Facebook made changes to it’s API access policy on May 1st, 2018. As the result we introduced our own Premium API for Facebook. We feel that we need to explain how exactly those changes affected SNAP. Since the beginning Facebook native API was unrestricted. Anyone w...
Tag: API
👓 Turning off Facebook for Bridgy | snarfed.org
Ryan Barrett (snarfed.org)I announced recently that Bridgy Publish for Facebook would shut down soon. Facebook’s moves to restrict its API to improve privacy and security are laudable, and arguably ...
This is so disappointing. Facebook is literally killing itself for me. So much for their “connecting everyone” philosophy.
Brid.gy was the last thing really keeping me connected to Facebook at all. Now that Facebook is shutting down its most useful functionality from my perspective, perhaps it’s time to deactivate it and move toward shutting it all down?
🔖 An Introduction to APIs | Zapier
APIs (application programming interfaces) are a big part of the web. In 2013 there were over 10,000 APIs published by companies for open consumption 1. That is quadruple the number available in 2010 2. With so many companies investing in this new area of business, possessing a working understanding of APIs becomes increasingly relevant to careers in the software industry. Through this course, we hope to give you that knowledge by building up from the very basics. In this chapter, we start by looking at some fundamental concepts around APIs. We define what an API is, where it lives, and give a high level picture of how one is used.
I found this downloadable e-book a while back at Zapier’s resource page, which has some other interesting things, but this overview and layout of APIs seemed fairly simple but powerful for folks interested in the topic.
👓 Apps of a Feather
Third-party Twitter apps are going to break on June 19th, 2018.
After June 19th, 2018, “streaming services” at Twitter will be removed. This means two things for third-party apps:If you use an app like Talon, Tweetbot, Tweetings, or Twitterrific, there is no way for its developer to fix these issues.
- Push notifications will no longer arrive
- Timelines won’t refresh automatically
We are incredibly eager to update our apps. However, despite many requests for clarification and guidance, Twitter has not provided a way for us to recreate the lost functionality. We've been waiting for more than a year.
Twitter seems to finally be closing off the remainder of their open API that allowed full-fledged Twitter clients to still exist. This certainly creates a chilling effect in the future on developers spending any time or resources on projects like it that aren’t completely open. This also makes it much harder to build competing services to Twitter which have a similar financial model. I remember the heady days when there were dozens of awesome Twitter clients to chose from and interesting new things were happening in the social space.
If I was sitting on a huge pile of Twitter related code with a full set of Twitter related reading/posting functionality, I think I’d head toward some of the new open protocols coming out of the IndieWeb to build a new user base. By supporting feeds like RSS, ATOM, JSON feed, and even h-feed (possibly via Microsub) for the feed reader portion and building in the open Micropub spec, one could rejuvenate old Twitter apps to work with a myriad of microblog-like (and even traditional blog) functionality on platforms like WordPress, Drupal, Craft, WithKnown, Jekyll, Kirby, Hugo, micro.blog, and a myriad of others in the future. Suddenly all those old Twitter apps could rise from the ashes and invigorate a new, more open community. Given the open “architecture” of the community, it would give developers much more direct control of both their software and futures than Twitter has ever given them as well as a deeper sense of impact while simultaneously eating a nice portion of Twitter’s lunch. With less than a week’s worth of work, I suspect that many of these old apps could have new and more fruitful lives than the scraps they were getting before.
If the bird site doesn’t heed their cries, I hope they’ll all re-purpose their code and support the open web so that their hard work and efforts aren’t completely lost.
The Web Cryptography API is a W3C Recommendation | W3C News
The Web Cryptography Working Group has published a W3C Recommendation of the Web Cryptography API. This specification describes a JavaScript API for performing basic cryptographic operations in web applications, such as hashing, signature generation and verification, and encryption and decryption. Additionally, it describes an API for applications to generate and/or manage the keying material necessary to perform these operations. Uses for this API range from user or service authentication, document or code signing, and the confidentiality and integrity of communications.
h/t
The Web Cryptography API is a now W3C Recommendation https://t.co/hz97mKXuYH
— The New Stack (@thenewstack) January 31, 2017
Break the logjam with a simple API
It just takes one storage service to decide to bridge the gap and a wonderful era of innovation can begin.
Background
Some people assume that for a user to be independent of silos, they would need to run a server. This is not true. With a tiny connection between JavaScript running in the browser and a cloud-based storage service, we can do anything a server can do without the server, entirely in the browser.
This isn't a question. In 2016, the technology is mature, we know how it works.
How to
Here's a sketch of how the service would work.
- Start with a user-facing service like Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon Cloud Drive.
- Add an API that allows a JavaScript app running in the browser to write into a folder in a user's space. The user grants access via oAuth, as they do with Twitter, Facebook, etc.
- Connect to a registrar to allow a user to associate a domain name with a folder. Or map a domain they register elsewhere. A revenue opportunity.
That's it. Now I can hook my JS-in-the-browser app to your service. The user manages it through the UI you already support. And we've opened up a new area for developers to be creative. And most important, it says the exploration of great writing tools can advance outside of Medium. (That's how important Medium has been for the last few years.)
BTW, for Amazon, they would use the S3 API, which is supported everywhere. The apps would pop up very quickly for their service.
It's a total logjam and could be broken by one storage service deciding to help the users break free of silos.