perfect API Stack
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com As I’m reviewing APIs, I spend a lot of time considering the viability and business use cases for an API. While considering this, I keep having thoughts about...
July 19, 2011
WebServius API Service Provider
WebServius provides a self-service tool for deploying, managing and monetizing datasets using an API. WebServius provides users with the ability to integrate and store data, and enable access to t...
July 18, 2011
#Web
Providing a Comprehensive API Area Search
One of the new features that Twitter rolled out with the new Twitter developer area was an enhanced search tool powered by Apache Solr. The new unified search provides an engine for searching acros...
July 17, 2011
#Search
Fear and Uncertainty Around a Public API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I spend a lot of time looking through various APIs. One common problem I see, are with, what on the surface appear to be public APIs, but once I start looking ...
July 17, 2011
#ai
Twitter Launching Advertising API in Q4
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com According to Reuters, Twitter is preparing to launch an Advertising API, targeting larger advertisers, allowing them to tailor, automate, and publish ads in bu...
Tumblr Releases API v2
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Tumblr just released version 2.0 of the popular blogging platform API, in an effort to make developers lives a little easier when integrating with the Tumblr p...
Facebook Removes Application Directory
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Many Facebook developers have been confused about what it means to submit to the Facebook App Directory, and frustrated by the length of time it took to get th...
Box.net Mobile Developer Challenge
Box.net just announced the Mobile Dev Challenge,along with their release of two new API methods, an updated iOS library, and new Android library. The goal of the Box Mobile Dev Challenge is to bui...
July 15, 2011
#Mobile
Box.net Mobile Developer Challenge
Box.net just announced the Mobile Dev Challenge,along with their release of two new API methods, an updated iOS library, and new Android library. The goal of the Box Mobile Dev Challenge is to bui...
July 15, 2011
#Mobile
Foursquare Unleashes Its Deals API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Foursquare launched a new Merchant API that will allow developers and merchants to create specials using any technology. The new Merchant API comes right afte...
July 14, 2011
#Facebook
Twitter Launches New API Developer Area
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Twitter just launch an updated version of the Twitter Developer Site. The new developer area focuses on enhancing developer communication channels and providin...
July 11, 2011
#Twitter
Wisdom Shared from the Foursquare API Team
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Foursquare is sunsetting their APIv1, and recently spent some time sharing the lessons they learned during APIv1 and the decisions that went into APIv2. Here ...
Updates to Mashape API Management Platform
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Mashapereleased a few enhancements to their API management platform. Inbox - Mashape redesigned their inbox and messaging system. Developers can contact yo...
Claiming My Blog Posts and Social Profiles
I made some more changes to my network over the holidays. I’m working to better tie together my blog(s) and my social network profiles using the rel=”” property. The process is a three part proces...
Updated Blog Sharing
I updated the sharing tools on apievangelist.com today. Previously it had eight buttons, representing the top social network channels that drive traffic to the blog. I’m changing it, putting empha...
What Does Online Sales Tax Battle Mean for APIs
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Amazon sent me an email about the recent signing of the online sales tax law by California Governor Brown, which would force online retailers who have no physi...
June 30, 2011
#Sales
Open-Source Version of the Mashape API Proxy
The Mashape API Proxy is an open-source version of the same proxy that allows APIs to integrate with the Mashape Platform andhandles authorizing users, billing, rate limiting and other features. V...
New Pricing for Genability Energy API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Energy pricing data provider Genability just announced the roll-out of more flexible pricing for their API. The new pricing structure gives Genability API dev...
Mashape Provides Tools to Distribute, Discover and Hack APIs
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I’m exploring the Mashape API Platform, trying to break things down and understand everything in more detail. Blogging about a topic does this for me. So let’...
Videos for Mashery, Evolution of Distribution Event
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com The other week I attended an event put on byMashery, calledThe Evolution of Distribution. Mashery has published videos from the event on their site. The event...
June 29, 2011
#Video
Facebook Officially Lauches Graph API Explorer
Facebook just officially launched the Graph API Explorer, a tool allowing developers to quickly explore the social graph of people, photos, events, pages and the relationships between them, via the...
June 29, 2011
#Facebook
Apigee Delivers API PCI-DSS Compliance
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Apigee justannounced their Apigee Enterprise Cloud PCI, a new offering that enables organizations to deliver transactional APIs, securely deployed in a private...
June 29, 2011
#Compliance
Rise in Mobile Payments Good Sign for APIs
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Mobile is hot. Everyone is talking about thegrowth in mobile payments this year. Forrester Research predicted that mobile commerce will hit $6 billion in 2011...
Mobile API Documentation with Mashape Documentor
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com The Mashape Documentor is an engine for automatically generating a mobile version of documentation for any API running on the Mashape API Platform. Using PHP,...
Amazon Kills Alexa SOAP API Due To Security
Amazon recently sent an email to all developers notifying them of upcoming changes to the Alexa Top Sites API. On November 25, 2011 Amazon will deprecate the Alexa Top Sites SOAP API. The SOAP int...
Why Your API Registration Process Sucks
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com This is one story I’m sure I will be telling over and over. Its about providing self-service registration to your API, and access to your documentation. I’m w...
API Ecosystem Tracking with StatsD and Graphite
When managing an API and its ecosystem, we are all making this up as we go along. We have to constantly try new things, build them out, test, measure, and readjust. Measuring being the most import...
Widget Builder Environment for APIs
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com There are many tools out there for working with Web APIs, but the one I am seeing used more and more is an API explorer. API explorers allow users to make call...
June 22, 2011
#Environment
What Challenges Do API Service Providers Face in the Enterprise Space?
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com APIs are hot right now. With the success of Twitter, Twilio, Facebook and others – due in no small part to their APIs – the enterprise space is taking notice. ...
3Scale and Layer7 Partner for Secure API Management
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Two API service providers have brought their products together to deliver a more robust enterprise API solution. 3Scale API management platform now integrates ...
HAPI Hackathon Wrapup
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com The HAPI hackathon wrapped up June 12th in San Francisco. The event brought developers together to hack on over 9 APIs in order to build something cool over th...
APIs Are Key to Industry Growth
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com At the Glue Conference this year in Colorado, I sat on a panel called, Whats Next for APIs?. In my talk, one area I focused on, was how industries would organi...
Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for APIs
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I recently moved my IDE off my desktop and onto the web. I’m test driving two separate web-based integrated development environments (IDE): Akshell - I lik...
Genability API Review
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Genability have assembled a database of electricity pricing information from over 3500 electricity providers throughout North America. TheGenability API is RE...
June 18, 2011
#Review
New API Management Platform Players
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Two new API management platforms were launched this month. Layer 7 technologies launched the Layer 7 API Portal, and SOA Software launched their Atmosphere API...
Layer 7 Technologies Launches New API Portal
Layer 7 Technologies recently launched a new API Portal platform. The new Layer 7 API portal provides API service providers with a secure, turn-key way to manage developers who build applications a...
June 17, 2011
#Portal
Factual API Review
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Factual is an open data platform and community, with a goal to maximize data accuracy, transparency, and availability. They provide a marketplace of evolving d...
June 17, 2011
#Review
Deploying Smarter API Documentation
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Posterous recently launched a new API giving users access to all the functionality available through the Posterous web interface. Instead of just delivering d...
June 17, 2011
#Documentation
Atmosphere, a New API Management Portal
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com SOA Software just launched a new API management platform called, Atmosphere. Atmosphere provides a secure, platform that companies can deploy to manage their ...
A YouTube Channel for Your API Community
Twitter has launched a new building block for their API community, a YouTube Channel. The new YouTube Twitter API channel will contain interviews, tutorials and other video content that is produce...
June 17, 2011
#Community
The USA Today API Matures
Back when I first started doing API reviews on API Evangelist, I did a review of USA Today’s API. At first I almost didn’t post the review. It was such a simple API, with nothing innovative to spe...
