by David I | May 30, 2017 | APIs, DevRelate, Webinar |
This week, I am presenting a DevRelate webinar, “Developer Relations and your Company’s APIs” on Wednesday (May 31) and Thursday (June 1). This blog post contains additional information and links covered in the webinar.
APIs and Your Company
Developer Relations and APIs
API Documentation Examples
API Versioning – Overview
REST
- URI
- Request parameter
- Media type (aka content negotiation & accept header)
- Date
- Custom request header
- Domain name
SOAP
- XML namespaces and XML comments
- UDDI version aware service registry
Shared Code Files
- Filename
- Version resource
API Resource Links
API Documentation Generation Tools
Additional Swagger Resources
The following Swagger related links were provided by SmartBear Software (thank you Keshav and Tracy)
- [Blog] API Design Best Practices – https://swaggerhub.com/blog/api-design/api-design-best-practices/
- [Blog] What is API Design, and Why it Matters – https://swaggerhub.com/blog/api-design/what-is-api-design/
- [Webinar] Scaling your API Design Process – https://swaggerhub.com/blog/api-design/scaling-your-api-design/
- [eBook] Optimizing the Swagger collaborative workflow using SwaggerHub – https://swaggerhub.com/blog/api-resources/optimize-your-swagger-api-workflow/
- [Blog] Design first or Code first approach to APIs – https://swaggerhub.com/blog/api-design/design-first-or-code-first-api-development/
- [Webinar] API Developer Experience (DX), and good documentation practices for good DX – https://swaggerhub.com/blog/api-documentation/api-documentation-and-developer-experience/
API Versioning – Examples
Facebook / Parse (BaaS) API Shutdown Example
Evans Data Developer Program Workshops and Assessments
If you have additional API links, best practices, tools, tips, tricks, thoughts and questions, send me an email.
David Intersimone “David I”
Vice President of Developer Communities
Evans Data Corporation
davidi@evansdata.com
Blog: https://www.devrelate.com/blog/
Skype: davidi99
Twitter: @davidi99
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidi99/
by David I | Dec 22, 2016 | Developer Programs News, Developer Relations, DevRelate |
In today’s interconnected world, companies in all industries need to publish APIs and cultivate a developer community to access and use them. To be competitive today, attracting and supporting developers is essential. The key to cultivating a vibrant developer community that uses your APIs and supports your platform is a good developer relations program. “Developer Programs and APIs in the News” is a series of news items from developer programs around the world.
Developer Programs and APIs in the News
Amazon AWS – December 21 – AWS Cost Explorer Update: Reserved Instance Utilization Report – “Cost Explorer is a tool that helps you to manage your AWS spending using reporting and analytics tools . You can sign up with a single click and then visualize your AWS costs, analyze trends, and look at spending patterns. You can look at your spending through a set of predefined views (by service, by linked account, daily, and so forth). You can drill in to specific areas of interest and you can also set up custom filters.”
Facebook – December 20 – Watch Mark Zuckerberg demonstrate Jarvis AI in a Facebook video – “After a year of coding, here’s Jarvis. In case it’s not clear, this is meant to be a fun summary and not a live demo. My personal challenge for 2016 was to build a simple AI to run my home — like Jarvis in Iron Man. If you want to read about how I built it, check out the note I published yesterday: https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building-jarvis/10154361492931634”
whitehouse.gov – December 20 – the White House releases its Artificial Intelligence, Automaton, and the Economy report (PDF) – “Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology and related fields have opened up new markets and new opportunities for progress in critical areas such as health, education, energy, economic inclusion, social welfare, and the environment. Although it is unlikely that machines will exhibit broadly-applicable intelligence comparable to or exceeding that of humans in the next 20 years, it is to be expected that machines will continue to reach and exceed human performance on more and more tasks.”
BMW – December 20 – BMW Group combines expertise in Munich’s Unterschleissheim: New development centre for autonomous driving – “The BMW iNEXT is scheduled for release in 2021 – self-driving, electric and fully connected. A whole range of highly-automated models from all BMW Group brands are set to follow. To achieve this aim, the BMW Group is combining its development expertise in vehicle connectivity and automated driving at a new campus in Unterschleissheim near Munich.”
SugarCRM – December 19 – Here are 3 new resources for developing on Sugar 7.8 – “You may have seen that that Sugar 7.8 has now been released! We have introduced some important platform updates in this release. Have you read the developer release notes yet? Here are three additional and essential resources for you to use before you embark on new Sugar 7.8 projects: Migration Guide, Unit Tests, and Overview for Sugar Developers.”
