Stories

Kin Lane

A Civic Hacker Corp

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 poli...
Kin Lane

An Author Walk-Through of a Story in Audio

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 
Kin Lane

Who Are The Customers For Your Startup?

Silicon Valley builds amazing apps! Read more →
Kin Lane

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

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 Googl...
Kin Lane

Personal Legal Storage Locker for TOS and NDA

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 f...
Kin Lane

Add Or Update Your #ReclaimOpen Profile At The Github Site

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 -  Read more →
Kin Lane

Usually When Developers Are Mean, It Is About Power

kinlane-productions2 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 lear...
Kin Lane

Migrating My Automation Services Beyond Free

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 e...
Kin Lane

Embeddable OpenSpending Visualizations

There are some really great examples of embeddable, open data goodness over at the OpenSpending project, w...
Kin Lane

Continuing the Migration of Projects Over To Github

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 b...
Kin Lane

I Have An Idea, Lets Launch an Analytics Platform

During my monitoring for the API stack this last week, I noticed that both Parse and New Relic had launched mobile ana...
Kin Lane

The API Pipes, From Resource to Last Mile

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 ...
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 →