Kin Lane

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

Thu, 02 May 2013 20:53:09 PDT

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. Ping me if your in the DFW area, so that I know you will be there.

Look forward to seeing you there and connecting.

A Civic Hacker Corp

Wed, 01 May 2013 21:45:17 PDT

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. It would be an NGO, that has government support, but provide a framework to hang meaningful government actions and expertise on.

In its simplest form, I envision the Civic Hacker Corp to be about:

Tasks - Available tasks that need to be accomplished. Tasks would always be bite site chunks that wouldn't take weeks or months to accomplish, but could be done within 5-40 hours of work. Examples might be processing data, cleaning it up, normalizing, verification, pulling data from PDFs, OCR work, etc. Tasks would be submitted by government organizations, in hopes of soliciting civic execution
Hackers - Citizens, not necessarily developers, that could step up for Civic Hacker Corp duty. They could donate as little, or as much time as they like to accomplish tasks that match their skills. Citizen hackers would bring necessary private sector talent to the table in an approach that is similar to Amazon Web Services, Mechanical Turk
Certification & Badging - Using a system like Mozilla Open Badges, the Civic Hacker Corp could certify the execution of tasks by hackers and issue badges for the successful that reflect work done for different sectors of government, types of work, scopes of work or any other benchmarks deemed suitable. Each certification would links to resulting data, content or code

The objective the Civic iHacker Corp would be to get government organizations from all levels to formulate and publish tasks, then incentivize citizen hackers to accomplish these tasks, and potentially move our country forward in new, and collaborative ways.

I think we currently see some of this in action, with programs like Code for America, Challenge.gov and the Presidential Innovation Fellows program. These are all an excellent start, but I think we need a single organization that can coordinate the tasks, hackers and certification in a permanent, widespread way. A group that can represent city, state or federal government appropriately, and provide a credible system for empowering citizen hackers to tackle meaningful open government tasks, then certify and reward hackers.

All work accomplished via the Civic Hacker Corp would be published to common platforms like Github, Dropbox, AWS, etc., while requiring the usage of open formats, common standards and require open licensing--making sure every aspect is reusable beyond the single task.

I know, this is a pretty grand vision. But I think it is doable and someday we could say, "if you didn't help crunch the data on White House Budget, and possess a certified badge showing you did…then you can't bitch"!!

Hacking Your Automobile Dashboard

Wed, 01 May 2013 19:19:22 PDT

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? Just wait until Ford, GM, BMW, Volkswagen, Toyota and other carmakers get their footing with APIs. It will be a different game!

A Lifetime of Experience with 'Government Workers'

Wed, 01 May 2013 18:40:39 PDT

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". Many of them acknowledge the beauracratic environment, uphill battles, massive problem and challenges, and slowness to adopt new technologies and practices. But most of the 'government workers' I have talked with mentioned doing their jobs for public service during my conversations.

I just can't help think, that if more of our citizens from around the country were truly educated about how our government operates and exposed to people actually on the ground doing this work, they might see things differently and begin rolling up their sleeves and getting shit done vs. sitting back, judging and bitching.

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

Wed, 01 May 2013 10:47:08 PDT

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. Pretty simple stuff that users need to always look for when signing up for a new platform.

An Author Walk-Through of a Story in Audio

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:26:13 PDT

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. After listening to him talk about the post, it renewed some very interesting points for me--which I'm working through an dyou will see in future blog posts.

It is a lot of work to craft a good quality blog posts that conveys difficult and often abstract API concepts to a wide audience. I struggle with getting my ideas across, as well as coherency in much of my writing. This got me thinking, maybe as part of my storytelling process I can try to work in an audio version, of me walking my readers (listeners) through it.

I'm not talking about something that reads the post to you. I'm talking about, me, actually walking you through the subject matter and post. We'll see. It is something I likely won't have time for with each post, but it would fun to try.

I really have been trying to incorporate more audio and video into more of my content creation, but seem to be falling short. I will keep trying until something sticks!

Who Are The Customers For Your Startup?

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:02:53 PDT

	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?