Microsoft – December 19 – Microsoft HoloJS on GitHub: Provides a framework for creating holographic apps using JavaScript and WebGL – “HoloJS is a framework for creating UWP applications using JavaScript and WebGL. HoloJS is a C++ library that hosts Chakra to run JavaScript code, and also hosts ANGLE to handle OpenGL ES graphics calls. OpenGL ES calls are translated from WebGL calls by the JavaScript app. When running on a Microsoft HoloLens, HoloJS supports holographic rendering.”
IBM – December 15 – Look who’s talking: IBM debuts Watson Speech To Text ‘Speaker Diarization’ beta – “Today, IBM Research and Watson commercial teams working together have made a significant step forward to advance this ability to distinguish between speakers in a conversation. Watson’s Speech To Text API has been enhanced with beta functionality that supports real time speaker ‘diarization.’ Diarization derives from ‘diary’ or the recording of past events. Here, it refers to the algorithms used to identify and segment speech by speaker identity.”
Wolfram Research – December 12 – Stephen Wolfram Launches Wolfram Alpha Open Code – “Code for Everyone – Computational thinking needs to be an integral part of modern education—and today I’m excited to be able to launch another contribution to this goal: Wolfram|Alpha Open Code. Every day, millions of students around the world use Wolfram|Alpha to compute answers. With Wolfram|Alpha Open Code they’ll now not just be able to get answers, but also be able to get code that lets them explore further and immediately apply computational thinking.”
Blackberry – December 8 – BlackBerry Unveils Comprehensive Mobile-Security Platform for the Enterprise of Things – “BlackBerry’s new platform is designed to be the foundation that drives the company’s ongoing move to software, is cloud enabled and addresses the entire enterprise from endpoint to endpoint. This platform completes the integration of the company’s prior acquisitions of key technologies such as Good Technology, WatchDox, AtHoc and Encription. The totality of the BlackBerry solution is called BlackBerry Secure and is grounded in the company’s mobile software security platform. It helps companies manage and secure their mobile devices and connected things and secures communications for all messaging and file types – ultimately opening up new markets for BlackBerry where multiple endpoint mobile security management and applications are critical.”
Google – December 8 – Start building Conversation Actions for Google Home – “The Google Assistant brings together all of the technology and smarts we’ve been building for years, from the Knowledge Graph to Natural Language Processing. To be a truly successful Assistant, it should be able to connect users across the apps and services in their lives. This makes enabling an ecosystem where developers can bring diverse and unique services to users through the Google Assistant really important.”
Microsoft – December 7 – Microsoft empowers new development opportunities in mixed reality, gaming and cellular PCs = “Terry Myerson, executive vice president, Windows and Devices Group, Microsoft, was joined on stage in Shenzhen by Navin Shenoy, senior vice president and general manager for the Client Computing Group, Intel Corporation, and Cristiano Amon, executive vice president, Qualcomm Technologies Inc., and president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies. Together, the companies showcased new ways for partners to build modern devices that will empower the next generation of creators.”
Oxford Dictionaries – December 5 – Oxford Dictionaries launches API for access to world-renowned dictionaries data – “Oxford Dictionaries is pleased to announce the launch of the Oxford Dictionaries API which, for the first time, will enable developers to access and utilize Oxford’s leading lexical content and provide a gateway to our innovative Lexical Engine and Platform (LEAP), where our multilingual[1] dictionary data is optimized and semantically linked.”
Unity Technologies and Xioami – November 21 – Unity and Xiaomi Partner to Grow Global App Economy: Developers will be able to access MIUI app store, licensing support and new revenue streams in China – “As one of the top Android device makers in China, Xiaomi boasts one of the world’s most engaged audiences, with the MIUI app store seeing more than 50 billion downloads to date. Unity developers will have unparalleled access and distribution support across a key market of players seeking high-quality original experiences.”
HERE – November 9 – Release notification: New Enhancements to HERE Platform services – “Updates to Geocoder API, Geocoder Autocomplete API, HLP Routing API, Map Image API, Map Tile API, Public Transit API, Venue Maps API, Custom Location Extension, Route Match Extension, Toll Cost Extension, Waypoints Sequence Extension, Platform Data Extension, HERE Android SDK, HERE iOS SDK and Map Data.”
Send me your Developer Programs News!
If you have news about your Developer Relations Program, send me an email about the news.