Using Your API to Find New Developer Talent
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Many API owners depend on their APIs for identifying new types of business models, turning their API ecosystems into research & development platforms. Edw...
June 13, 2011
#Talent
Hunch's Clear Vision of Privacy and OAuth
Having a privacy policy on your API is an important part of making it clear to developers and end-users, where your company stands in regard to their data and personal privacy. Just having a priva...
Hunch's Clear Vision of Privacy and OAuth
Having a privacy policy on your API is an important part of making it clear to developers and end-users, where your company stands in regard to their data and personal privacy. Just having a priva...
June 13, 2011
Hunch API Review
Hunch’s ambitious mission is to build a ‘Taste Graph’ of the entire web, connecting every person on the web with their affinity for anything, from books to electronic gadgets to fashion or vacation...
June 13, 2011
#Review
API Tools & Service Providers
When I review a new API, I take a look at the technology they provide, but I tend to focus on the business of their API. One area I look at, is what tools they use to deliver the building blocks t...
API Tools & Service Providers
When I review a new API, I take a look at the technology they provide, but I tend to focus on the business of their API. One area I look at, is what tools they use to deliver the building blocks t...
June 13, 2011
Managing My Google Alerts
I am making some adjustments to my Google Alerts today. I removed a few and added a few alerts. Here are my current Google Alerts: call for papers kin lane open API REST API self publ...
June 12, 2011
API Proxies, Connectors, and Add-Ons
I’m working through some 100K views of the API service provider arena, and trying to evolve my perspectives of Whats Next for APIs. This is all a work in progress, so I’m publishing here on kinlan...
The Battle for Your API Proxy
Every Web API is designed to receive requests from and respond to the outside world. Every day an API kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com millions of calls. Before the API can process these requ...
June 11, 2011
#Proxy
Etsy API Review
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Etsy’s mission is to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers . Ety’s vision is to build a new economy and present a ...
June 11, 2011
#Review
Why is your RESTful API Separate From Your Website?
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I was having a beer with Dr. Alexandre Passant of Seevl the other day, we were talking about music, APIs and the Seevl API. A while back I wrote a piece about...
Posterous, From SaaS to PaaS Using an API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com In a single announcement yesterday, the blogging service Posterous went from Software as a Service (SaaS) to Platform as a Service (PaaS), with the introductio...
Lessons in API Deployment From Netflix
I’ve heard this story several times now, but I think its a story worth telling over and over. It is the story of the Netflix API and the lessons they learned along the way. Not every API owner wil...
Reinventing Payments with Dwolla Grid API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com The Dwolla payment service just launched a new payment API called Grid. Before you can understand grid, you need to understand Dwolla’sphilosophyon payments. ...
June 8, 2011
#Payments
iCloud Storage APIs
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com iCloud storage APIs allow IOS application developers to store documents and other data to a central location so userscan view or edit from any device without h...
HAPi Hack Weekend
There is a hackathon going on this weekend in San Francisco over at the TokBox Offices. HAPI Hack Weekend has a pretty simple focus: Create cool new software using APIs. The event starts Friday, ...
A White-Label API App Store Platform
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com The goal of any API evangelist is to encourage its community to build mobile and web applications around their API. When you and your community have several w...
June 8, 2011
#Platform
API Office Hours with Google Calendar
Google Calendar has a new feature for managing “Appointment Slots”. These appointment slots are a great way to let others know preferred times when you are available. Open office hours are becomin...
Apple iCloud API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Lots of big news coming out of Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC2011) in San Francisco today. There were major enhancements coming down the pipes ...
June 6, 2011
#Cloud
API Basics for Retail Companies from Best Buy
Kumar Kandaswamy, Director of Open API Platform Business for Best Buy, spoke at Mashery’s The Evolution of Distribution event today. Kandaswamy offered some practical advice for retail companies t...
June 3, 2011
#ai
Mashery - Evolution of Distribution
Providing some real-world examples, Mashery invited four leaders in the API space to speak: Daniel Jacobson, Director of Engineering for Netflix API who walked us through how APIs are allowing ...
June 2, 2011
#Twitter
Three Potential Types of API Platforms
I’m processing all my notes from the 2011 Glue Conference, which has been one of the most thought provoking events I’ve been to this year. The best part of events like Gluecon is you get to hang w...
Open vs. Closed APIs
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com With all the buzz around APIs these days, its easy to get swept up in all the hype around open APIs, and miss the mark with your own API deployment. So what d...
June 1, 2011
#Open
API Forums Using Get Satisfaction
Get Satisfaction is one way to build API forums that enable productive conversations between an API owner and the developer ecosystem. Simply engaging your customers in conversation won’t earn you...
May 30, 2011
#Forums
3Taps API Review
3taps is a data platform that aggregates searches and posting to multiple data platforms into single interface. 3taps API provides a RESTful interface with app and keys for authentication, provide...
May 30, 2011
#Review
Qwerly API Review
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Qwerly provides a single data API for accessing social network profiles across multiple networks including Twitter, Facebook, and Twitter. Qwerly only offers ...
May 29, 2011
#Review
API Technology - OData
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com There is an ever growing amount of data available today and much of this data is now being collected and stored across a wide variety of system, locked into sp...
You Think There Are a Lot of APIs Now? Wait Until Evrythng Has An API!
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com We are in the middle of an era of unprecedented growth in the number of available web APIs. In March 2011 ProgrammableWeb hit 3000 APIs in its directory, and i...
May 28, 2011
#ai
Building Your Business Around Google or Any Other APIs
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I’m reading all the starred items in my Google Reader about Google’s latest closing of APIs, most notably Google Translate API. There are some pretty sensation...
May 28, 2011
#Business
With Seevl Music Discovery, the Website is the API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Seevl, a music discovery service that provides anew way to explore the cultural and musical universe of various artists, just launched an API with the assistan...
The Rainmaker API Challenge
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com The Rainmaker API, which provides developers with a bi-directional sync from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other contact management systems is holding an API...
May 27, 2011
#ai
Google API House Cleaning
Google has had a busy year when it comes to APIs. So far this year they’ve launched 6 new APIs: Tasks API Books API Pagespeed Online API Places API Prediction API Fusion Tables API ...
Loggly Introduces User Defined, Variable Pricing
Loggly recently changed the structure for their cloud-based logging service from a tiered pricing, to a user-defined variable pricing structure. Users can define their own pricing tier using two k...
Facebook Platform Focuses in on Game Developers
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Tomorrow I’m participating in a session at Gluecon called Finishing School for Potential API Providers. Justin Tormey of Alcatel-Lucent will be talking some a...
Whats Next for APIs? Learning From Social APIs
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com The modern Web API got its start in CRM with Salesforce, and in E-commerce with Ebay and Amazon, but it really found traction with social platforms like Flickr...
Whats Next for APIs?
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I’m preparing for another talk tomorrow at the Glue conference in Colorado. Glue is a conference that assists architects, developers, administrators and integr...
May 24, 2011
Finishing School for Potential API Providers
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I’m preparing for a talk tomorrow at the Glue conference in Colorado. Glue is a conference that assists architects, developers, administrators and integrators ...
May 24, 2011
#Providers
Evernote Developer Competition and Conference
Evernote has announced their first ever developer competition and conference called, The Evernote Trunk Conference (ETC). ETC is a one day event in San Francisco bringing together developers and e...
May 23, 2011
#Competition
Open Source API Billing and Traffic Control
I was writing a story for ProgrammableWeb tonight on the enhancements Google made recently to its API console. I hadn’t properly covered the API Console, API Explorer here on API Evangelist, so I ...
Google APIs Explorer
The Google APIs Explorer is is a tool that helps you explore various Google APIs in a web interface without writing any code. kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Google APIs Explorer allows you ...