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

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 11:48:03 PDT

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. It has our GPS location, identity and contains a lot of info about our every day lives. But it tends to live in our pocket, purse or other location and is only engaged when we decide
Watches - I’m not a big watch person, but I know people who are. It is a pretty good location to place a piece of tech in our worlds. The limitations of a watch is very similar to the limitations of a smart phone in our pocket
Health Devices - Devices like Fitbit and Nike+ Fuelband are emerging providing another slice of our lives, with location, pedometer and other tracking mechanisms with a focus on our health and activity, but can be limited to lesser areas of our bodies
Automobiles - Our dashboards are becoming valuable real estate in the online world, but this real estate is still limited to your time in the car which will vary widely
Wearable Tech - Our clothes are beginning to get equipped with digital goods from lights and eye candy, to headphones, sensors and tracking that will be used as part of our online world

Alll of these areas of evolution in the technology space offer some pretty interesting opportunities for digital integration into our physical worlds, but none of them have the potential of glasses. We would wear our glasses everywhere (potentially) and they sit on our heads, giving them the primest body real estate, and are responsive to what we see, and where we are at at any moment.

This prime real estate is no doubt why Google is putting all this money into Google Glasses. HCI through glasses offers the most possibilities for innovation, but also posses the highest probably for abuse. Think about it, its on your head, sees everything you see, and sits next to your ears, eyes and brain. There will be abuse!

Although I’m following this space with enthusiasm, as with any other tech, I’m extremeley skeptical about how it will be used, and constantly pondering the negative potential, while trying to showcase the positive use of this powerful technology.

Personal Legal Storage Locker for TOS and NDA

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:32:04 PDT

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. I will begin educating people about these concepts by showing them how to start a blog, and move into other service areas later.

One service area that would be further down on my roadmap, but I would like to put the idea out there today, is the concept of a personal legal storage locker for terms of use(TOS), non-disclosure agreements(NDA) and the other common legal arrangements we all encounter with on a daily basis.

We all click on those checkboxes, agreeing to the terms of use in the growing number of cloud applications we are depending on everyday. In my world, I’m similarly bombarded with numerous non-disclosure agreements that I’m required to sign before most companies will talk to me about their API strategy.

It would be nice to have some sort of application that would help me manage these legal relationships that I enter into every day. This app would also extend to my browser(s) and record a copy of each TOS that I agree to, as well as record any NDA I receive, sign and send back.

My storage locker for these legal agreements would not just keep track of each legal arrangement, but also track when I signed, the company I entered into the agreement with, help me know about any future changes by pushing me updates, and keep me in tune with when the agreement expires.

This is something I would like to have integrated into our vision of #ReclaimYourDomain, but for now it would be awesome if someone would get to work building a central storage system, complete with API, desktop clients and browser plugins. :-)

If we are going to start empowering people to take control of their worlds, the legal layer to all of this will be essential.

Add Or Update Your #ReclaimOpen Profile At The Github Site

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 11:38:35 PDT

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)
1. https://github.com/
Github Client
1. Mac - http://mac.github.com/
2. Windows - http://windows.github.com/
Fork Repository to Your Github
Clone #ReclaimOpen Repository
1. Clone to local folder on your machine
2. Edit the people.html page locally
Submit Pull Request
1. 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.

UPDATE: Edit the hackathon.html page NOT the people.html page!! I messed up!!

Usually When Developers Are Mean, It Is About Power

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 11:55:56 PDT

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.

Throughout my career, in just about every position I’ve taken, whether as a programmer, manager, lead, architect and VP, I’ve encountered developers who are challenged by me, my role, skills and approach to tech. I can remember 3 separate roles I’ve had where one of my first assigned tasks was to fire a developer who had made everyone’s lives miserable, because before I came along they couldn’t fire them (him), because they were dependent on them for their skills.

Quality technical talent is hard to find, and many companies can’t afford to lose the talent they already have. No matter what the personality defects or the workplace issues might be. Many developers know this and work it to their advantage, taking advantage of power they possess for their own selfish goals.

