API

Flying – it seems we all have a love-hate relationship with flying and the airlines that operate our flights.  For many of us, there is no way to get around having to fly, whether for business or vacation, so we can’t avoid the airlines.  Thankfully for frequent flyers, airlines have been trying to make things a bit easier – most of the major airlines now have put out an app that allows you to check-in to your flight, load your boarding pass, select your seat, etc.

This past weekend, Hacker News blew up again over the issue of gender bias in tech. Regardless of your views, it's clear there are still a lot more men employed as programmers than women. 

Forrester Research predicts that by 2016, U.S. cross-channel sales will be $1.660 trillion and that more than half of all retail sales will be either online or web-influenced.

APIs have helped the The Yellow Pages Group Canada (YPG) go from phonebooks to an online communications giant with exponential and continued growth. YPG began life as a directory publisher for Bell Canada in 1908.

Today is a very special beginning for me, for my fellow Masherites and really for anyone who has ever used an API, which I can assure you, is every one of you. This is “Day One” for Mashery as an Intel company. What this means is that Mashery is becoming part of Intel’s vision for creating an open ecosystem of software and services capable of accelerating innovation with Intel technology inside^Ⓡ.

This post, part of a guest blog series on platform success strategies, originally appeared on Programmableweb.com.

Photo Credit: Set Them Free by Dennis Wunsch

With the baseball season now in full swing, the NBA playoffs underway and the Stanley Cup playoffs right around the corner, it is an exciting time for sports.  And for sports APIs.  In the past few months, there have been a number of exciting events that have brought sports data and sports APIs to center stage.

Photo of Rob Phythian and Dave Abbott, Founders of SportsData

Sports news happens 24-7. Perhaps the Final Four game is taking place and everyone’s checking the score.  Maybe Buster Posey’s stats went up, or Tom Brady just made a touchdown pass.  Fans who like to regularly follow their favorite teams need access to this information via the devices, apps, social networks, and/or media outlets of their choice.

Photo courtesy of siliconangle.com

Exposing data through APIs is a well-worn topic.  At Mashery, we talk about it literally all the time.  But we usually focus on a company exposing its own data sets through APIs to inspire innovation.  What we don’t talk about as often, is how whole industries can use APIs to increase productivity and efficiencies. 

Photo of Victoria Barret (Left) and Wendy Lea (Right) speaking at The Business of APIs conference in San Francisco last Fall. 

Wendy Lea fell in love with the idea of creating, driving and connecting the meaningful conversations between companies and their customers.

She found a home doing that as the CEO of Get Satisfaction, a community-based platform that helps companies engage with their customers and in turn, gain product insight and enhanced customer loyalty.

Photo courtesy of printedelectronicsworld.com

Photo courtesy of Society Works, on Flickr

Photo courtesy of verizonwireless.com

Success in retail equals selling more and more “things”.  For traditional brick and mortar retailers, that means getting people in the doors and keeping them there long enough to make a purchase.   With the advent of the Internet, these traditional retailers have had to adapt and create websites to allow their shoppers to shop online.  Now that the vast majority has figured out websites, mobile is bringing a new threat to the traditional retail model.

This guest post, written by Andy Thurai, originally appeared on Infosecurity.com. Andy is the Chief Architect & Group CTO for the Intel unit responsible for Cloud/ Application security, API, Big Data, SOA and Mobile middleware solutions. You can follow him on Twitter at @AndyThurai.