Blog

White House Announces Round Two of the Presidential Innovation Fellows

by Kin Lane on 02/05/2013

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 Government, to develop innovative solutions to our governments most difficult problems. Today the United States CTO Todd Park and CIO Steve VanRoekel announced round two of the Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) program. The first round of PIF projects included MyUSA (formerly known as MyGov), RFP-EZ, Blue Button, Better Than Cash, and Open Data Initiatives started in August 2012 with 18 inaugural Fellows. I had the pleasure to be invited in October to spend half a day talking to a group of the fellows, and help make sure they had an awareness of the API space, empowering the group to make the biggest impact possible. Last week when I was in DC, I also got to speak with a couple of the fellows as they were finishing up their tour of duty, and beginning to think about what is next.... read more.

Tags: Federal Government, Open Data, White House

Augmenting Popular Platforms With New Features Using APIs

by Kin Lane on 02/05/2013

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 interesting approach to externally developing features for another platform or service. I think Parse says it well: Even the hottest new apps, however, aren’t perfect and that’s where clever innovators can fill in the gaps with a great idea. Parse-powered instaDM is one such innovation. On one hand, this approach is a gamble. All Instagram has to do is copy what you've done, put it in the roadmap, and your done. Finished. On the other hand, I think this is a very realistic way of pushing a platform forward, by external developers, using APIs. If an API provider is smart, when you have someone in your ecosystem roll out a valuable feature like this, you invest in their success. Building features that augment web or mobile apps like this demonstrate that API ecosystems offer a lot potential for innovation, and I have to say it is even more interesting that this is being built on Parse--probably a whole other story in itself. I don’t think every idea that comes out of Silicon Valley should be VC size.... read more.

Tags: Direct Messaging, InstaDM, Instagram, parse, Private Messaging

Salesforce Discusses Its Eclipse Plugin Release Approach

by Kin Lane on 02/04/2013

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 releases as well as waiting to release their Eclipse plug-in, until API release is complete. I’m more interested in this story from an API building block perspective. An eclipse plug-in seems like a building block for only the most mature APIs out there, and especially ones targeting the enterprise. An eclipse plug-in is not for every API, but I think I will add it as a building block to consider. It also seems like something a 3rd party provider could step up and find success with as well, by building a single or suite of Eclipse plug-ins that provide integrated API developer tools across popular or high value web APIs for Eclipse users.... read more.

Tags: Eclipse, Idea, SalesForce

Google Adjusts Adwords API Access Tiers

by Kin Lane on 02/04/2013

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 has opted to go with two levels of API access: Basic - Basic access is provided by default and allows up to 10,000 operations per day Standard - Standard access is available to qualified developers and has no daily limit on operations With both basic or standard access, there are no charges for AdWords API usage. Google is just looking to maintain quality over which developers can hammer on the API, while acknowledging a free tier allows for experimentation and innovation. All you have to do is apply to be part of the standard level, if you reach limits of basic tier. This is a good model for even a totally open data of free resource APIs. While you want your data and resources to be open, you also want to be able to offer a certain quality of service, and keep infrastructure costs to a minimum.... read more.

Tags: Access, Adwords, Google, Pricing

Open By Default for New Generation of API Integrators

by Kin Lane on 02/03/2013

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 trends, where I covered some of the newer aggregation providers like Singly, BaaS providers like Parse and automation tools like IFTTT. At the end of the meetup, we did a QA panel session, and Javaun Moradi (@javaun), product manager at NPR digital, made a great point about the reliability and stability of this new generation of third party platforms building aggregate, backend, automation or other types of providers who are in turn, dependent on other API providers. Javaun questioned the reliability of this new generation of startups, who are newly funded, most likely not yet profitable, dependent on other APIs, and are most likely going to be acquired later on down the road, or go out of business when funding runs out. Javaun felt that established players like Salesforce and Google are here to stay, you know they aren’t going anywhere--where a new startup has greater potential for service disruption and instability.... read more.