This power struggle does not just exist between developers and non-developers. As a programmer I encounter developers who always have to one up you, and make you feel stupid for what you don’t know. It might be a programming language, database platform, technical library or just the fact you use Windows vs Mac. Some programmers can co-exist, but many feel the need to challenge others, while assuming a defensive position around their established fiefdom.

Outside the corporate firewall I see this behavior extended to online interactions, where programmers make non-developers feel insignificant for what they do not know, and belittle other developers for what skills they lack. Something that often can extend into other more harmful, trollish behavior. Developers can be quick to jump one others in an online environment, creating very uncomfortable or hostile situations.

Many places I’ve worked or contracted with, this power struggle plays itself out as the classic IT bottleneck. IT bottlenecks are often portrayed as lack of resources, but more often than not they represent power struggles around budget, technology and other lesser evils. Think about some of your IT interactions--is it always a shortage or resources or lack of desire to actually deliver? It can be very hard to tell sometimes.

While the root of this behavior I feel is insecurity, I think ultimately it is all about power. I also strongly believe one of the by-products of this reality is the sexism, racism and other negativity that is a systemic issue in the tech space.

I’m not writing this to say that all developers are power trippers. They aren’t. But us technologists have a huge problems with wanting to be keepers of the knowledge. I’m not excluding myself from this. I fall victim to the desire for power and glory. I’m not exempt. But I work really, really, really hard at trying to transcend this past I share with the rest of the tech space.

I believe APIs are letting the IT resources out of the bag, and so is the consumerization of other areas like cloud computing, storage, email, web and mobile development, etc. APIs are bringing valuable IT resources closer to the people who can use these resources to solve problems. I saw the opportunities around APIs playing out from 2005 through 2010, and in middle of 2010 I decided to start API Evangelist to help spread the word to the masses about the potential of APIs--bridging a gap that has created between developers and non-developers.

It is very important that us technologists ground our work in the assistance of other non-technologists. We have to work very, very, very hard at being nice and make what we do inclusive. It isn’t easy. Listen to the first couple minutes of the API podcast Traffic and Weather from the other week and you will hear how much work I put into making sure I’m pleasant, but make an impact when engaging not only non-developers, but developers alike. It is critical.

If you are a developer, please join me in making sure everything we do is as inclusive as possible for other developers, non-developers and most importantly of other sexes, races and anyone we encounter in what we do.

Migrating My Automation Services Beyond Free

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 21:42:21 PDT

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. In my opinion, all FREE platforms should have relief valves for users like me, who want to move to some sort of paid account, assuring me some sort of service level agreement (SLA) or I'll move away.

For example: Once I started using Evernote regularly, I moved to the premium level. I bought into Pinboard at an early rate, once I was hooked. Inversely, I can't pay for Twitter, Facebook and some Google services. Today it is about IFTT.

In light of me losing Google Reader I'm taking a hard look at all my services. IFTT is on the chopping block.

I have about 20-30 jobs running at IFTTT, moving data around between my cloud services, in a way I depend on. I need to move this into the realm of premium or paid services.

What are your thoughts? Sell me on your service.

Continuing the Migration of Projects Over To Github

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:45:41 PDT

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. In the shadow of the Google Reader deprecation I’m reconsidering not just how I consume RSS, but my analytics as well.

I can keep using Google Analytics for pages, and Google Feedburner for RSS. But I’d also like data on how JSON files are consumed as well, which neither platform provide me. Using the Github API I can track on the activity around a repository like commits, follows, downloads and forks, but I don’t get actually page view activity on pages or individual files.

Really my only hope for getting the data I need is from Github. Some sort of raw web logs for our domain, would be sweeeet!! Then I could see how many times a JSON file is accessed, and build custom reporting tools for Github page views, Jekyll blog views, etc and migrate away from Google Analytics.

I've looked briefly for any Github solutions, but everything is client-side tracking. Let me know if I'm missing anything.

Embeddable OpenSpending Visualizations

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 11:07:15 PDT

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. Now they have begun developing and publishing a handful of cool, embeddable widgets that can be published anywhere:

All three visualizations are available as open-source code on Github. OpenSpending also provides examples you can play with using jsfiddle:

The embeddable tools provided by OpenSpending are exactly the types of tools I want to organize as part of my Hacker Storytelling work. I’m looking to build a wealth of embeddable tools that help people tell more meaningful, data driven stories.