David Intersimone “David I”
Vice President of Developer Communities
Evans Data Corporation
davidi@evansdata.com
Blog: https://www.devrelate.com/blog/
Skype: davidi99
Twitter: @davidi99
by David I | Dec 7, 2016 | Developer Outreach, Developer Relations, DevRelate |
Most active developer relations programs create a lot of content. I’ll call this content your developer relations assets (DRA). Developer evangelists, most valuable professionals, engineering team members, developer support staff, product managers and product marketing managers create their own focused content that is related to a specific topic. This cornucopia of DRAs is placed somewhere on your developer program site and on other Internet properties including YouTube, GitHub, Slideshare, etc. What is a best practice for making it easy for developers to navigate from one digital asset to another? This blog post takes a look at a few developer relations program sites and how they provide links to additional documents, videos, source code, etc. from another digital asset.
Examples of Quick Access to Developer Relations Assets
Last night I attended an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Office Hours at the Cruzio / Santa Cruz Works meeting in downtown Santa Cruz California. Two of Amazon’s local employees talked about the the recent AWS re:Invent developer conference in Las Vegas. During the presentation Drew Meyer and Tom “Elvis” Jones highlighted some of the new APIs and services that were rolled out during the conference (130 announcements and new bits). One of the new services that was announced is Amazon Athena. Athena, from the AWS page is “Amazon Athena is an interactive query service that makes it easy to analyze data in Amazon S3 using standard SQL. Athena is serverless, so there is no infrastructure to manage, and you pay only for the queries that you run.”
This DevRelate blog post is not a plug for AWS or Athena. I am using this example to highlight some tips for how you can help developers quickly navigate to the related developer relations assets for any piece of content or topic that you place on your site. Going to the AWS re:Invent 2016 announcements page, you’ll find an entry for Athena along with iconography with links to additional related developer information. I’ve grabbed a bitmap of the entry and included it below.
For the new service you see a short description of the Product and links to a blog post, the press release, a video and a link to additional information. There could have easily been any number of additional icons/links to more resources for developers to get quickly what you need instead of having to go to “Learn More” and then navigate from there.
The Intel’s Software Developer Zone received a new face lift last month to provide new links to additional developer relations assets and quick navigation. On Intel’s older developer site there was a menu structure that let you choose which development topics, types of tools, and additional resources start your navigation. Now you can choose the Intel DRAs at the top level
or choose a specific development area and see the DRAs for that topic near the top of the landing page.
One final example is the DRA links on each of Apple’s 2016 WWDC video replay pages. On most of the technical session pages you can watch the video, read an overview of the topic, see a list of additional resources containing links to the presentation slides, reference documentation, product information, download the videos and more. The video page also includes a link to show the transcript of the session.
23 Top Content Bits to Connect to Each of your Developer Relations Assets
Here is my list of 23 content bits that you should be able to link to any developer related asset you place on your site. The actual number may be higher or lower depending on what the asset actually is. But, for any major piece of content you put on your developer site, you should be able to provide iconography and links to most of the following assets. If you can only place a few, it might be an indication of areas where you need additional developer content. I’ll leave the iconography designing to the graphic designers.
- Download the Sample Code
- Follow the Tutorials
- Browse the Documentation
- Scan the Developer Use Cases
- Read the Newsgroup
- Look Up Recent Stack Overflow questions (filter using a tag)
- Attend an upcoming Event
- Surf the Web (search using related keywords)
- Read the White Papers
- Check Developer Success Stories
- Peruse the DocWiki
- Get the Slides
- Download the Video
- Play in the Sandbox
- Try the Product
- Buy the Product
- Get Started
- Look at the FAQs
- Download the Product Sheet
- Share with other Developers on Social Media
- Contact Us for Additional Information
- See “Also/Related” (developer site search using tags)
- Rate the Content
Does your Developer Relations Program Link other Bits to your Developer Program Assets?
Let me know how you provide quick access to all of your important technical content for most (if not all) of your developer relations assets.
David Intersimone “David I”
Vice President of Developer Communities
Evans Data Corporation
davidi@evansdata.com
Blog: https://www.devrelate.com/blog/
Skype: davidi99
Twitter: @davidi99
by David I | Dec 6, 2016 | Developer Programs News, Developer Relations, DevRelate |
In today’s interconnected world, companies in all industries need to publish APIs and cultivate a developer community to access and use them. To be competitive today, attracting and supporting developers is essential. The key to cultivating a vibrant developer community that uses your APIs and supports your platform is a good developer relations program. “Developer Programs and APIs in the News” is a series of news items from developer programs around the world.
Developer Programs and APIs in the News
Netflix – December 5 – NetFlix announces a new Open Source project called Hollow – “Hollow is a java library and comprehensive toolset for harnessing small to moderately sized in-memory datasets which are disseminated from a single producer to many consumers for read-only access. Hollow shifts the scale … datasets for which such liberation may never previously have been considered can be candidates for Hollow.”
OpenAI.com – December 5 – Openai.com releases Universe – Universe is “a software platform for measuring and training an AI’s general intelligence across the world’s supply of games, websites and other applications. Universe allows an AI agent to use a computer like a human does: by looking at screen pixels and operating a virtual keyboard and mouse. We must train AI systems on the full range of tasks we expect them to solve, and Universe lets us train a single agent on any task a human can complete with a computer.”
Amazon AWS – December 1 – Introducing AWS X-Ray: See Inside of Your Distributed Application – “We have made it possible for you to trace requests from beginning to end across all of the touch-points that I just mentioned. It addresses the problems that come about when you want to understand and improve distributed systems at scale, and gives you the information and the insights that you need to have in order to do this.” Developers can use Node.js, Java, C# .NET, and AWS Lambda function (any programming language).
GE Digital – December 1 – Minds + Machines 2016 Hackathon Recap – “On Tuesday, November 15 at Minds + Machines 2016, 18 teams competed in a Predix Hackathon showcasing the power of the platform. The GE Developer Relations team was excited to partner with GE Energy Connections, GE Power, Intel, and the GE Digital Foundries to host the very first Hackathon specifically for the yearly event. Overall, 85 developers attended the Hackathon and delivered 18 outstanding hacks, completely packing the house.”
Facebook – November 30 – Instant Games Now Available on Messenger and Facebook News Feed – “Instant Games, launching in closed beta, opens up a unique opportunity for game developers to lower the friction for people to discover and instantly enjoy playing games without having to install new apps. Using only one build that will run in web view, developers can easily deploy their Instant Games across multiple platforms to reach the 1.79 billion people on Facebook, as well as 1 billion people on Messenger. Facebook News Feed posts also include the Instant Play call-to-action to help drive distribution and discovery of new games.”
Google – November 30 – Customize your G Suite experience with App Maker and Recommended apps – “App Maker is a low-code, application development tool that lets you quickly build and deploy custom apps tailored to your organization’s needs. Whether you’re looking for better ways to onboard new team members, staff projects, or approve employee travel requests, App Maker helps you build an app for that in days instead of months.”
SYNQ – November 29 – Synq announces their Cloud Video API for Developers – “Our flexible video API enables developers to create new scalable video services, or move existing solutions in hours. We offer extensive and easy to use documentation and a range of code libraries. Create new scalable video services, or move existing solutions in hours.”
GitHub – November 28 – Preview the new Organization Memberships APIs – “We’re releasing new endpoints and changes to existing endpoints to better help you administer your GitHub organizations and repositories.” New endpoints include: Review a user’s permission level, List outside collaborators, Remove an outside collaborator Convert a member to an outside collaborator List pending organization invitations and List pending team invitations.
Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Linux Foundation – November 16 – Microsoft contributes to open ecosystem by joining Linux Foundation and welcoming Google to the .NET community – Microsoft Corp. unveiled a series of products and partnerships that strengthen the company’s Azure cloud platform for building intelligent, cross-platform apps and services. Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise Executive Vice President Scott Guthrie detailed significant steps Microsoft is taking to empower the ecosystem by giving developers greater choice in the tools they use — including joining the Linux Foundation as a Platinum Member to better collaborate with the open source community, welcoming Google to the independent .NET Foundation, and working with Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. to enable .NET developers to build apps for more than 50 million Samsung devices worldwide.
Intercom – November 15 – Connecting developers and customers with the new Intercom Developer Program – “Today we’re launching our new Developer Program, which recognizes and promotes quality integrations. The Program will help our customers discover and use integrations built by the community, as well as helping us better support you, the developers building them. Today more than 13,000 businesses use Intercom to connect with a billion people worldwide.”
Airobotics – November 14 – Airobotics Launches Developer Program to Create an App Store for Automated Drones – “Airobotics, a global leader in fully automated industrial drones, is announcing the launch of its official developer program, a new initiative that provides third-parties with the ability to design and develop software that will be integrated into and operated by its drone platform. With this announcement, Airobotics is opening the first ‘App Store for Industrial Drones’, for which any developer or company may develop software utilizing Airobotics’ automated drone platform.”
Send me your Developer Programs News!
If you have news about your Developer Relations Program, send me an email about the news.
David Intersimone “David I”
Vice President of Developer Communities
Evans Data Corporation
davidi@evansdata.com
Blog: https://www.devrelate.com/blog/
Skype: davidi99
Twitter: @davidi99
