Solutions for API’s
As there are more and more new-fandangled Web-based products released on to the market, one of the things I’ve noticed (yah, me and probably everyone else on the planet), is that they feature the ability for other developers to write their own applications on top of them.
This is typically accomplished using an API. In today’s world, more often than not, it’s a URL-based API. A developer says, “get me this content, based on these parameters” and the service provides an according response in either text or XML or whatever format.
I came across a new company today called Post App. The premise is quite smart (based on what you can tell from a terribly simple home page, and an e-mail sign-up form), in that it’s catering to the set that may want to write their own applications, but don’t necessarily have the know-how to do so.
This is important for a couple of reasons, that I see.
- Developers who write the API’s are probably smarter than most of the developers charged with building solutions on top of those API’s
- Business stakeholder’s are looking for solutions that get built quick (whan don’t they want this), and work really damn well
- Users that are aware of this “Web 2.0″ thing are always on to trying to find that next cool service — that next 30 boxes, or that next Flickr.
I’ve signed-up for their private beta, so I’m hoping that I get invited in. I’d love to see what this is all about, because I’m really into the idea of making the creation of customized Web services on top of existing API’s much easier for a larger set of folks. There are tons of ideas floating around out there that are useful.
The tricky part that Post App faces is opening the service up to a level that’s comparable to actually writing the stuff from scratch. Yes, this seems easy in principle. However, as a hack PHP developer who has entertained and researched the idea of using freeware apps / code that already exist to “try” and get something done “faster”, I know that it’s more often than not, a better choice to write your own application from the ground up.
So, that being said, I’m interested to check it out, as see what the reaction is from developers.