I will be curating and tagging as many examples like this as I can, and continue to publish via Hacker Storytelling, for anyone to use.

I Have An Idea, Lets Launch an Analytics Platform

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:49:00 PDT

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?

Here are a few of the analytics platforms that launched in the last 30 days:

02/21/2013 - TEOCO Launches INrange™ Location-Based Predictive Analytics Solution
02/26/2013 - IBM Launches Cloud-Based Analytics and Mobile Initiatives for Global Ecosystem to Capture New Markets
02/26/2013 - Trinity Pharma Solutions Launches Mobile Analytics Platform
02/26/2013 - Trinity Pharma's AgileM Delivers the First Mobile Analytics Solution for Life Sciences
02/26/2013 - Mobile App for Anametrix Marketing Analytics Platform Launches in iOS, Android and BlackBerry App Stores
03/05/2013 - Voltari Launches Voltari Auto – Predictive Analytics for Ad Targeting Fueled by Polk Automotive Data
03/07/2013 - Analytics firm Applause launches the Applause Index
03/12/2013 - Introducing Pinterest Web Analytics
03/12/2013 - Houzz Launches New Analytics Tool for Remodeling and Design Professionals Participating in Pro+ Program
03/19/2013 - App Annie launches Amazon Appstore analytics

It seems that everyone is getting pretty excited about the growth of big data and mobile. Analytics seems to be the latest boom area, something I will add to my list of API driven trends I’m monitoring.

The API Pipes, From Resource to Last Mile

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 12:32:43 PDT

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. At first glance, API Evangelist looks like just a blog, but in reality it is a pretty complex system of data stores, API connectors, jobs and curation that I'm using to help draw a map of the API space that I can follow. Currently it looks something like this:

The way I see the space, is there are a shitload of resources, awaiting to be exposed via APIs that are both public and private resources. The stewards of these resources have the ability to select from tools and resources to deploy their API resources, using various building blocks for accomplishing this.

API as a Service
Additional to standing up your own API, there is the phenonmenon known as BaaS, PaaS and SaaS. Many of these platforms can actually help you deploy API resources, while also consuming and deploying resources of their own. For example, Kinvey allows you to deploy generic APIs from data stores you setup on their BaaS platform, bt they also consume API resources and makes available to you from eBay, and other places, while also providing you with their own API resources that you can use to rapidly deploy mobile apps. This layer is complex, lots to think aobut here.

Top APIs
There is a breed of API resources that are changing the landscape, both in whats available and how you do it. Leaders like Twilio, SendGrid, Amazon Web Services, Google and others are providing API resources and approaches to delivering API resources in ways that are influencing the API economy in big ways. These players stand out, and are worthy of identifying as separate group.

Discovery
API consumers have to be able to find API resources. Historically we've only had ProgrammableWeb for this, but we are seeing growth in number of directories, IDE integrations and other evolutions in how we describe, share and discover APIs.

Enablers
There are several evolving approaches to using APIs that deliver entirely new use cases for APIs, enabling new value that API providers and consumers can tap into. API aggregation from providers like Singly are bringing together existing API resources into easier to use, aggregated interfaces. Reciprocity providers like Zapier and IFTTT allow resources and value to transfer between API platforms in the clouds and behind the firewall. Application frameworks like ql.io, are changing how we bridge APIs and rapidly build API driven web and mobile applications. Real-time providers like Firebase and Pusher are connecting and providing APIs that make the exchange of API driven resources real-time. These are just a of the few of the new areas of API enablement I'm seeing emerge.

Reseller
Platform providers like BaaS, PaaS and Saas, plus the enablers, discovery services and top APIs all represent reseller and partnership opportunities for individual companies deploying API resources. This is the wholesale world of getting your API found as well as being baked into an existing consumer base. Without a reseller or partner layer to your API, you are just a single API in a ever growing flood of API resources.