May 21, 2011
Google APIs Discovery Service
TheGoogle APIs Discovery Service provides a set of web APIs for discovering metadata across Google APIs. The discovery service delivers a JSON-based API that provides a directory of supported Goog...
May 21, 2011
#Discovery
Google APIs Console
The Google APIs Console is an interface for developers to manage and view traffic data, authentication, and billing information for up to 15 Google APIs, and more coming soon. Developers can bundl...
May 21, 2011
Discovery Services for Common APIs
I just wrote about the potential ofopen source API billing and traffic control building blocks, if Google would open source their Google API Console, like they did with the Google API Explorer. I ...
Series - 3D Printing - Virtual Warehousing
With the growing number of 3D models used in 3D printing there is a building need for warehouse space to store these virtual products, and parts. Of course this is virtual warehouse space, but it ...
May 18, 2011
#3D Printing
Series - 3D Printing - The Creators
3D printing starts with someones idea. Someones idea to recreate an existing object, or a vision of an object they hold in their head. The evolution of 3D modeling software and 3D printers is crea...
May 18, 2011
#3D Printing
Series - 3D Printing - Process & Materials
Once in production, a 3D model will be printed layer by layer using one of four potential 3D printing processes and corresponding materials: Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) - SLS is an additive...
May 18, 2011
#3D Printing
Series - 3D Printing - Process & Materials
Once in production, a 3D model will be printed layer by layer using one of four potential 3D printing processes and corresponding materials: Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) - SLS is an additive...
May 18, 2011
#3D Printing
Series - 3D Printing - Marketplaces
Marketplaces are necessary to showcase and make 3D printing products and parts accessible by the public and other potential customers. Shapeways and Google SketchUp provide integrated warehousing ...
May 18, 2011
#3D Printing
Series - 3D Printing - Makers
Just like it takes creators to develop 3D models of physical objects, it takes makers, who are people that actually bring these virtual representations into the world. 3D printers do most of the w...
May 18, 2011
#3D Printing
Series - 3D Printing - Files Formats
3D models used in 3D printing are stored in files. These files can be a wide range of standard or specialized file formats. File formats often depend on the type of 3D modeling software used, but ...
May 18, 2011
#3D Printing
Series - 3D Printing - Delivery
3D printing is about delivering a virtual object as a physical object, on demand. This is where our current shipping industry steps in; UPS, Fedex, USPS, DHS and other shipping providers will make...
May 18, 2011
#3D Printing
Series - 3D Printing - 3D Scanners
3D printing doesn’t always start with a human designer or creator. There are wide variety of 3D scanners that can be used in the 3D printing process. A 3D scanner is a device that analyzes a real-...
May 18, 2011
#3D Printing
Series - 3D Printing - 3D Modeling Software
When it comes to creating 3D models for 3D printing there are many types of software to choose from. 3D software solutions range from commercial to free, and can be desktop or part of a newer evol...
May 18, 2011
#3D Printing
Series - 3D Printers - Printers
A 3D printer works by taking a 3D model, then by making a series of slices that are printed one on top of the other to create a 3D object of the model. Since 2003 there has been large growth in th...
May 18, 2011
#3D Printing
Google Apps Marketplace Offers TRUSTe Data Privacy Certification
Google has partnered with TRUSTe to offer Data Privacy Certification for Google Apps Marketplace Apps. The certification program assists vendors of installable apps better communicate their data p...
Facebook Joins API Explorer Game, Sort Of
API Explorers are proving to be an essential tool when getting up and running developing against an API. Apigee, Salesforce, Google, Microsoft, and Infochimps have all deployed REST API Explorers ...
May 17, 2011
#Facebook
YellowAPI.com and the Future of API Monetization
Canada’s Yellow Pages Group (YPG)kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.comtem to support their local search and location based services (LBS) API, YellowAPI.com. YPG sees their developer ecosystem muc...
May 16, 2011
#Monetization
"YellowAPI.com and the Future of API Monetization"
Canada’s Yellow Pages Group (YPG) launched a new developer ecosystem to support their local search and location based services (LBS) API, YellowAPI.com. YPG sees their developer ecosystem much dif...
May 16, 2011
#Monetization
"Google API House Cleaning"
Google has had a busy year when it comes to APIs. So far this year they’ve launched 6 new APIs: Tasks API Books API Pagespeed Online API Places API Prediction API Fusion Tables API ...
Pearson Plans API Platform to Unlock Content
Publisher and ed-tech company Pearson announced a new initiative to build an API platform that give developers access to the publisher’s content. Pearson’s Plug & Play Platform claims to unloc...
Amazon Affiliate Program is Integrated with Product API
The Amazon Associates Program allows web site owners to make money by marketing Amazon products on other their sites. Users can market products using links and widgets they create by using the sit...
Hazards of Developers Evangelist for an API.
I’m working to make it easier to get up and running using the Mimeo Connect Cloud Print API. One concept that is tough to understand at first, is that all printing starts with a Mimeo document. T...
Does Your E-Commerce Marketplace Have an Embed Strategy?
Embeddable widgets come in many formats, from JavaScript to iFrames, and are quickly becoming commonplace, especially within e-commerce platforms. Embeddable objects allow users, especially non-de...
APIs That Compliment Each Other
I’m starting to see more API providers working together to attract developers to their platforms. As an API Evangelist I look for other APIs that enhance the Mimeo Connect Cloud Print API, and try...
May 3, 2011
An Example of BizDev 2.5
In 2006, Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake coined the phrase Biz Dev 2.0 in a blog post explaining how several small companies had approached Flickr wanting to provide services that the photo-sharing...
Business of APIs - Primer for the API Economy
With the recent explosion in the number and usage of APIs, the Internet technology industry is well aware of the value of the application programming interface. It recognizes that APIs drive much o...
Managing Print Files with Box.net
As the Mimeo.com API Evangelist one of my jobs is to find other platforms, services and technology that goes well with the Mimeo Connect Cloud Print API. One such platform that I’ve identified as ...
April 30, 2011
#Print
Facebooks Operation Developer Love
Facebook has been accused of not caring about, or communicating with its developers, an image that can be hard to shake. Recently they made a huge effort in turning this around, with a campaign ca...
April 30, 2011
#Facebook
Brochure & Flyer Printer with Box.net and Mimeo Connect
As the Mimeo.com API Evangelist one of my jobs is to find other platforms, services and technology that goes well with the Mimeo Connect Cloud Print API. One such platform that I’ve identified a...
April 30, 2011
Brochure & Flyer Printer with Box.net and Mimeo Connect
As the Mimeo.com API Evangelist one of my jobs is to find other platforms, services and technology that goes well with the Mimeo Connect Cloud Print API. One such platform that I’ve identified as ...
April 30, 2011
#Print
Bound Document Printer with Box.net and Mimeo Connect
As the Mimeo.com API Evangelist one of my jobs is to find other platforms, services and technology that goes well with the Mimeo Connect Cloud Print API. One such platform that I’ve identified as ...
April 30, 2011
#Print
Internal Adoption Can Boost Support for your API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com When it comes to APIs, and who uses them, we often think about partners. Sharing data and resources with partners has long been the number one reason for deplo...
Instapaper Mobile App and API Strategy
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Marco Arment creator of Instapaper, is sharing his thoughts and strategy around the decision to discontinue the free version of the Instaper IPhone application...
Create 3D Models from Images for 3D Printing
3D printing innovators Shapeways has released a new concept in 3D Printing. Image Popper is a new tool that allows you to upload a black and white JPG, and Shapeways will generate 3D model from it...
APIs Being Used for Public Health
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Foursquare just highlighted an innovative use of their API, that alerts people to public health issues. DontEat.at is a service which merges city health code ...
