I Am Speaking At The Dallas-Forth Worth API Professionals Meetup May 14th

by on 05/02/2013

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 speak, hang out and talk APIs, to help kick-off the area API group. Both TheRightAPI and backend as a service (BaaS) provider Proxomo are sponsoring the shindig. The group will be meeting at the Microsoft Campus, 7000 Texas 161, Irving, TX. We are thinking we'll kick it off with food and drinks from 6:00 - 6:45 PM, and I'll start talking around 7:00 PM. After that we can just hang out and talk about APIs and see what all y'all are doing with APIs in Texas.... read more.

Tags: Dallas, DFW, Fort Worth, Meetup, Proxomo, TheRightAPI

A Civic Hacker Corp

by on 05/01/2013

I've always been told, "If You Don't Vote, You Can't Bitch". This is a statement I've heard from hundreds of American citizens that I've encountered throughout my life, across every region of this great country. While I agree with the intent of this statement, I have to declare that it isn't enough! Its obvious that being a couch political pundit and voting for your favorite, corporate owned politician isn't enough anymore. In the age of the Internet, open data and open APIs we need politicking to be a group sport.  Something everyone lends a hand in. So how do we do this? As I'm working through my thoughts on this subject, I would like propose an idea for a Civic Hacker Corp.... read more.

Tags: Citizen Hackers, Government

Hacking Your Automobile Dashboard

by on 05/01/2013

In the tech space we use the term dashboard a lot. Think about how overused that term is when delivering web applications, portals, home page, start page and any other bullshit incarnation on the Internet where you heard the term dashboard applied to! We place a lot of demands on these digital dashboards. They should only display exactly the information we need. We need to be able to hide, show and reorder all the elements of the dashboard as we see fit. We need skins and other ways to customize the way our dashboard looks. Our dashboards should be personalized to our everyday lives. Now think about the dashboard in your car. How much control over this dashboard do you have?... read more.

Tags: Automobile, Car, Dashboard

A Lifetime of Experience with 'Government Workers'

by on 05/01/2013

I grew up in rural Oregon. One concept I was raised on and given healthy portions of, was a distrust of "government workers". Government workers were lazy, predatory, beauracratic and definitely not working for the interests of anyone I encountered in the small town I grew up in. In contrast, during the last year of monitoring the White House Digital Strategy I've learned a lot about how government operates, the mission of a handful of the 200+ federal agencies, and opened up conversations with multiple "government workers", from a wide variety of government agencies. One thing that stands out, is how all of them are working in a state of "public service".... read more.

Tags: Federal Government, Government Workers

Reminder of Why Data Portability Should Be Default: Bye Bye Posterous

by on 05/01/2013

I was a Posterous user. I didn't rely on the platform for anything.  It was just, yet another endpoint in my world of content production. So I was not that upset when they announced they were shutting down(I would link to post, but its gone).  But I was just checking the blog feed of an API that I monitor.  It came up in my alert dashboard as a feed that wasn't pulling.  I clicked on the link to test, and: Just a reminder that in ALL platforms, data portability needs to be default.  Either an API or at least an archive download as HTML, JSON, CSV or other common, open format.... read more.

Tags: Data Portability, Posterous

An Author Walk-Through of a Story in Audio

by on 04/30/2013

I was finally catching up on all my podcasts this week, which includes Traffic and Weather, which is an always informative source of news and commentary podcast about APIs and the cloud hosted by @smarx and @johnsheehan  While listening to Episode 8: I’m going to withdraw my objection, John Sheehan discusses his March story in NextWeb called APIs are Dead, Long Live APIs.  It was very interesting to hear him describe his intent behind the post and walk us through his points.   I read the original article back in March, jotted down some notes, but really didn't trigger much beyond that.... read more.

Tags: Audio, Soundcloud, Traffic and Weather

Who Are The Customers For Your Startup?

by on 04/26/2013

Silicon Valley builds amazing apps! We need customers to use our apps Hopefully we get lots of customers who use our apps! We can also launch an API, and become a platform Now we have developers as customers Now we have our developers customers as customers We need $$ to operate and scale our platform, APIs and apps Now we add investors as our customers Our investors want us to give them ROI with a good exit Now we have other larger companies as potential customers Who is the customer of your startup?... read more.

Tags: Silicon Valley, Startup, VC, Venture Capital

Your Glasses Are Prime Real Estate for a Human Computer Interaction (HCI)

by on 04/17/2013

I’m closely following the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) world lately, in an attempt to understand the role APIs will play in this expanding tech sector. One product that is of particular interest is Google Glasses, which I think is one of the most exciting and scariest technologies to emerge in recent times. As I look across the landscape of emerging HCI technology and other more known and adopted technologies such as smart phones, GPS, etc, I can’t help but think about how Google is genius for targeting the most ideal real estate in our physical world. Think about the other pieces of tech in our lives: Smart Phone - A smart phone is a pretty desirable piece of virtual real estate.... read more.

Tags: Automobile, Google Glasses, HCI, Human Computer Interaction, Smart Phones, Watches

Personal Legal Storage Locker for TOS and NDA

by on 04/10/2013

I’m unpacking all my notes from my time spent at the MIT Media Lab this last weekend.  One of the byproducts of hanging out with so many smart people is I end up with all kind of great ideas, and I know better than to think I can do them all myself, so I put my ideas out on the web for anyone to run with. My project from theHackathon this weekend was #ReclaimYourDomain, which I’ll write about in detail separately, but the overall project objective was to educate people about: Owning Their Own Domain Taking Control Of Their Cotent The project is focused on empowering people in these areas by providing not just tools, but also education.... read more.