Last Mile
However, this is all just the piping or tubes of this fascinating new API driven economy. The entire purpose of having these API pipes is to deliver the "last mile". APIs began by delivering resources to distributed web sites, and enabling sharing and embeddable widgets and buttons. With the birth of the cloud, APIs began delivering wholesale infrastructure resources for use indistributed cloud environments. Then with mobile we saw the demand for APIs skyrocket--what will it do with big data, sensors, devices, cars, home and building and beyond?

Which brings me back to my role as API Evangelist. I feel compelled to keep the discussion of the pipes occuring within all the "last mile" conversations. I understand the VC's and companies under their control want to monetize the last mile. This is fine. But I want to prevent the API pipes from getting paved over in the process.

I want ANYONE to be able to get at the pipes behind the tablet applications their children use. I want ANYONE to be able to get at the data that went into any infographic, visualzation or report. I want ANYONE to understand the pipes that connect our physical worlds via sensors, devices to our online worlds.

I want the pipes to stay open, accessible, transparent and part of ALL "last mile" conversations. Which brings me back to Patrick Meir article. There were several key quotes I'm processing in regards to how I view API resources, API pipes and the last mile API Products that are derived from them:

Feenberg’s own view is constructivist, “emphasizing that technology development is humanly controlled and encapsulates values and politics; it should thus be open to democratic control and intervention.” In other words, “technology can and should be seen as a result of political negotiations that lead to its production and use. In too many cases, the complexities of technological systems are used to concentrate power within small groups of technological, financial, and political elites and to prevent the wider body of citizens from meaningful participation in shaping it and deciding what role it should have in the everyday.”

“Meaning Hacking" is often hijacked by "Deep Technical Hackers"

Democratizing information flows and access; promoting Open Data and Do it Yourself (DIY)

Innovation with free, highly hackable (i.e., open source) technology; letting go of control.

"the artful alteration of technology beyond the goals of its original design or intent,” enables “Deep Democratization"

"Freely pro-viding the hackable building blocks for DIY Innovation is one way to let go of control and democratize"

"The control over the information is kept, by and large, by major corporations and the participant’s labor is enrolled in the service of these corporations, leaving the issue of payback for this effort a moot point. Significantly, the primary intention of the providers of the tools is not to empower communities or to include marginalized groups, as they do not re-present a major source of revenue."

There are so many lessons to be absorbed from CrisisMapping and Neogeography, when it comes to the API economy. Sorry for just posting these quotes as just a list, but I'm still absorbing and just needed them published in single place, so I can reference and re-read while thinking on this subject. (Thats right, I read my own blog!)

I don't think there are any easy answers here. I just want to make sure we keep the conversation including the pipes and not just about the resources and last mile products delivered on top of the pipes. So we don't cutoff the oxygen needed for the API economy to work for EVERYONE!

Who Runs The Internet?

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:08:13 PDT

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. Similarly, its governance is conducted by a decentralized and international multi-stakeholder network of interconnected autonomous groups drawing from civil society, the private sector, governments, academic and research communities, and national and international organizations. They work cooperatively from their respective roles to create shared policies and standards that maintain the Internet's global interoperability for the public good.

Here is how it works:

Operations & Services - Internet Operations span all aspects of hardware, software, and infrastructure required to make the Internet work. Services include education, access, web browsing, online commerce, social networking. etc
Policies & Standards - Internet Policies are the shared priciniples, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programs that shape the evolution and use of the Internet. Internet Standards enable interoperability of systems on the Internet by defining protocols, messages formats, schemas, and languages
Open Debate - The forma and informal process of debating policy and standard propositions in a multi-stakeholder model using any variety of methods: in-person, Internet Drafts, public forums, publishing and many more
Multi-Stakeholders - Civil Society & Internet Users, the Private Sector, Governments, National & Internal Organizations, Research, Academic and Technical communities all have a say in how the Internet is run

Who is Involved:

IAB - Internet Architecture Board - Oversees the technical and engineering development of the IEFT and IRTF
ICANN - Internet Corporate for Assigned Names and Numbers - Coordinates the Internet's systems of unique identifiers: IP Addresses, Protocol-Parameter registries, top-level domain space (DNS root zone)
IETF - Internet Engineering Task Force - Develops and promotes a wide range of Internet standards dealing in particular with standards of the Internet protocol suite. Their technical documents influence the way people design, use and manage the Internet
IGF - Internet Governance Forum - A multi-stakeholder open forum of rebate on issues related to Internet governance
IRTF - Internet Research Task Force - Promotes research of the evolution of the Internet by creating focused, long-term research groups working on topics related to Internet protocols, applications, architecture and technology
ISO 3166 MA - International ORganization for Standardization, Maintenance Agency - Defines names and postal codes of countries, dependent territories, special areas of geographic significance
ISOC - Internet Society - Assure the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world. Currently ISOC has over 90 chapters in around 80 countries
RIRs - 5 Regional Internet Registries - Manage the allocation and registration of Internet number resources, such as IP addresses, within geographic regions of the world - Africa - http://afrinic.net, Asia Pacific - http://apnic.net, Canada & United States - http://arin.net, Latin America & Caribbean - http://lacnic.net, Europe, the Middle East & parts of Central Asia - http://rip.net
W3C - World Wide Web Consortium - Create standards for the world wide web that enable an Open Web Platform, for example, by focusing ton issues of accessibility, internationalization, and mobile web solutions
Internet Network Operators Groups - Discuss and influence matters related to Internet operations and regulation within informal fora made up of Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) and others

Chicago Using Github Has Potential For More Citizen Participation in Government

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 19:11:17 PST

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.

The move to Github goes beyond just making street locations, building footprints, bike routes, pedway routes and bike rack locations open for download and reuse. It will make the process of maintaining city data a public affair, allowing citizens to get involved, and empowering them to add and fix any incorrect data.

Github will make the process of maintaining valuable city data, something city workers, public partners and citizens do together. I envision a future where citizens can stop complaining about government bureaucracy and actually can roll up their sleeves and do something about it.

The City of Chicago is using GeoJSON and CSV for the five datasets they published to Github. Along with introducing an open source mindset for managing city data, using Github will help city workers embrace lightweight, standards based, open formats which will go a long way to encourage reuse and interoperability.

I’m eager to help other cities, county and state officials understand the different ways they can manage city data using Github and APIs. I will be adding news and analysis for each of these government areas to follow in addition to the work I’ve been doing to encourage the federal government to embrace open data, JSON, APIs and Github.

Evernote, OAuth and Zapier

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 18:52:52 PST

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. By 2:57 PM I get an email from Evernote, letting me know of situation:

Next at 3:56 PM I receive an email from Zapier, letting me know I should have received email from Evernote and to check my connections:

I immediately update my OAuth token for Evernote, via the Zapier dashboard:

Next I get an email from Evernote, letting me know I’ve successfully been connected to Zapier.

I really like seeing OAuth in action. It makes me really evaluate how my network of cloud services can work together. OAuth and reciprocity services like Zapier help me integrate, automate and make my world go around in a secure way I can depend on.

There was a security breach today, on the Evernote platform, a service I depend on, but because of quick action by Evernote as well as Zapier, my Google Docs and Evernote integration has resumed, migrating vital data and content securely after only a minor disruption.

Method to the Madness

Sat, 02 Feb 2013 14:13:10 PST

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 information about my world in the following sections:

Blog - My personal thoughts and random observations in blog form
About - My official bio that I use across most of my profile, which changes each year
Research - Any areas I'm currently researching or looking to research in the near future
Projects - Projects that I've completed and made publicly available (hopefully on Github)
Talks - Some video and slideshows from talks that I've given
Images - A variety of logos, photos and drawings from across my world as API Evangelist
Mission - The mission statement for my evangelism platform
Contact - Various ways you can get a hold of me

The second area is providing links to all my main properties:

API Evangelist - Business of APIs
API Voice - Politics of APIs
API Stack - My ranking system for the API space
Hack Weekends - A resource site focused on hackathons
IPA Evangelist - My personal blogging about my love of IPAs
Hacker Storytelling - A format I'm using in 2013 to make my projects open and machine readable by default

When you google my name, KinLane.com comes up first. So I want to make sure and provide one click access to everything I have going on.