Tags: Geekier, Hallway, Open source, OpenKit, Rules.io, Singly

Deploy and Manage API on Amazon Web Services (AWS)

by Kin Lane on 02/03/2013

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 deploy your APIs, they only help you manage them. Deploying your APIs was up to you. Generally you already had some sort of internal system that you would use to generate RESTful interfaces or you'd go find your own open source API framework and deploy. Then you'd proxy or connect your API to one of the API service providers. These lines are now blurred by providers like Intel with their enterprise API gateway, and through API deployment resources from 3Scale. 3Scale is investing in open source server technology for NGINX, and blueprints for API deployment using Amazon Web Services. 3Scale recently published a quickstart tutorial on how to deploy an API on Amazon EC2 for Amazon Web Services (AWS), and manage it using 3Scale API management. My favorite part is that everything in this tutorial is completely FREE. A critical element to experimenting with APIs.... read more.

Tags: 3Scale, Amazon Web Services, AWS, NGINX

The API Evangelist Toolbox

by Kin Lane on 02/02/2013

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 tool directory you can filter by language or other tag. I've added a number of open source tools to my database lately. But I know there are many more out there. So I put out on the Twitterz that I was looking for anything that is missing. Here is what I got: @kinlane runscope. com/oauth_tool — John Sheehan (@johnsheehan) February 2, 2013 @kinlane github. com/devo-ps/carte — John Sheehan (@johnsheehan) February 2, 2013 @kinlane I/O docs. what all do you want it to cover? i’d put requestb. in, localtunnel, hurl. it, @postmanclient. — John Sheehan (@johnsheehan) February 2, 2013 @kinlane httpbin. org, foauth. org as well — John Sheehan (@johnsheehan) February 2, 2013 @johnsheehan @kinlane and j. mp/WenvTn — Phil Leggetter (@leggetter) February 2, 2013 @kinlane Fiddler. Can't work with HTTP on Windows and not have fiddler installed.... read more.

Tags: Carte, Charles Proxy, Darrel Miller, Fiddler, Foauth.org, Hurl, I/O Docs, InspectB.in, John Sheehan, Localtunnel, Phil Leggetter, Postman, RequestBin, Runscope

API Server Mashups Will Increase But Client Mashups Will Decline

by Kin Lane on 02/02/2013

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 "server mash-ups will increase but client mash-ups will decline"--he clarifies it with: The increasing popularity of languages like Node. js, Erlang and Closure will make implementing server-side mash-ups more efficient and easier to maintain than doing the same work within a client application; especially for the mobile platform. This will reduce the “chattiness” of client-side applications and increase the security and flexibility of server-side implementations. The result will be a perceived increase in responsiveness and a reduced use of battery power on mobile apps. As with my earlier post, individual API deployments will get smaller and more numerous, I agree 100%. This is where I’m going with my post this week on virtual API stacks. With so many individual resources available on the web, in the coming years we’ll see increased “mashing up” or “virtualization” of new stacks, that are meaningful to a particular app or group of developers.... read more.

Tags: Layer7, Mike Amundsen, OpenKit, Singly, Virtualized APIs

The Scientific Archive of Biodiversity Audio and Video Recordings Needs an API

by Kin Lane on 02/02/2013

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 of biodiversity audio and video recordings. Our mission is to collect and preserve recordings of each species' behavior and natural history, to facilitate the ability of others to collect and preserve such recordings, and to actively promote the use of these recordings for diverse purposes spanning scientific research, education, conservation, and the arts. The library's collection has a total of more than 7,000 hours of sounds, the result of an 80-year collaboration between the scientific community and the library's volunteer collaborators. An amazing resource! I couldn't help myself, and emailed them, to let them know a web API of the audio and video collection would be a great addition. If developers could build web and mobile apps around the sounds, it would extend the reach of the catalog exponentially. Of course you'd do it in a way that adds value to the collection and protects it as a brand and priceless asset.... read more.

Tags: Audio, Cornell, Macaulay Library, Video

Individual API Deployments Will Get Smaller and More Numerous

by Kin Lane on 02/02/2013

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 "individual service deployments on the Web will get smaller and more numerous"--he clarifies it with: Influenced by the existence of the many mobile apps running on a single device, Web-based services will become small, single-focused offerings that (in the words of Doug Mcllroy) “do one thing and do it well. ” This will also explode the number of available services. The advantage of this trend will be an increase in the agility and evolvability of service offerings. The challenge will be an increased need for governance at the “micro-service” level. I have to agree. I think the smaller we can break resources down, the better. Agility is key in the API economy. But as Mike points out it won't come without its new set of problems, like life cycle, governance and discovery. Much like web pages, I think we'll still try to estimate the number APIs available, but there will be so many, we will lose track in the near future.... read more.

Tags: Layer7, Mike Amundsen