We've teamed up with James Higginbotham of LaunchAny and Keith Casey of Casey Software to bring you their hand-curated weekly newsletter for API developers. You can subscribe to the API Developer Weekly email newsletter here.
Also, be sure to check out James's and Keith's new book A Practical Approach to API Design on Leanpub. On to the links!
Hot Topics
5 Ways an API is More Than An "API"
"If we are trying to speak to that CEO or manager rather than the taxi driver, we could be underselling how transformative an API truly is for anyone thinking about how they can use APIs in business."
Awesome API User Experience Should Include The Operations Users
"Awesome API user experience should cover more than end users and developers. It needs to cover operations and dev-ops. Here are a few reasons why"
Making Your API a Valuable Product
"Much in the same way you do with your core products, you need to invest some time and energy into every stage of your API quality life cycle – from development and testing to post-production monitoring. Let’s focus some attention on how you can elevate the quality of your API to make it a valuable (and valued) asset in your organization."
Low Hanging Fruit For API Discovery In The Federal Government
"I looked through 77 of the developer areas for federal agencies, resulting in reviewing approximately 190 APIs. While the presentation of 95% of the federal government developer portals are crap, it makes me happy that about 120 of the 190 APIs (over 60%) are actually consumable web APIs, that didn't make me hold my nose and run out of the API area. "
The Business of APIs
Twilio Helps Nonprofits Enter the API Economy With Social Good Venture
"Twilio’s new social good venture, Twilio.org, is bringing API-enabled communications to nonprofits around the world."
APIs are coming. Welcome to the B2B Sharing Economy
Why APIs are lowering market transactions costs and are reshaping of the economy we know for a new generation of entrepreneurs.
Survey: CA Finds API Security, Usability Taking Center Stage
"As APIs capture the attention and imagination of more devs, a survey of API professionals finds security and usability now rank as top areas of focus. The survey, from CA Technologies’ Layer 7, polled approximately 180 API enterprise stakeholders, from front-line devs to IT architects."
The Business of APIs: What Product Managers Need to Plan For
"In today’s cloud computing world, many Product Managers will be faced with the decision of whether to open an API to their users. Open APIs have many advantages, but they also bring significant business challenges. In this post, I describe key benefits and challenges of open APIs, and why Product Managers should treat an open API as its own product instead of as a feature."
The 'Internet Of Things' Will Soon Be A Truly Huge Market, Dwarfing All Other Consumer Electronics Categories
There are already clear signs that the biggest tech companies — and even smaller players — are trying to get out front of the race to dominate the IOT. Google has acquired Nest. Apple has unveiled its HomeKit platform. Even Staples and Honeywell — not typically companies thought of as tech leaders — are putting out new IOT-related products.
API Development
Soundcloud API usability review
A look at the steps required to build an API usability review using the Soundcloud API. Submitted by @apiusabilitytst.
Say 'Hi' to mrJSON
A project that enables you to define your resources, launch a hosted API, and even generate test data to help teams quickly focus on the client side.
Slideshare: OAuth you said
An introduction to OAuth, a brief history, what to avoid, and links to further reading.
Slideshare: Moving from API Design to Deployment
A look at one of our recent projects, how we go through the API design process, and how we used various cloud, tools, and strategies to easily support messaging and ease of deploying upgrades for our API.
Cloud Watch (from Cloud Developer Weekly Newsletter)
Are Docker Users Migrating to Ansible and Away from Puppet and Chef?
The Ansible automation technology is different from Chef and Puppet. It operates strictly over SSH and requires no server side daemon process.
Dockercon video: AWS Elastic Beanstalk and Docker
In this video, Evan Brown from AWS explains how to deploy your Containers via a Dockerfile, public repository, or private repository. Evan also highlights the best practices for security and secret management, logging, and scaling and monitoring your Docker Containers on Elastic Beanstalk.
Softlayer: The bare metal IaaS provider
Softlayer is an IBM company that provides IaaS. What makes them different from Amazon?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host expands to Google Compute Engine
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host is now available as a technology preview on Google Compute Engine for customers participating in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic special interest group (SIG). The inaugural SIG is focused on application containers and encompasses the technologies that are required to create, deploy and manage application containers.
Amazon Picks Mobile Development As Its New Product Category To Dominate
Amazon Web Services (AWS) seems to have the Midas touch. Seemingly everything the Seattle bookseller’s cloud infrastructure division introduces ends up being category-leading. That’s awesome for Amazon but pretty horrid for all those left in the wake of the juggernaut. The latest (and, admittedly, entirely natural) area for AWS to introduce product in is the burgeoning Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) area.
Revisiting "What is DevOps"
If all companies are software companies, then all companies must learn to manage their online operations.
Want to share something?
As always, if you want to chat, share a link, or make a suggestion, feel free to drop us a quick note using Twitter (@launchany and @caseysoftware) or by emailing us at: james@launchany.com.