I will adjust this from time to time, and work to keep each of these sections up to date as things shift.

2013 Is Year The Infographic Comes Out of Closet

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 14:54:14 PST

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.

Please be responsible with your Infographic creation in 2013, and make sure and check your sources and provide the data behind.

I predict in 2013 we will see more infographics with actual data behind them, but like with data journalism at The Guardian.

Thanks to Visual.ly and Alaska Robotics for use of their images! :)

The Guardian Is Brilliant in Supporting Relevant Events with Open Data

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 12:53:52 PST

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 globe.

When they post stories, I tend to take a look, not because of the story, but their data driven approach to reporting.

A great example of this, is yesterday's helicopter crash on top of a residential building construction project in London, killing two people and injuring 13 others.

The Guardian provides not just the overview of the story with data visualizations and summary, but of course you can download the data behind.

The process is brilliant, because it rides the waves of popular stories, but also provides valuable data behind--which creates value as well as page views.

Which I think will have a greater long-tail than just page view exhaust.

Connecting My Platforms Into One Stack Overflow Resume

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 18:40:34 PST

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, in a meaningful way, that was very easy, and is an approach other networks need to adopt.

Like any other profile I was able to add my name, link, description and tags. But then I notice that I’m able to connect using Github and LinkedIn. Both networks I use daily.

Using Github I’m able to import repositories that I’m currently maintaining via the social coding platform. Stack Overflow allows me to choose which repositories I to show, displaying the name, description, date repository was created and other vital statistics like number of followers and times it was forked.

Next I click on the connect to LinkedIn, and I can select from my work history and display my resume as I’ve built it on LinkedIn. This really helps, as LinkedIn is the only place I maintain my work history. Using LinkedIn via the API centrally like this, just make sense.

After Github and LinkedIn I’m able to add books that I’ve written or influenced me using the Amazon API. Additionally you can link to your Stack Exchange profile and fill out entries for your education, certifications as well as what you’re reading, apps and tools you use.

I like the tools that Stack Overflow provides to assemble my resume. It acknowledges the role both Github and LinkedIn are playing in my technology career, and makes your vital data portable using APIs. Beyond the areas Stack Overflow provides I would also like to have photos from Flickr, Tweets, blog posts from Wordpress or Tumblr and other important information via platforms I depend on in my professional career--something easily done with Singly. But as it is, I really like the Stack Overflow approach to building online profiles.

I would like to see this same approach to populating my other app profiles, ability to login with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Github, then allow me to connect various, relevant pieces from other platforms into a single, meaningful profile without redundancy.

Evolution of My Technology Platform Over Last 24 Years

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 11:42:06 PST

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 first started programming, I was still in high school. I was recommended for a job by my high school computer science teacher Mr. Smith and went to work for Mt Rose Software where I spent my time assisting the owner in building student information systems in Cobol. We compiled, distributed and installed this software ourselves.

1993 - As we made our way into the 1990's we rewrote the codebase from Cobol to Foxpro, but still the systems were compiled and installed database systems, that we had to distribute to all school districts manualy. No servers or Internet in my world yet.

1995 - In 1995 the Internet started to become more prominent in my daily business world, but much of the work I did was around building database systems for music, commerce and non-profits. I did much of this work in Microsoft Access, but when I started doing work for non-profits I started using Filemaker Pro. This is when I started building web pages using HTML, but at this point they were static, hand-crafted sites without much that was dynamic.

1998 - I remember trying to play with Frontpage and build dynamic sites and being very frustrated. I discovered Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), which was an add-on to the Windows NT server. I began building dynamic web sites using Active Server Pages (ASP) and Microsoft Access databases. Due to locks on the database I quickly discovered SQL Server and began launching separate web and database servers using Windows NT.

2001 - By 2001 I was playing around with new Microsoft tools like .NET and more robust languages like C#, and continued to use ASP, SQL Server and Windows Server with IIS to deliver websites. This formula would remain constant for a few more years, assisting me in building some pretty large, dynamic web sites / applications.