April 28, 2011
A Unified Approach to Delivering APIs
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Not all APIs are the same. Even with RESTful approaches to delivering APIs they can be quite different. As APIs grow and as we want to be able to connect apps...
April 28, 2011
API Contests and Hackathons are a Marketing Vehicle
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com As I’m identifying common building used by various API service providers to build their APIs and communities, there are two innovative tools Im seeing show up ...
Google Sketchup and 3D Cloud Printing
I’m doing a lot of researching and thinking about the future of commercial printing, 3D printing, and manufacturing. Yesterday I was brainstorming on 3D printing and manufacturing with Google. To...
Research: 3D Printing and Manufacturing with Google
I’m watching the future of manufacturing and printing unfold slowly in front of us. I’m paying attention to 3D printing solutions evolving from companies like Shapeways, MakerBot, Materialise, ZCor...
Open APIs Give Content Providers More Control
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I’m organizing my code libraries tonight. These are PHP, JavaScript, Regular Expressions, SQL, and other tools I use for different purposes. One such purpose ...
Deltacloud Universal Cloud API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I’m spending time going through RedHat’s Deltacloud set of cloud APIs. They recently recently moved the project to the Apache Incubator and submitted it to the...
April 25, 2011
#Cloud
Sending API Invites
The ability to send email invitations to other potential users is a pretty common tool in place in many applications, helping them hopefully to expand their user-base. Phaxio, an API that allows d...
Phaxio API Review
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Phaxio lets developers build faxing capabilities into systems with a simple API. The Phaxio API provides a RESTful API, using production and test application ...
April 23, 2011
#Review
Measuring the Popularity of APIs
How do you measure the popularity of your API, or someone else’s API? If its your API, hopefully you have metrics established for every part of your API and supporting API area. But how can we me...
April 21, 2011
DocuSign API Hackathon
Hackathon to build the most innovative app in either the business, consumer, enterprise and mobile space using the DocuSign API. Dates May 14-15, 2011 Location DocuSign Offices @ 111 Sut...
API Partner Platforms
As an API Evangelist I’m always grouping and targeting my API consumers, to better meet their needs and identify their role within my API ecosystem. The three main groups that I bre...
API Business Models - How to choose the right one for you?
Presentation assets are the user interface or visual front-end to an application. Logic assets are the algorithms, analytics or services which take data inputs, do some processing and provide a res...
April 20, 2011
#Business
Hoovers API Tweetup
Hoovers Inc, a provider of an API that allows you to stream reliable, on-demand business information into applications is holding an API Tweetup: When: April 21, 2011 Time: 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. EST ...
April 19, 2011
News Industry R&D with Open APIs
There is an excellent analysis of Open API usage in news organizations at the Nieman Journalism Lab, called Wisdom of the (developer) crowd: Key lessons from news organizations using open APIs to r...
News Industry R&D with Open APIs
There is an excellent analysis of Open API usage in news organizations at the Nieman Journalism Lab, called Wisdom of the (developer) crowd: Key lessons from news organizations using open APIs to r...
Beyond Partners and Developers with Your API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I’ve been watching my girlfriend Audrey Watters, evolve her online presence as a freelance writer working for ReadWriteWeb, O’Reilly, NPR Mindshift, and other ...
Community Driven API Code Samples and Libraries
Sample code libraries are an essential part of an API ecosystem. They give developers a head start when integrating their applications with an API. I’ve explored the concept of letting your API de...
Claim Your Territory with New APIs by Building Code Samples
We are witnessing some tremendous growth in the number of new Web APIs. ProgrammableWeb, for example, added 1000 new APIs to its directory over the last year. Many of these APIs are brand new and ...
LinkedIn API Platform and the Evolution of the API
LinkedIn refreshed its developer platform recently, updating its RESTful API and JavaScript API. A noticeable change, was its continued evolution towards a more plug and play API environment. Whe...
April 13, 2011
#Platform
Github Says, If There is an App, There is an API
Github launched someenhancements to its GitHub Jobs homepage, and IPhone application. Being the forward thinkers they are, they say: If there’s an app there’s an API, so we’ve made ours availa...
April 13, 2011
#Github
Freshbooks API Add-Ons, Billing, and Webhooks
I am slowly working my way through hundreds of APIs and doing business reviews of their approach to delivering their APIs. At API Evangelist I’m focused on the business of APIs, with a minor focus...
Freshbooks API Review
Freshbooks provides time tracking, expense and invoicing Software as a Service (SaaS). The Freshbooks API is a RESTful API, using OAuth for authentication. The API provides sixteen endpoints, prov...
April 13, 2011
#Review
Chicago API Hack Day
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Hack Day, the all-day API hackathon is coming to Chicago on Saturday, May 28th, from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM. Hack Day is hosted at the Morningstar offices, 22 Wes...
An Organic Approach to Your API Ecosystem
There are many approaches to building an API ecosystem. Some approach it more like building an API community, and others as growing an API ecosystem. Howard Liptzin, at Avatar Industries prefers a...
April 12, 2011
#Ecosystem
Twitter API is Not Just for Developers
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I keep stumbling across innovative approaches to using Web APIs, for non-developers. The other day I wrote about quantifying your social media impact, using G...
Open Source Manufacturing, Web APIs, and 3-D Printing
I just finished reading, Will 3-D Printing End Mass Manufacturing, on Mashable. I also had a link to an open source manufacturing site bookmarked from a couple months ago. And of course I live an...
Readability API Contest
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Readability is having a contest encouraging developers to build innovative reading applications using the Readability API. Contest Starts: 4/6/2011 Submi...
April 10, 2011
#Evangelism
Rdio Shares Revenue with API Developers
Rdio is a music streaming service, where users can access music via the web or mobile phone for a monthly fee. Using Mashery, Rdio provides a RESTful API where you can do just about anything you c...
RESTful Business Architecture
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com In my quest to fully understand the underlying principles of Representational State Transfer (REST), i’m re-reading Roy Thomas Fielding original dissertation, ...
Art: 3-D Print a Figurine of Yourself
A group of innovators called BlablabLAB have integrated a Kinect with a 3-D printer to print personalized statues. BlablabLAB setup an interactive art installation on the streets of Barcelona, whi...
APIs Are Not Just for Developers
One of the reasons I believe APIs are growing so popular is they are getting easier, and easier to use. The main reason they are getting easier to use is due to the adoption of RESTful approaches ...
April 9, 2011
#Developers
API Evangelism vs. Developer Evangelism
I have found a voice through my blog, API Evangelism. I get asked why “API Evangelism” instead of “Developer Evangelism”? I see a significant difference: Developer Evangelists spread awarenes...
April 9, 2011
#Evangelism
Google Apps Marketplace
Google Apps is an online email, document, and collaboration platform in the clouds. Google Apps Marketplace provides a directory of custom third party applications in various categories for Google...
April 8, 2011
#Marketplace
Box.net OpenBox
Box.net provides a cloud platform for storing, sharing and managing files and content in the cloud. Box.net OpenBox provides a directory of custom third party applications that add value to Box.ne...
April 8, 2011
#Open
Box.net OpenBox
Box.net provides a cloud platform for storing, sharing and managing files and content in the cloud. Box.net OpenBox provides a directory of custom third party applications that add value to Box.ne...
April 8, 2011
#Open
BizDev 2.5 with APIs and Self-Service Platforms
APIs have been influential in ushering in a new era of business development, dubbed BizDev 2.0. APIs empower new types of relationship to be built between a business and its partners or openly by p...
Anatomy of a Self-Service Application Platform
In addition to the growth in number of APIs, and the evolution ofBizDev 2.0, there is a rise in self-service application platforms accompanying APIs, within many cloud platforms. Platforms such as...
Allow API Users to Embed Content with oEmbed
Now the content “consumer” can take returned inkinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com display on web page using JavaScript, PHP or other language. This is just a simple example of using oEmbed to d...
April 6, 2011
#Content
Sharper Developer Focus with Embed.ly Redesign
Embed.ly launched a new, improved API area with a focus on helping first time users to understand what the API is, and how to use it quicker. If your not familiar with Embed.ly, the API allows dev...
Sharper Developer Focus with Embed.ly Redesign
Embed.ly launched a new, improved API area with a focus on helping first time users to understand what the API is, and how to use it quicker. If your not familiar with Embed.ly, the API allows dev...
Superfeedr XMPP over HTML5 WebSockets
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Superfeedr keeps showing what a pioneer they are when it comes to web, API and feed technology, with a release of an Ejabber module that builds WebSockets into...
April 4, 2011
#Web
Opportunities in API Deployment, PDF APIs
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I’m spending time evaluating different types of APIs in various categories. I want to see how each provider delivers their API in similar categories, and pote...
Open Building Blocks for an API
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com When deploying an API, the interface is just the beginning. You need tools and resources to support the API. There are common building blocks that are used by...
April 4, 2011
#Open
3Taps Data API Speaks My Language
All of us programmers have a preferred programming language. It is the language that we identify with and prefer to build projects in. When it comes to delivering an API area, one of the most impo...
April 4, 2011
#Data
Integrate Github Into an API Community
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com GitHub is a web-based hosting service for software development projects that uses the Git revision control system. The site also provides social networking fu...
Use Your Community to Build API Code Libraries
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com An important tone of my blog is not to ever say any API owner should, or developers have to do anything. kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.comrve, discuss and ...
The Mendeley API Binary Battle
Mendeley, the academic social network for organizing, discovering and collaborating around research, has announced an API contest. Mendeley is awarding $10,001 for anyone kinlane-productions2.s3.a...
NPR News for Android 2.0
NPR announced their new NPR News application for Android 2.0 today. Normally I wouldn’t cover just any new app or feature release, but there is more of a story here than just a new mobile app. I a...
April 1, 2011
#News
NPR News for Android 2.0
NPR announced their new NPR News application for Android 2.0 today. Normally I wouldn’t cover just any new app or feature release, but there is more of a story here than just a new mobile app. I a...
April 1, 2011
#News
Factual Dataset + IndexTank API Contest
Factual has announced a new contest. They are encouraging users to buid an app that uses both IndexTank real-time custom search API and Factual’s dataset of 14M US businesses. Contest Prizes are: ...
April 1, 2011
#Data
Billboards that Monitor and Respond to API Activity
Its kind of goofy at first glance, but if you think about it…it is a pretty powerful application of an API. GranataPet, a German dog food manufacturer, created a billboard that dispenses a treat f...
Simpler Twitter API Integration with Web Intents
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Since the Twitter OAuth Apocalypse integrating tweets into a web page requires writing an OAuth application for even the simplest of Twitter integrations, like...
API Metrics and Analytics
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I document a lot of the common building blocks used by API providers. These are common tools used across many industries and types of APIs to build their ecosy...
Netflix API Review
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com The Netflix API allows anyone to build a custom application integrated with the Netflix movie and television streaming platform. Netflix provides a RESTful an...
March 29, 2011
#Review
A Sensible Approach to the Twitter API Ecosystem
I just finished reading two more posts on the recent changes to the Twitter API terms of service. There are a lot of opinions on whether Twitter was right or wrong in their approach to reign in the...
Watchmouse Top 50 API Availability Report
Watchmouse, a website and application performance monitoring service launched a new report that monitors the top 50 most popular APIs as ranked by ProgrammableWeb. A few of the APIs included in th...
March 25, 2011
#ai
Explorers Open API Access Beyond Developers
I am seeing more API owners and service providers launching REST API explorers lately: Apigee Console Salesforce Google Windows Live Infochimps These REST API explorers allow users to...
Data APIs and Exploration with Infochimps
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Infochimps recently launch some new API calls, and expect to be launching hundreds more in the coming months. Infochimps is taking large data sets in areas li...
Twitter, Lendle and the State of the Open API Ecosystem
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com As such, there has been much discussion recently about Open APIs and whether or not third party developers are wise or foolish to build their businesses on som...
Setting the Tone for your API Terms of Service
kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com I wanted to establish a base Terms of Service for my API area. So I went and read the API terms of service from 15 top APIs I found the opening paragraph say...
AlchemyAPI Adds Sentiment Analysis to Text Mining Platform
AlchemyAPI, a natural language processing service announced a new sentiment analysis layer to its existing text-mining Software as a Service (SaaS). The service can be used by online publishers, n...
API Idea Management with Google Moderator
Silicon Valley is full of ideas. APIs provide the data and functionality that many of these ideas are built on. If you have an API, hopefully you have lots of ideas on what developers can do with...
March 18, 2011
#Management
Rethinking the NPR API Ecosystem
Twitter has been working hard lately to define the rules of the road for the Twitter API ecosystem. When it comes to monetizing content and media, there are many differing opinions and by extensio...
March 17, 2011
#Ecosystem
Google APIs Now Support SSL
Google will start supporting the use of SSL in many of their APIs. SSL will improve API security by encrypting all data communications between 3rd party applications and Google, protecting data fr...
March 16, 2011
#Support
Google API Access with OAuth 2.0
Google has evolved their API authentication to embrace OAuth 2.0. Even though the OAuth 2.0 specification isn’t 100% finalized, Google has overhauled all of their APIs in Google Code to support it...
Google API Access with OAuth 2.0
Google has evolved their API authentication to embrace OAuth 2.0. Even though the OAuth 2.0 specification isn’t 100% finalized, Google has overhauled all of their APIs in Google Code to support it...
History of APIs - Amazon S3
In March 2006, Amazon launched a groundbreaking web service that marked a significant departure from its traditional e-commerce platform. This new initiative was a storage web service called Amazon...
History of APIs - Amazon S3
In August 2006, shortly after Amazon launched its new cloud storage service Amazon S3, the company followed with a new cloud computing service called Amazon EC2, or Elastic Compute Cloud. Amazon EC...
History of APIs - Instagram API
On October 6, 2010, Instagram launched its photo-sharing iPhone application. Less than three months later, it had attracted one million users. Kevin Systrom, the founder of Instagram, focused on de...
History of APIs - Instagram API
On October 6, 2010 Instagram launched its photo-sharing iPhone application. Less than three months later, it had one million users. Kevin Systrom the founder of Instagram focused on ...
March 11, 2011
History of APIs - Foursquare API
Foursquare launched in March 2009 at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, TX. It is a location-based mobile platform that makes cities more engaging to explore. By checking in via a smartphone ...
History of APIs - Foursquare API
In March 2009 Foursquare launched at the SXSW interactive festival in Austin, TX. Foursquare is a location-based mobile platform that makes cities more interesting to explore, by che...
March 11, 2011
Zappos API Developer Contest
Zappos has announced an API developer contest called the Zappos API Developer Challenge-palooza-athon. They are looking for web applications, mobile apps, or even a simple widget that is built wit...
Please Feed the Unicorns - Nurturing Developer Champions
This is a presentation hacker advocate Abraham Williams gave at an Apigee API Meetup in February meetup on the care and feeding of API champions- or as he calls them, unicorns. Thanks for sharing t...
March 10, 2011
#Twitter
Brand APIs - Start with the Basics
I have been thinking aboutAdam Kleinbergs recent posts,Why Every Brand Needs an Open API for Developers andDigging deeper on Brand APIs. He’s right. The pace of API development skyrocketed in 2010...
March 9, 2011
Brand API Starter - Supporting Product Data
I have been thinking aboutAdam Kleinbergs recents post,Why Every Brand Needs an Open API for Developers andDigging deeper on Brand APIs. He’s right. The pace ofAPI development skyrocketed in 2010,...
