APIs

Here at Mashery, we clearly talk about APIs all the time.  While US-based companies make notable moves in the API space, there is a whole world out there beyond our borders.  All over the world, companies are opening up and exposing their data and services to spread their brand for an international audiences. 

We’ve been talking about retail a lot on this blog in the past few months, and with good reason – more and more people are realizing the importance of mobile to the survival of traditional brick and mortar retail stores.  A study published a few weeks ago by Econsultancy, found that more and more young people are using mobile to shop and price compare.  The proportion of consumers using a mobile phone to make a purchase rose to 28% in 2012 from 12% in 2011 (accordi

With the holiday shopping season close at hand (can you believe it’s here already), people are looking to make the smartest choices at checkout time, especially for higher priced items like electronics. Shopping shouldn’t be difficult, right? Often, when it comes to consumer electronics and their ilk, we mere mortals face tough calls about a few things when it’s time to put our money down: will it work properly? Am I buying the best product for my dollar? Does someone else have a cheaper version of what I’m looking for?

API’s are driving tremendous innovation. This isn’t news. The news, as it would be, comes in the daily twists and turns of that innovation as we rewrite the laws, rules and mores of social interaction, ownership and privacy, etched into design and use of APIs and API architecture. Why?

There has been a lot of talk about how technology can change the way we think about education.  Bill Gates often talks about technology and education coming together to change the way we teach and learn. Neither technology nor education are going anywhere, so the question really is, how will they come together to make learning and teaching more cost effective and more successful.

The Business of APIs Conference (BAPI) is here and we are proud to announce San Francisco has sold out! 

Don’t despair if you didn’t get a golden ticket, the event will be live streaming!

We will also be live tweeting, so be sure to follow us @mashery or look for tweets with the #BAPI2012 hashtag.

We’ve all read about tech superstars who dropped out of college or never bothered to go at all, before launching successful startups. In the real world it helps to know a little about what’s actually out there. 

Think Best Buy—a household name by any measure, the specialty retailer has a huge market share in sales of consumer electronics in the U.S., along with a growing presence in such regions as Canada and China. Now switch to Whit.li, a startup with a solution for SMB brand and social media managers to segment and engage social influencers in real time, based on demographics, rare interests, life-stage and personality.

Healthcare has been a hot topic nationally for the past few years now. Debates rage about what we should and shouldn’t be doing with our healthcare system. One thing that I hope most people agree on, however, is that opening up data can be part of the healthcare solution.

Photo Courtesy of 7-11

If you are looking for a way to illustrate how APIs are a piping hot way to better reach and understand your customers, here’s a tall cup of big brand proof. Your corner store is where APIs meet Main Street to answer a question on everyone’s mind: Obama or Romney?

When the App Store first started in the summer of 2008 it was a huge game changer. Now, for those of us with smartphones, apps are pretty commonplace. Apps help us do daily tasks and make our lives easier. Many of us feel very lost without our phones since they store all our information and entertainment. This of course poses the problem of forgetting, losing or leaving your phone somewhere. We all know that helpless feeling. Well, what if all your apps and all your information weren’t stored in a device, but were with you all the time?

What does The New York Times have to do with Best Buy? Or Intuit and ESPN? Maybe USA Today and Twilio?

The easy answer is that they are among the companies you’ll find represented at the annual Business of APIs (BAPI) conference, the premier global forum for API experts and professionals. The conference will be in the Julia Morgan Ballroom at Merchants Exchange in San Francisco on Oct., 360 Degrees in New York on Oct. 17 and Altitude 360 - 29th Floor at Millibank Tower in London on Nov. 6.

In July 2011, the Poynter Institute, the go-to resource for breeding the next generation of journalists and other media creatures, took on the task of telling its audience about the birds and the bees.

At this moment, we’re in the thick of the U.S. presidential election season—the Republican nominating convention is about to start and the Democratic one is just around the corner. Only a few weeks ago, the world was abuzz with the London Olympics, and now many of us are thinking about Labor Day, Back to School, NFL games, elections, and on to Thanksgiving and Black Friday, into the holidays.

So, why APIs? For retailers, the answer is in your pocket. When was the last time you used a shopping app while inside a store? Or made a “spur of the moment” online purchase? Back in February, Forrester analyst Brian Walker laid this logic on retailers at eTail Palm Springs (Optimizing Your Business for the Era of Agile Commerce) in a message to retailers that: you have to go slow, to go fast.