Christian heilmann an-open-web-for-all

Chris&an HeilmannHow to Web, Bucharest, Romania, November 2010

An open web for all

I am Chris (@codepo8)

I make technology easy.

6 Books,>120 slide decks,a few dozen videos,Blogger:

wait-till-i.comajaxian.com

smashingmagazine.comsitepoint.com

thinkvitamin.comMicrosoft Scriptjunkie

People come to me for advice how to get known on the web.

Being a success on the web as a product depends on a few things.

Having a creative idea.1

Finding people to build it.2

Getting found by people.3

What if I can tell you that none of these are a problem if you shift your focus?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisisbossi/3361593196/

If you build for the web use the web to build.

Be technology agnostic

If you do all by yourself you will burn out quickly.

Having a creative idea.1

I can’t help you with that - much.

The main trick is to take the old and make the new by mixing and matching.

A technique for producing ideas.

http://goo.gl/N8S7

This doesn’t even have to be creative!

+ =

Please be creative - even when creating the $local Facebook is tempting to do!

Finding people to build it.2

Good developers are hard to find.

The main danger is that you make yourself dependent.

Your product should not rely on one tech person.

You should not tell your techies what to do.

But you should tell them to document what they did.

Separation of concerns should be high on your agenda.

Data and interface are not the same thing.

The interface will change and has to change - look at Twitter.

There is one trick to make this work.

Go and build an API!

Reasons for APIs:

You can change the backend or the frontend when you need to.

You build them in parallel.

You can have various different interfaces to the same content (mobile, web, iPad...)

You give third parties access to your data and not to your system.

You crowdsource innovation.

Success stories?

Using APIs is hard enough...

Providing one should not be taken lightly.

An API is for life, not just for the next press release.

So instead of building your own infrastructure test the waters with an existing one.

YQL http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/

YQL turns web services and data on the web into databases.

YQL http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/

select {what} from {where} where {conditions}

Let’s have a quick example.

http://winterolympicsmedals.com

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/feb/11/winter-olympics-medals-by-country

select * from csv where

url="http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tpWDkIZMZleQaREf493v1Jw&output=csv"

and

columns="Year,City,Sport,Discipline,Country,Event, Gender,Type"

and Year="1924"

http://isithackday.com/csv-to-webservice/

You can store information in YQL and allow for writing to your API.

All you need is a developer who knows how to access data on the web.

YQL helps you filter and convert information - even for mobile environments.

Using YQL has a lot of benefits:

No time wasted reading API docsUsing the console makes creating complex queries dead easy.Data filtering down to the least amount necessary.Fast pipes.Caching + converting Server-side JavaScript for complex conversions

YQL can be your “try before you buy” offer

And a real interface to play with is much more powerful than mockups and a lovely logo.

Getting found by people.3

In order to get known in developer circles, release free stuff.

This can start with adding your API to YQL as a new table.

All you need to do is write an XML schema and put it on GitHub.

http://github.com/yql/yql-tables

But if I am open, won’t people steal my ideas and data?

Yes, but not being open makes people creative in the wrong ways.

Offering free things is a wonderful way to make people tell people about you.

Your biggest fear should be being insignificant.

There are a lot of tricks you can do - but that is for another time.

Where to find more tricks?

http://developer-evangelism.com

http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/

Christian Heilmann http://wait-till-i.com http://developer-evangelism.com @codepo8

Cheers