Brand API Starter - Product Data
I have been thinking aboutAdam Kleinbergs recent posts,Why Every Brand Needs an Open API for Developers andDigging deeper on Brand APIs. He’s right. The pace of API development skyrocketed in 2010...
Brand API Starter - Location / Geo
I have been thinking aboutAdam Kleinbergs recent posts,Why Every Brand Needs an Open API for Developers andDigging deeper on Brand APIs. He’s right. The pace ofAPI development skyrocketed in 2010,...
March 9, 2011
#Location
Programmable Web: 3000 APIs and Growing
Congratulations to ProgrammableWeb for hitting the 3000th API in their directory. The ProgrammableWeb API directory has seen some amazing growth: 1,000 APIs: over 3 years 2,000 APIs: less th...
March 8, 2011
#Web
Google API Explorer
Just days after Apigee made their API explorer free and embeddable, Google has announced a new API Explorer. The new Google API Explorer is an interactive interface for playing with Google APIs. ...
Manufacturing: 3D Printing a Nylon Bicycle
Engineers in the UK are using 3D printing with a nylon powder to create a really cool, futuristic bicycle. Guided by a computer-aided design program, a laser fuses together several layers of finel...
Apigee API Console is Now Free for Everyone to Use
Apigee has released its API Console as a free, publicly available tool for use by any API provder. The API Console allows developers to view an API, authenticate with the API and begin making requ...
API Area - Common Building Blocks
I have spent time reviewing 100+ of the most popular APIs. I am trying to determine a common set of building blocks that are essential to API adoption. Here is a list of what I consider are thkinl...
Mashape API Service Provider
Mashape provides tools that enable developers to quickly deliver and consume APIs and offers a marketplace for listing APIs to buy and sell. For developers looking to publish any resource as an AP...
Software Development to API Development
In the last 20 years we’ve seen the how the Internet has altered the role of the developer from a desktop software developer to aweb application developer. It started with web sites, the need for ...
Use Elance To Develop Your API SDK and Code Samples
API code samples and software development kits (SDK) are among the most important tools for getting developers up and running with any API. Providing complete sets of code samples for every area o...
Provide High Quality, Professional API Developers with Elance
Every API owner wants to ensure she or he has high quality, professional developers to refer to partners when building applications that use their API. It can take years to cultivate an organic com...
Plug and Play API Developer Area with Elance
One way to make sure your API has qualified and reputable developers from day one is to tap into an existing freelance developer community. Popular freelance sites like Elance provide existing com...
If You Build It (an API), They Will Come
One of the goals of any API is to catch the attention of developers and become a tool they depend on and integrate regularly into their applications. If you build an API and release it into the wi...
Develop an Elance Skills Test for Your API Area
Integrating with APIs requires a wide variety of skills. Depending on the technology an API uses, integration may require knowledge of OAuth, REST, SOAP, XML, JSON, and mobile platforms. Each API ...
February 28, 2011
#Skills
Achieve an API Ecosystem Powered by Elance
Taking an API from area to community takes a lot of work. It just doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a perfect balance of technology, developers, partners, resources and hard work. APIs are a big ...
PubSubHubbub for APIs
Superfeedr is now supporting PubSubHubbub for data APIs. PubSubHubbub was initially created for XML to alleviate the number of times a feed is polled versus how many times it actually has an update...
February 23, 2011
Twilio Anything Goes SXSW Developer Contest
The cloud communications platform Twilio has a new API developer contest this week. As usual they are looking for someone to build a killer app that uses the Twilio voice and SMS API. This round ...
February 22, 2011
#Twilio
Use Google Apps APIs Without Being a Programmer
Google just released the Google Apps Shell Interface (GASI), a graphical user interface for working with Google Apps APIs. GASI allows Google Apps administrators to make certain API calls through ...
February 15, 2011
Sweet Sound of APIs Contest
Twilio is having a new developer contest called Sweet Sound of APIs. Mission: Create something cool using your favorite music API and Twilio. Prize: Amazon Kindle 3G and $100 in Twilio Credit De...
February 15, 2011
Art: 3D Printing Fixes Art Treasures
In 2007 the popular statue Rodin’s Thinker was stolen from the Singer Laren museum and damaged while the thieves were trying to destroy and sell it for scrap metal. At the request of the museum, a...
API Technology - OAuth
OAuth is an open protocol to allow secure API authorization for web applications, desktop applications, mobile phones, and other devices. When OAuth is implemented for an API, it provides benefits...
API Technology - Basic Auth
Basic Auth is a way for a web browser or application to provide credentials in the form of a username and password. Because Basic Auth is integrated into HTTP protocol it is the easiest way for us...
February 13, 2011
#Technology
Sunlight Congress API - [Developer Review]
Sunlight Labs has released an API that will help address the Sunlight Foundation’s mission - making information about government more open and transparent. The Sunlight Congress API provides an in...
February 12, 2011
#Review
API Status Dashboard with Pingdom
Pingdom is a Software as a Service(SaaS) that provides website monitoring and up-time reporting. Recently they started offering public report pages. These reports or status pages allows you to mak...
Mobile Provider APIs
As mobile phone adoption and usage continues to grow we are seeing a parallel growth in APIs to support the mobile browsing market. Many API providers are seeing the majority of calls coming from ...
February 10, 2011
#Mobile
Instapaper Launches Full API
Instapaper just launched a Full API giving developers access to web pages that Instagram users have saved to read later. The API provides full Instapaper account access, but can only access web pa...
History of APIs - Birth through Social
We hear a lot of talk about companies that were pioneers in the API space. In an ongoing series we want to try to document the story behind these pioneers, and we are calling it History of APIs. S...
History of APIs - Flickr API
In February 2004, the popular photo-sharing site Flickr was launched. Six months later, they introduced their now-famous API, and within another six months, Yahoo acquired the platform. Originally ...
OpenTok API Video Chat Developer Contest
The OpenTok API is holding a developer contest to see who has the most unique and innovative approach to the video chat market. The company is holding a series of contests over 6 weeks: Week 1...
OpenTok API Review
OpenTok is a free set of APIs from TokBox that enables websites to integrate live, group video communication into their web sites and applications. The OpenTok provides a RESTFul API using an appl...
Instagram Launches API
The mobile photo sharing site Instagram officially launched an API this evening. This comes just under a month after the company asked developers to stop using a rogue API that was reverse enginee...
February 8, 2011
#tag
API Technology - SOAP
SOAP, or Simple Object Access Protocol, is an XML-based protocol that allows applications to exchange information over the Internet using HTTP or RPC. SOAP uses Extensible Markup Language (XML) fo...
API Roadshow
Events are definitely one of the most important tools in an API Evangelist’s tool box. Making a regular showing at popular events both on and offline is critical to building the awareness and the ...
Guide to Sharing Your Data
So you want to share some data– perhaps out of the goodness of your heart, perhaps it makes you look good or perhaps you’re required to do so. kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Whatever the ca...
Launch Region Specific APIs
With the increase growth in API usage in 2010, and expected growth in 2011, the need for high availability APIs will increase. One way to localize usage and increase API performance is to deploy r...
February 4, 2011
$40K Developer Contest from Binpress
Binpress is a marketplace for code, where software developers can buy and sell source code from each other. And it’s holding a developer contest. Binpress is looking for high quality code from pro...
February 4, 2011
#4
Opportunities in the Financial API Space
According to Forrester Research, the U.S. mobile banking market has experienced rapid growth in the past three years, more than doubling from 5% of online adults in 2007 to 12% in Q2 2010. By 2015...
February 1, 2011
#Financial
API Technology - XML
XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a way for programs to exchange information. It is very similar to JSON (JavaScript Object Notation). XML was originally designed to describe documents, but has ...
