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 of my domain as I can.
I will be asking some questions of each online service, questions like, why do I use this service? does this service have an API? Questions that will help me establish a profile of that service, to better understand how I use it, and whether there is any valuable content or information I should be organizing in a better way.
I produce a lot of content each day, and on the surface it seems like I maintain control over most of this, but in reality my content resides in online services like Twitter, LinkedIn, and other places that I frequent daily.
I do a pretty good job of centrally managing the blog content I generate each day. I have a central CMS where I create my blog entries, and then syndicate to my network of 60+ Github repositories, that use Github Pages + Jekyll.
When it comes to my social media streams, I do a very poor job of maintaining control over my network. I do not store my Tweets, Facebook, Linked or other social streams anywhere. I don’t centrally sync my network of friends and business contact, until recently. I now have a central CRM alongside my blog CMS, but I’m just getting started there.
Overall, there is just a lot of content I generate on the Internet, and in addition to understanding my online footprint, to make sure it is secure, I want to make sure I maintain as much control over the intellectual exhaust I generate each day, as I can. I want all my messages, contacts, streams and media to have the widest possible reach, across the latest online services, but I also want to make sure they are organized and stored in a central place that I control.
You will hear me say the phrase “Reclaim Your Domain” a lot in the future. I think this is the evolution of API Evangelist, beyond the business of APIs, and more into the politics of APIs, and helping people understand why APIs are important for orchestrating your online world, keeping yourself safe and secure, but also establishing the greatest control over the value you generate online each day.
Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons
