Stories

Kin Lane

Who Runs The Internet?

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...
Kin Lane

Chicago Using Github Has Potential For More Citizen Participation in Government

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 man...
Kin Lane

Evernote, OAuth and Zapier

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.   <...
Kin Lane

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 sites, blogs and projects. To help organize this, I'm breaking my navigation on KinLane.com into two main groups.  The first area is overview inf...
Kin Lane

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 20...
Kin Lane

The Guardian Is Brilliant in Supporting Relevant Events with Open Data

I’m a big fan of what The Guardian is doing with their data and API strategy. I think they are a model for what old media should be doing around the ...
Kin Lane

2013 Is Year The Infographic Comes Out of Closet

Could have asked for better timing between a link from Audrey and email from Visually.  Such an important message I want to share in 2013.  I will be making this a theme. Read more →
Kin Lane

Connecting My Platforms Into One Stack Overflow Resume

I received an email from Stack Overflow today asking me to fill out a new Careers 2.0 profile today.  After finishing I have to say, they provide a very slick process for populating my profile...
Kin Lane

Evolution of My Technology Platform Over Last 24 Years

Every couple of years I migrate my platform a little bit forward (hopefully) and begin weaving in new tools into my personal and business world. I recently spent some time looking back, and trying to map out the last 24 years of my professional technology career--in hopes of helping me understand how far I've come. 1988 - When I firs...
Kin Lane

Creating Two Levels of Open Engagement with Github Pages and Disqus

I’m moving all my side projects to run on Github as open source repositories. One of my goals in doing this, is to facilitate engagement around my projects, as opposed to developing them in isolation. My projects all start as a public Github repository, equipped a subdomain pointed at a Read more →
Kin Lane

All Side Projects Are Now Hosted on Github

I’m working through the 2012 year, trying to quantify what I did over the year. It’s not as easy as it sounds. One area I’m having trouble quantifying is how much programming I do. Programming is an essential variable in my happiness algorithm. If I’m not programming...
Kin Lane

Sexism in the Tech Space

I just finished reading Asher Wolf’s Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk. I have so many emotions bubbling up, it’s hard to know how to organize them. I envy her for being able to express them so eloquently and in detail. First, bef...
Kin Lane

The Places I Traveled in 2012

The end of the year is a great time for reflection. 2012 was kind of a blur, and with the amount of API Evangelism I did, I had little time to reflect on where I went and the places I enjoyed. I wanted a quick way to create some kind of visualization, showing where i had been over the year.  Foursquare was the first placed I looked and using Singly I was quickly able to pull my year of checkins. Read more →
Kin Lane

If Quora and IFTTT Had a Love Child

I'm spending a lot of time asking questions about 2012 for various year-end stories. Some questions I can just go to my database and pull numbers, others I can use various APIs to ask questions of common tools I u...
Kin Lane

Moving From Instagram to Flickr

I stopped using my Instagram account this week. I migrated all of my photos to Flickr, and removed Instagram from my iPhone. I’m doing this in protest of the ...
Kin Lane

Instagram Terms of Use Change Represents a Lack of Imagination

As a startup, you are bound to reach a point in your evolution where money will blind you, whether its during roadmap planning or communicating with your customers--eventually you will be blinded by your investors. Once you’ve taken on enough investment, or the load of the parent company who acquired, you will st...
Kin Lane

Silicon Valley Tells Stories to Protect Its Own

I'm closely following the whole Instagram terms of service discussion. I will be watching closely and if Instagram follows through with implementing these TOS changes, I will migrate my photos and close my account.
Kin Lane

API Driven, Big Data Opportunity in Europe

I just got back from France this week where I was attending API Days in Paris. I thoroughly enjoyed many deep discussions with folks about big data and APIs, coming home with what I feel is a pretty clear difference between the US approach and the potential EU approach to APIs and b...
Kin Lane

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 generate to material and work through it in fr...
Kin Lane

Start-Up Offers Blueprints For 3D Printed Parts

kinlane-productions2kinlane-productions2 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 prin...
Kin Lane

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 own solution.  I created an about.json file for API Evangelist. When you need my company logo, a quick description about API E...
Kin Lane

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 stood out was their new
Kin Lane

New York's Growing Mobile Developer Meetup Scene

I’m continuing my research into how various cities operate their developer meetups, with a focus on mobile developer gatherings. Today I’m focusing on New York City, a town that is fast becoming a contender with Silicon Valley for developer talent. I went through the meetups ...
Kin Lane

Learning From San Francisco and Bay Area Developer Meetups

I’m spending time profiling eight of the top developer markets in the country. My goal is to profile the building blocks of cities that have healthy developer communities, and from the research write several blog posts, and a white paper that will help other underserved communities unders...
Kin Lane

2012 Presidential Debates

While your all reasserting and protecting your already existing position on your political views based upon what you saw on TV tonight…please try to step back and look at the bigger picture. Your in a world of a lot of people, whether you like it or not. You have to exist with everyone else in it. For better or for worse. And no matter how much you wish everyone to be just like you, we aren't. And that is the beauty of it. And when you want to blindly cut governmen...