Stories
I was first introduced to the concept of a personal data locker after discovering The Locker Project by Jeremie Miller (@jeremie). For some of us activist oriented technologists, who live in a Silicon Valley driven world where data is the new oil, a personal data l...
I attended a conference in Vancouver British Columbia last week. Well I didn’t actually attend or speak at the conference, I was just there to support my partner in crime Audrey Watters(@audreywatters). If you have seen me at events, you know Audrey and I usually travel together, and support each other at...
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 public APIs emerging, the majority of growth is coming from the deployment of internal ...
I just went through 52 services that I depend on, and experienced 52 different ways to manage passwords—most of which sucked! It seems that each service has their own way of allowing you to change your password.
It would b...
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 ...
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 $10.00 website and domain purchase, they proceeded to squat on my domain for almost two years. Eventually I got my doma...
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 custom built platform works, I have workflows and tasks I accomplish each day, and as I have time, I ...
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 Evangelis...
I’m spending a lot of time looking at the API landscape in Europe, trying to understand the companies behind some of the valuable API resources emerging from across the pond. It can be tough to determine the country of origin for many tech companies, for two reason:
Many European companies want to look like they have a pres...
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Much like after 911, things will never be the same on the Internet after the Snowden-NSA revelations. Our delusional belief that the Internet is by default “open”, has been crushed, and corporate and government surveillance is now an expected part of daily life--ther...
As I scan my news feeds I constantly see talk of all the innovation going on—everyone is doing it! In the same feeds I see lots of really big problems like people out of work, mega-drought in California, heating fuel shortages in rural areas, power grid issues, and the list goes on and on.
On side of my news feed showcase how we...
One of the security blogs I follow is Schneier on Security from Bruce Schneier. If you want to understand what is going on around the NSA and security, Bruce is the guy. I was tweeting out a story from his blog today and n...
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 keep all my writing targeted outside the developer community, it can be...
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 built around algorithms, that founders consider their “secret sauce”.
I don't have a problem with this, more power to you, ...
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 a w...
I recently talked about how an IRS API would be the holy grail of APIs, and after reading
I have been doing some work on a project to develop an API for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form. After getting the core API designed and published, I wanted to provide several supporting APIs that would help developers be more successful when building their apps on...
I get a lot of requests from individuals and companies to partner with them to work on projects. Partnering can range from advising a startup, working on in-kind or paid projects or just having a conversation around a specific topic. Each one of these engagements, I guess you could consider is a sort of interview, for lack of a better descriptio...
When I pulled the over 5,000 datasets from 22 federal agencies after the implementation of
I just finished the basic setup for a project that @audreywatters and I have been working on together. A while back Audrey said she wanted to better under...
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I'm reading through the some of the news about the Salesforce Hackathon, and while I'm disappointed in the outcome, with a bounty that big I'm not surprised. The event organizers are focused on the one thing in a hackthon you can ...
I'm reading through the some of the news about the Salesforce Hackathon, and while I'm disappointed in the outcome, with a bounty that big I'm not surprised. The event organizers are focused on the one thing in a hackthon you can scale, which will not actually scale any...
We have anywhere from 1 to 25 people on a city bus at any time. Every one of these folks have a cell phone in their pocket. I think we can assume at least a handful of them possess smart phones.
With this technology, why don't we know where each bus is in real-time? We know that each bus has a tracking device on it, so knowing the location is...
When I read stories like Walmart Holding Canned Food Drive For Its Own Underpaid Employees, I can't help but think about the statement I've heard from numerous conservative friends, that "the market will work itself out". That somehow markets are this magical force that...