History of APIs - Google Maps API
On June 29th, 2006, Google launched Google Maps API allowing developers to put Google Maps on their own sites using JavaScript. The API launch was just shy of 6 months after the release of Google ...
History of APIs - Google Maps API
On June 29th, 2006, Google launched Google Maps API allowing developers to put Google Maps on their own sites using JavaScript. The API launch was just shy of 6 months after the rele...
January 30, 2011
Functional APIs
APIs are not just for exchanging of data. They provide much needed functionality for developers and integrators. The functionality of an API can provide shipping costs as the Fedex API does, or pr...
January 30, 2011
APIs Power Partner Relationships
Sharing information and services with your partners is vital to your business. With the complexities of businesses’ systems and the security of firewalls, this exchange isn’t always easy. Defining...
January 30, 2011
#Power
API Technology - REST
REST or Representational State Transfer is term that describes a specific approach to delivering an API or web service. REST takes advantage of the same Internet mechanisms that are used to view r...
Module Exposes Drupal Resources as RESTful API
A new Drupal module makes use of the Drupal Entity API and then takes information about the entity and delivers it as a Restful Web Service. kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Features are: ...
History of APIs - Salesforce.com
February 7th, 2000 Salesforce.com officially launched at the IDG Demo 2000 conference. Salesforce.com launched its enterprise-class, web-based, sales force automation as a “Internet as a service”....
History of APIs - Salesforce.com
February 7th, 2000 Salesforce.com officially launched at the IDG Demo 2000 conference. Salesforce.com launched its enterprise-class, web-based, sales force automation as a “Internet as a service”. ...
History of APIs - Facebook Development Platform
On August 15, 2006, Facebook launched its long-awaited development platform and API. Version 1.0 of the Facebook Development Platform provided developers access to Facebook friends, photos, events,...
History of APIs - Amazon E-Commerce
Amazon.com Web Services (AWS) allowed third party sites to search and display products from Amazon.com. Product data was made accessible using XML and SOAP. From day one the API was integrated wit...
Flattr - API Launch
Flattr the social micro-payment site, made their API public today. The API comes in two flavors. Javascript API REST API Flattr provides application registration and authentication with oA...
API Technology - JSON
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a way for programs to exchange information. It is very similar to XML (Extensible Markup Language). APIs are are way for programs to communicate and since they...
API Technology - JSON
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a way for programs to exchange information. It is very similar to XML (Extensible Markup Language). APIs are are way for programs to communicate and since they...
What is an API?
An Application Programming Interface (API) is a way for websites, programs, and mobile applications to talk to each other. APIs allow access to information, provide functionality or control electr...
Managing API Code Projects & Libraries
Having a framework for managing your API code samples and libraries is essential to providing partners and developers with relevant, useful and functional code they can use to integrate with your A...
January 26, 2011
Managing API Code Projects & Libraries
Having a framework for managing your API code samples and libraries is essential to providing partners and developers with relevant, useful and functional code they can use to integrate with your A...
History of APIs - Twitter
On September 20, 2006, Twitter introduced the Twitter API to the world. Similar to the release of the eBay API, Twitter’s API launch was a response to the growing number of users scraping the site ...
History of APIs - Ebay
On November 20, 2000, eBay launched the eBay Application Program Interface (API) and introduced the eBay Developers Program. Initially, the eBay API was made available exclusively to a select group...
January 26, 2011
#History
Youtube JavaScript Player API for IFrame Embeds
The YT.Player is used to control the player, defined by script loaded from http://www.youtube.com/player_api. Here is the Youtube Player API documentation.
January 24, 2011
Stack Oververflow API Review
StackApps is an API for the family of Q&A websites using the Stack Exchange engine including Stack Overflow, Server Fault and Super User. StackApps provides a RESTFul API using a basic applica...
January 20, 2011
#Review
Benefits of Transparency
One of the aspects of my current job that I enjoy, is the transparent nature of my role. My job is to generate attention for Mimeo and the Mimeo Connect Cloud Print API. Let me give you an example...
January 20, 2011
#Transparency
The New API Economy
Those of us in the tech community who work with APIs talk a lot about the API economy. This refers to how the Internet is changing all industries on a global scale, and how APIs are a driving forc...
January 19, 2011
#Economy
OpenID for API Registration
You want to make it as easy as possible for developers to get up and running with your API. You don’t want developers to fumble around with lengthy registrations and approval processes. Your API ...
github as a Marketing Channel to Developers
Marketing products and services to developers can be difficult. They are unlike other consumers and often are difficult to reach and build trust with. Recently, I was discussing which group within...
New API for Google URL Shortener
Google launched a much anticipated API for the Google URL shortener today as part of the Google Code Labs. The Google URL Shortener at goo.gl is a service that takes long URLs and squeezes them in...
Image Management in the Cloud
I am taking some time and writing down my image management strategy to share with Audrey. I have a specific process and set of tools I use to manage images I use across my Kin Lane Blog, API Evange...
Amazon Web Services Enhances Premium Support
Amazon Web Services (AWS) changed up its premium support offerings, introducing two new support plans: Bronze Plan - The Bronze Plan is meant for developers at $49.00 / month. Platinum Plan -...
Quora Exposes JSON API
Quora has exposed a JSON-based data API that allows users to access data about a currently logged-in user. To request particular fields about the currently logged-in user, you can add fields to a ...
FRAPI Open Source PHP REST API Framework
FRAPI is an open source RESTful API framework developed in PHP. It can be used as the backbone of your RESTful web service. FRAPI allows you to instantly have a REST framework for handling all the...
API Contests and Challenges
In 2010 contests were a proven way to generate attention about your API and products as well as generate some great code and applications for your API. Some contests in 2010 were: AWS Start-up...
Google Trends - Application Programming Interface
I thought the visualization of the search and news traffic for Application Programming Interface (API) at Google Trends was interesting enough to share. You have to ask yourself: What 2011 will lo...
December 27, 2010
API Evangelist Weekly Review
Here is the coverage for the week from API Evangelist. Evernote API Review Android and IOS SDKs for Amazon Web Services Glue API Review Foursquare API Version 2.0 Infochimps API Review ...
Google Maps API Review
Google Maps API provides mapping, satellite and other geographical data. The system allows overlaying of dynamic data on top of existing maps and photos. The Google Maps API provides a RESTful int...
Importance of Developer Community Metrics
Any building block you are using to deliver your API to developers, such as blog or forum should have metrics attached to it. You should be collecting any data you can on activity in your API commu...
Infochimps API Review
Infochimps provides API access to large data sets including Twitter and census data. Its system also provides business intelligence on much of this data, including a Twitter influence ranking. The...
December 10, 2010
#Review
Foursquare API Version 2.0
Foursquare released version 2.0 of its API today, after a year of development on the update. kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com The API provides the following upgrades: OAuth 2.0 Authentica...
Glue API Review
The Glue API provides integration with the objects, people, and interactions available on the entertainment social network GetGlue. The Glue API delivers a RESTful API using OAuth for authenticati...
December 9, 2010
#Review
Evernote API Review
Evernote is a text, voice and image note-taking software. A software as a service , Evernote provides web-based, desktop and mobile clients for accessing the service. The Evernote API is delivered...
December 9, 2010
#Review
Android and IOS SDKs for Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services has launched mobile software development kits (SDK) for Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS operating systems (iPhones, iPads, and the iPod Touch). The AWS SDK for Android and the...
Using Contests to Deliver API Components on Fixed Budget
Contests are becoming a popular way for API community managers to bring attention to their APIs. Giving away cash and prizes is a quick way to get developers understanding your API and to get press...
December 2, 2010
#Components
Overview: 3D Printing and Manufacturing
As the Mimeo Connect Cloud Print API Evangelist, I get asked why I would be an evangelist for technology in a dying industry. Print and Publishing. My primary argument is: Through new technology s...
