During the week of June 8th, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced that the records of all current and past US federal employees had been compromised. That includes standard employment information – address, social security numbers, etc – of over 4 million people ranging from a random forest ranger to US Cabinet members. (According to OPM, the […]
This past weekend was our third annual ATX Hack for Change. It was still hosted at St Edwards University, but this time it was organized by the City of Austin’s Innovation Office. While Kerry O’Connor is the Chief Innovation Officer, her staff ran much of the show over the weekend. I was lucky enough to be invited […]
Over this past weekend, I came across a Wired called “Write the Perfect Email to Anyone with this Creepy Site” on using machine learning and natural language processing to analyze a person’s social media profiles and offer tips on how to communicate with them effectively. Most people immediately thought about sales, but one thread of the conversation […]
Let’s get this out of the way upfront: Building API helper libraries is hard. When you think about it, that makes sense. The helper libraries rarely get the same time or attention as the API itself. They’re usually an afterthought. Even worse, most teams are usually only strong in one or two programming languages and dabble […]
If you read the tech press, everyone knows they need an API but most aren’t really sure what it is. They treat it as another checkbox like “Web 2.0” was a few years ago or a mobile app was most recently. In fact, there’s an entire “API-first” movement in development circles that most people don’t […]
For the first time ever, DrupalCon is joining us in the great State of Texas, specifically right here in Austin over the week of June 2nd-6th. As a part of that, I’ve been tapped to serve as the Chair of the Coding & Development Track. It basically means that I’m in charge of reviewing every […]
Since Twilio and I parted ways a few months ago, I’ve had a number of people ask “what’s next?” and for a while I didn’t have an answer. I just wanted to stop and catch my breath. In fact, I planned to take December off. That lasted all of 4 days.. First, I decided to […]
My first book – “A Practical Approach to API Design” – shipped this past Friday. As a result, I’m activating Operation Buy It Now today. To sweeten the deal, if you order it by 11:59pm ET on Sunday the 23rd, you will be entered into a random drawing for four hours of API consulting. All […]
Everything noted below is professional advice not legal advice. I’m not a lawyer, so check with your legal department or similar before you use open source software, regardless of the license. In terms of software licensing, I have a simple principle: Don’t make things unnecessarily complicated. Let’s face it, most developers don’t understand licensing. They […]
It’s a dark and stormy night. You’ve been working on that last bit of code and an explosion rocks your living room. In walks Doctor Doom with a simple demand: How many other “doctors” are in the Marvel universe? Unless you’re Comic Book Guy and know this off the top of your head, you’re going […]