Tags: Legal, NDA, Non-Disclosure Agreement, Terms of Service, TOS

Add Or Update Your #ReclaimOpen Profile At The Github Site

by on 04/10/2013

You have the power to update your own profile on the #ReclaimOpen Github repository, by editing and submitting a pull request. Here are some steps you will need to consider to accomplish this. Github Repository - https://github. com/1l2p/reclaimopen Github Account (Skip If You Have One) https://github. com/ Github Client Mac - http://mac. github. com/ Windows - http://windows. github. com/ Fork Repository to Your Github Clone #ReclaimOpen Repository Clone to local folder on your machine Edit the people. html page locally Submit Pull Request Github Help - https://help. github. com/articles/using-pull-requests Here is a video walkthrough of the process as I update my own profile on the people. html page.... read more.

Tags: #ReclaimOpen, GitHub, MIT

Usually When Developers Are Mean, It Is About Power

by on 03/30/2013

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, reassess what I've learned, and adjust the direction I'm going with this mined wisdom.  This week I’m reflecting on the recent insanity around Adria Richards, my role as the API Evangelist, and spending time thinking about the tech space's inclusiveness as I’m hanging out with my 12 year old daughter for spring break.... read more.

Tags: Developers, Power, Technology

Migrating My Automation Services Beyond Free

by on 03/28/2013

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 scenarios to make sure my content exists in multiple areas. When it comes to the IT decisions for API Evangelist, I carefully evaluate what services I use.  If I begin to depend on an account, after 6 months I need to start paying a fee to secure some sort of quality of service (QOS).  This is how I roll. Not all platorms allow for this.... read more.

Tags: Automation, IFTTT, Reciprocity

Continuing the Migration of Projects Over To Github

by on 03/21/2013

I’m continuing the migration of all my projects to run on Github. Eventually all public areas of my site will run as static, published Github pages and supporting back-end repositories. Last night I migrated API aggregation, Backend as a Service, Reciprocity and Real-Time providers using a version of my Hacker Storytelling format. While apievangelist. com will still remain the master doorway to all my work, each project will live under its own subdomain and Github repository. As I make this switch I’m having to adjust my Google Analytics strategy as well as potentially my Google Feedburner strategy.... read more.

Tags: Analytics, GitHub, Hacker Storytelling, JSON, RSS

Embeddable OpenSpending Visualizations

by on 03/21/2013

There are some really great examples of embeddable, open data goodness over at the OpenSpending project, which is operated by the Open Knowledge Foundation, a non-profit with a missions to promote open knowledge and data. The OpenSpending platform has a wealth of data regarding spending budgets from all over the world, providing key data that allows anyone track government and corporate financial transactions globally. The OpenSpending platform has plenty of data visualizations avialable for use, but until recently these tools were only fixed and available on the OpenSpending site.... read more.

Tags: Embeddable, Hacker Storytelling, Open Knowledge Foundation, OpenSpending

I Have An Idea, Lets Launch an Analytics Platform

by on 03/19/2013

During my monitoring for the API stack this last week, I noticed that both Parse and New Relic had launched mobile analytics platforms. I’ve been tracking on various API driven analytics platforms, and after seeing both Parse and New Relic launch their offerings, I thought, who else is doing this?... read more.

Tags: Analytics, Mobile, Pinterest, Trends

The API Pipes, From Resource to Last Mile

by on 03/17/2013

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 thoughts I'm having around my role in the API space, a diagram I drew the other day while enjoying an IPA, and inescapable thoughts fueled up by a post by Patrick Meir over at iRevolution, called Crisis Mapping, Neogeography and the Delusion of Democratization.   Meir kicks up a bunch of thoughts related to how I perceive my role in the API space, which I believe is to help keep a certain amount of oxygen (aka open) present in the space, which I believe is the key ingredient in why the expirement we know as APIs is working.... read more.

Tags: Discovery, Enablers, Last Mile, Resources

Who Runs The Internet?

by on 03/13/2013

I came across the great infographic from ICANN titled, Who Runs the Internet?  i want to brush up on my own knowledge about all the key stakeholders in the Internet, so I typed up some of the text from the infographic, for my own benefit, as well as to make it a little more interactive. Who Runs The Internet? No One Person, Company, Organization or Government Runs the Internet The Internet itself is a globally distributed computer network comprised of many voluntarily interconnected autonomous networks.... read more.

Tags:

Chicago Using Github Has Potential For More Citizen Participation in Government

by on 03/04/2013

Github is not just a site for managing code, for use by programmers. The platform can host code, data, markup, markdown and files like images, pdf, etc. Basically anything you can store in a file, and apply versioning to, you can put Github to work, helping you manage collaboration and the assets evolution. The City of Chicago just published five datasets including street locations, building footprints, bike routes, pedway routes and bike rack locations on Github--released under the MIT license, giving anyone the right to download, modify and reuse, even for commercial purposes.... read more.

Tags: Chicago, City Government, GitHub, Open Data

Evernote, OAuth and Zapier

by on 03/02/2013

One of the platforms I depend upon for my memory was hacked today. This afternoon, Evernote let everyone know that the platform was compromised and forced a reset of all passwords. While I’d prefer all platforms I depend on could thwart any hacks, it seems like security breaches are becoming par for the course. I appreciate that Evernote immediately forced a password reset and because I use the desktop app, I immediately was prompted to update my password.   I also enjoy seeing the OAuth flow in action, where reciprocity providers like Zapier immediately take action.... read more.

Tags: Evernote, Zapier

Method to the Madness

by on 02/02/2013

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 sites, blogs and projects. To help organize this, I'm breaking my navigation on KinLane. com into two main groups.... read more.

Tags: Navigation, Organization


1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next >>