2004 - In 2004 I faced a major rewrite of my companies custom content management system. I had zero confidence in .NET at this point and rather than continue using an obsolete language, I opted to replace ASP with PHP and SQL Server with MySQL and being the migration to open source tools. I still maintained my own Windows server as I had invested a lot in hardware, software as well as server management scripts in classic ASP.

2006 - This year was the beginning of cloud computing for me. I was an early adopter of Amazon S3 and immediately saw the potential for storing heavy objects on the new platform. While I still ran my own server farm, with a flavor of Windows, MySQL and PHP (WAMP), I would story all images, CSS, JS, PDF and all objects centrally at Amazon S3.

2008 - Once Amazon came out with Amazon EC2, I was hooked on the cloud. I was facing buying new hardware and opted to migrate everything to the cloud. The language, server and database remained the same, but I moved from my own colo facility and went entirely into the Amazon Cloud. Running Windows instances on Amazon EC2, keeping storage at Amazon S3--selling all of my server infrastructure.

2010 - As Amazon continue to add to their stack I took advantage of the scalability of Amazon RDS. I stopped deploying my own servers running MySQL and depended exclusively on MySQL running on RDS. I also opted to finally ditch Windows Server as my primary server OS at this time, and began using Fedora Linux w/ Apache as my base OS and web server. I was finally a full LAMP stack running exclusively in the cloud.

2013 This year I'm still keeping my core LAMP stack running the cloud, but it is becoming just the core of what I call the "Laneworks Network". While I still rely on LAMP to do the heavy lifting an data crunching in the clouds, I am migrating projects and public sites to run as Github repositories using Github Pages. This new approach uses Github Pages for static pages, Jekyll for the blog and JSON output from the core lane works on a schedule, taking advantage of mustache templates and JavaScript for display.

I have been pushing the boundaries of what I know, and which tools I use for 24 years now. I'm excited about the potential of all my sites and projects being completely open source and running as exclusively client side projects on the Internet. i feel the potential is much greater when I leverage the open and social environment of Github. 90% of all my work be open, public repositories with only a handful held back as private repositories.

Additionally, a growing part of my platform is dependent on APIs. APIs I create or those of providers like AWS to Pinboard. While i still rely on my core Laneworks operations to make things function, in 2013 my world is becoming mostly API driven client side applications written in HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

I'm excited for the potential!

Creating Two Levels of Open Engagement with Github Pages and Disqus

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 00:00:00 PST

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 Github Pages and a Jekyll site template--allowing me to add pages and give the project its own blog.

By default all pages and blog entries will have Disqus enabled for conversation around all aspects of the project.

This approach to project management will open up two levels of engagement from users:

Casual - Quick comments and feedback via Disqus as users come across a project
Deep - Fork a project and commit back blog posts, pages or other more structured data as JSON files

In 2013 my goal is to make sure all projects use this format by default. It really isn’t any more work than what I’m doing now--with a huge amount of benefits.

Hopefully more of my work will see the light of day, and it will encourage casual and deeper engagement from anyone with the interest.

Kin Lane

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

A Civic Hacker Corp

Hacking Your Automobile Dashboard

A Lifetime of Experience with 'Government Workers'

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

An Author Walk-Through of a Story in Audio

Who Are The Customers For Your Startup?

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?

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

Personal Legal Storage Locker for TOS and NDA

Add Or Update Your #ReclaimOpen Profile At The Github Site

Usually When Developers Are Mean, It Is About Power

Migrating My Automation Services Beyond Free

Continuing the Migration of Projects Over To Github

Embeddable OpenSpending Visualizations

I Have An Idea, Lets Launch an Analytics Platform

The API Pipes, From Resource to Last Mile

Who Runs The Internet?

Who Runs The Internet?

Chicago Using Github Has Potential For More Citizen Participation in Government

Evernote, OAuth and Zapier

Method to the Madness

2013 Is Year The Infographic Comes Out of Closet

The Guardian Is Brilliant in Supporting Relevant Events with Open Data

Connecting My Platforms Into One Stack Overflow Resume

Evolution of My Technology Platform Over Last 24 Years

Creating Two Levels of Open Engagement with Github Pages and Disqus