A Personal API • Hacker News Board

Re: A Personal API

#21

Post by vijayr » Fri, May 31, 2013, 6:43 PM UTC

mnutt wrote: post #4

ngoel36 wrote: post #2

This is so cool. Somebody should turn this into a platform - a mobile app that at least helps you record the stats you want, paired with an API platform that lets you grant and request permission for other "personal APIs". Then other API calls can be built on top of individual people - College students in the US, citizens of India, etc. The possibilities are pretty endless.

I'll bet you could get a lot of this information from something like FitBit.

True. But fitbit can only give health related data - what if one wants to track multiple things in his/her life - finance, health, food habits etc

Re: A Personal API

#22

Post by chiph » Fri, May 31, 2013, 6:45 PM UTC

crisnoble wrote: post #20

dale386 wrote: post #8

This website was blocked by my company's firewall as "suspicious."

maybe because its a tumblr site? You must work at a strict company, there is nothing NSFW in the article or the site.

Got blocked for me as well - "Pornography"

Re: A Personal API

#23

Post by Dirlewanger » Fri, May 31, 2013, 6:45 PM UTC

Narcissism reaches a new level (or low, depending on how you see it).

Re: A Personal API

#24

Post by psycr » Fri, May 31, 2013, 6:45 PM UTC

I have been working on an open source version of this idea: http://www.quantify.io

Right now, things are fairly sparse. You can check the repo out here: https://github.com/jdjkelly/bodyimage

An open source Rails API to track "quantified self" data.

Right now, the hardware companies in this space are storing your data in closed systems. Let's change that.

Take the Withings WiFi scale or the FitBit, for example. Both are essential pieces of the quantified self hacker, yet both store your data in their respective, siloed databases. What happens when one of them goes bust? Or decides to pivot towards an ad-based business model?

This project includes a Rails + MySQL RESTful API to store your data.`

Contact in profile.

Re: A Personal API

#25

Post by EternalFury » Fri, May 31, 2013, 6:49 PM UTC

Cool idea, Naveen. I would like to contribute and expand it.

Re: A Personal API

#26

Post by nemesis1637 » Fri, May 31, 2013, 6:51 PM UTC

My first thought was "this is about as narcissist as you can get". But, it's still pretty damn cool. Nice job.

Re: A Personal API

#27

Post by uptown » Fri, May 31, 2013, 6:52 PM UTC

cocoapriest wrote: post #11

As an engineer, I can understand the excitement. But I wonder why and who should use that data? I can't see any great use cases.

Insurance companies - for adjusting rates based on lifestyle.

Re: A Personal API

#28

Post by parm289 » Fri, May 31, 2013, 6:52 PM UTC

I actually started hacking on this idea a few weeks ago. A personal API could have tons of uses. Many others have commented on the benefits of aggregation, but this could allow users to control and selectively sell/provide information to companies, apps, and advertisers. Applications could be built which utilize the personal APIs of friends. In Naveen's example, my app could compare my fitness level with my friends, recommend new restaurants based on ones my friends actually went to, track progress on goals, etc.

What I'm trying to say is that with a personal API platform, apps simply become a front end to standardized personal data. Switching costs would be reduced significantly, which would encourage a lot more innovation.

Here's a spec I've written out for my work on my own personal API. It's not done yet, and the code isn't open sourced yet, but hopefully it will inspire others to hack on the idea.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/570656/spec_public.md

Re: A Personal API

#29

Post by groby_b » Fri, May 31, 2013, 6:55 PM UTC

I've been spending a bit of time thinking about this lately, too. Here are the things that I think need to be answered for this to be truly useful.

* Secure access. It's great you decided to share everything publicly. I'm looking at fairly confidential data like blood tests, though.

* How do you express permissions? It's likely you'd give out sets of data, not per-url permissions. (I.e. my photos from date A to date B, in this general vicinity - your vacation pics)

* How can others discover what data sets & types you've shared?

* Related: A type description. Some events cover time ranges. Some are momentary samples. They all use different units. Some have location info attached, some don't. (I.e. my heart rate doesn't. Pictures do. Steps/day - geolocation is meaningless)

Either way, it's exciting to see people push ahead on this - many of these questions will probably be answered as we go.

Re: A Personal API

#30

Post by jckt » Fri, May 31, 2013, 7:01 PM UTC

abraininavat wrote: post #13

I was about to dismiss this but have thought about it a bit more, and there's something interesting here. There are already APIs built on top of you. There are the ones you know about, like Facebook and Twitter. There are the ones we know exist but have no direct access to, such as Amazon's backend or your police record. And there are the ones we may never know about, such as the NSA bot scanning this post right now…

+1, but do you mind expanding on "discoverability"?