Print a Book of Your Facebook Life
I spend a lot of time thinking about new ways to print as the Mimeo Connect Cloud Print API Evangelist. During this time I see a common pattern; that print can create more meaningful, physical aspe...
Universal APIs
Many APIs deliver the same type of data like city, country or other factual data. Other APIs deliver similar functionality like geo-location and currency conversions. The opportunity to develop Un...
November 19, 2010
API Exploration
It is not always easy to get up and running using a new API. As a developer you face all kinds of challenges before integration, like finding and making sense of documentation and authentication an...
November 19, 2010
#Exploration
Deltacloud API Review
Deltacloud provides aggregated access to multiple cloud computing platforms in a single web service. Deltacloud currently supports seven major cloud computing platforms including Rackspace and Amaz...
November 17, 2010
#Review
Developing API Documentation
Peter Gruenbaum of SDK Bridge shared an article in the company’s November newsletter that resonated with some of the work I’ve been doing recently – creating API documentation for the Mimeo Connect...
November 13, 2010
#Documentation
fotobooks on Facebook
I’m going through the my list of existing and potential self-publishing and print-on-demand applications. First on my list is the fotobooks the Facebook social print application. Its a pretty stra...
November 9, 2010
#Facebook
API Evangelist - The Business of Your API
I have launched a new site called API Evangelist. I have been operating in stealth mode because I’m not 100% done with all the API Ecosystem building block pages. I’ve had a couple people ask if I’...
Monitoring APIs and Their Availability
Applications are being built around APIs at an ever-increasing pace. Developers put a lot of trust in these service providers, and we depend on them to provide a certain quality of service. As a d...
Mashery Business of APIs Conference
I attended Mashery’s Business of APIs Conference in San Francisco on Thursday. The event was kicked off with a complete history of APIs from Oren Michels the CEO of Mashery. Michels took us from p...
Google API Console
Google released some updates to its API ecosystem the other day with a new release of Google Custom Search API. Google also rewrote a bunch of API documentation and more importantly released an API...
Showcase Your API Developers and Their Applications
Do you have a cool application built on top of your API? (Hopefully you do!) I’m sure there are some amazing developers who have worked hard on developing applications that make use of your API. T...
Amazon S3 API Review
Amazon S3 is infrastructure service that provides virtualized storage on demand with pay as you go pricing. Amazon S3 began as a web service and later developed a web-based interface to manage serv...
USA Today API Review
USA Today is a major newspaper and online media outlet. It provides wide coverage in the following categories News, Travel, Money, Sports, Life, Tech, and Weather. USA Today offers a RESTful API d...
October 27, 2010
#Review
My Mimeo - Future of Technology and Printing
I am in New York City this week kicking off my new career as the API Evangelist for Mimeo Connect. Mimeo Conneckinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.comtp://www.mimeo.com/” target=”_blank”>Mimeo Pr...
Amazon EC2 API Review
Amazon EC2 is infrastructure service that provides virtualized servers on-demand with pay-as-you-go pricing. Amazon EC2 began as a web service and later developed a web-based interface to manage se...
bit.ly API contest - Building Block Showcase
Holding an API contest is a great way to spur innovation around your API and its community. bit.ly is a popular URL shortening service that offers an API as part of its core software-as-a-service....
October 23, 2010
#Showcase
LinkedIn Labs - Building Block Showcase
LinkedIn has released an API labs to showcase various internal projects using the LinkedIn API. LinkedIn Labs hosts a small set of projects and experimental features built by the employees of Link...
October 15, 2010
#Showcase
How to Avoid Frustrating Your API Developers
If you provide an API, one of the things you will want to avoid is having someone’s blog post condemning your company for not caring about developers hit the front page of Hacker News. Because even...
Yahoo Answers API Review
Yahoo! Answers is a community-driven question-and-answer (Q&A) site that allows users to both submit questions to be answered and answer questions asked by other users. The site gives members t...
October 12, 2010
#Review
Skype API Review
Skype is a software application that allows users to make voice calls over the Internet. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free, while calls to both land-line and mobile phones can ...
October 12, 2010
#Review
Paypal API Review
PayPal is an e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. PayPal serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as checks and mo...
October 12, 2010
#Review
Google Documents List API Review
Google Docs is a free, Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, form, and data storage service from Google. It allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating in re...
Google Apps Supports OAuth
Google Apps recently began supporting OAuth authorization when connecting to the Google Apps API. OAuth will make integration with the Google Apps platform much more secure by not requiring admini...
Delicious API Review
Delicious is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering Web bookmarks. Delicious has a RESTful API, with a HTTP-Auth authentication. Using the API, you can read and wri...
October 12, 2010
#Review
Digg API Review
Digg is a social news site that allows users to submit and vote up or down news stories published by others. Digg offers a RESTful API, with oAuth authentication. The API gives access to just abou...
October 11, 2010
#Review
Mashery API Services
Mashery is an API management service provider that offers an API as a Software as a Service (SaaS). You can leverage Mashery’s platform to get an API planned, deployed, and into operation quickly. ...
October 10, 2010
#Services
Industry News for Week of October 3rd 2010
We share the top API Industry News with you throughout the week in our real-time API Industry RSS Feed. Here are the top stories from the week: Foursquare Outage a Chance to Test for Errors ...
Apigee API Services
Apigee is another player in the API management service provider space. Apigee is similar to 3Scale in helping businesses plan, deploy and manage their API. Apigee provides resources to help you un...
October 10, 2010
#Services
3Scale API Services
3Scale provides plug-and-play as well as enterprise level API management services. 3Scale is similar to 3Scale connect is a starter platform with a freemium model for delivering your API. You can d...
Why a Tech Journalist Cares About Your API
There are a lot of things I weigh when deciding to write about a company: is the product interesting, is the technology innovative, is the company’s story compelling. Some days, it’s “news” when a ...
API Documentation
The ability to explain your API to developers and potential developers critical to the success of your API. While it’s important to be able to explain to potential business partners and customers a...
October 9, 2010
#Documentation
Scribd Review
Scribd is a social publishing site, where people can upload and share their documents. The Scribd API has the following building blocks:kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com * API Overview S...
October 7, 2010
#Review
Salesforce Reaches for Larger Audience with REST API
Salesforce is gearing up for the upcoming release of their REST API on October 26, with a REST API Developer Preview Webinar. The release of the a RESTful API for the developerforce platform is a...
October 7, 2010
#Audience
Box.net Review
Online storage and collaboration tool OpenBox Developer, Box.net offers a robust API for file management, as well as an area for those working with the API. The developer area offers the following...
Biz Dev 2.0
Several years ago, Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake coined the phrase “Biz Dev 2.0” in a blog post explaining how several small companies had approached FLickr wanting to provide services that the p...
Youtube API Review
One of the keys to YouTube’s success as a video sharing platform is its successful API that allows developers and site owners to embed, share and distribute YouTube content across the Intertubes. ...
October 6, 2010
#Review
Riding the Waves of Change
Change happens. With technology, change seems to be accelerating, or at least the waves of change seem to come more frequently. I feel I’ve developed a certain rhythm fkinlane-productions2.s3.amaz...
How To Pitch Your API
As a journalist, I get a lot of pitches from startups trying to convince me to write about their product or service. And I also attend a lot of pitch events, where entrepreneurs try to convince a p...
October 6, 2010
#Pitch
Flickr API Review
The Flickr API for the online photo and video sharing service provides a way for new tools to be built and for Flickr content to be uploaded or shared. Flickr offers a solid API with very tradition...
October 6, 2010
#Images
The API Economy
Application Programming Interfaces (API) are a driving the Internet and our economy. They drive our online experience: Developers rely on API for key data and functionality in their application...
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