Tag: techreport

What about the freaking book?

Some of you know that Etienne Wenger, John Smith and I have been working on a book about technology for communities of practice for what seems like an eternity. Well, there IS progress. We are working on the final round of writing and editing. We desperately need a graphic designer who can help us turn our images into something useful. The focus is information graphics.  (Yes, with a very small budget!) If you are interested, ping me. In the meantime, John posted a wee update on the book blog… Technology for Communities » Time marches on. One of the things he did was share a couple of graphics we are using. (These are examples of the work we need someone to improve upon!)

What is an API?

I have been doing little editing/clean-up bits for the upcoming “Stewarding Technology for Communities” book and one of the things we want to get right are the technical terms – and we want them to be understandable to people who may not be techies. One that I was chasing down yesterday was API, or Application Programming Interface. I wasn’t clear if APIs opened up access to functionality, the actual code, or both. I decided to ask my Twitter friends. Here is what I learned – I thought I would share it with you.

reply to NancyWhite

  • davecormier @nancywhite it’s like exposing the underside of a lego block. if you make your block to fit the holes, you can connect to it 04:27 PM January 02, 2008
  • D’Arcy Norman dnorman @nancywhite: APIs expose functionality so you can write your own code to incorporate it. 01:17 PM January 02, 2008
  • Chris Lott fncll @NancyWhite also depends on what is meant by “access” to code– a proprietary system w/API can provide access to code 11:13 AM January 02, 2008
  • Chris Lott fncll @nancywhite APIs provide access to existing functions, code and data, any or all of which can be used to further functionality. 11:12 AM January 02, 2008
  • Scott Leslie sleslie @nancyWhite forget what I just said. I thought you were asking a different question. Just waking up. 11:42 AM January 02, 2008
  • Scott Leslie sleslie @NancyWhite both, it depends. Some API’s focused around giving you functionality, other’s around data (though w/ data, there are other ways) 11:41 AM January 02, 2008
  • Jan Karlsbjerg JanKarlsbjerg @NancyWhite API’s make FUNCTIONALITY accessible to other programs/programmers. 11:38 AM January 02, 2008
  • Lion Kimbro LionKimbro @NancyWhite: APIs make functionality accessible. Even if code is available, I wouldn’t necessarily call it “accessible.” 12:21 PM January 02, 2008