I enjoyed the post very much. Just out of curiosity, though, why did you choose not to capitalize any words?
that's the hip thing to do these days
A Personal API
71–80 of 119 posts
Re: A Personal API
#72Similar to this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5021783 (minus the act API)
Re: A Personal API
#73Very cool.
I had actually mocked up something similar with openapi.me, but never got to release it.
It included different level of permissions and data including addresses and payment information. The goal was to have a centralized repo of data to update only once and have it propagate to all the other services asking for the same data over and over (email, address, links, etc).
Re: A Personal API
#74I 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…
This is very much the goal of Project VRM: 1. https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/Main_Page 2. http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vrm/
Neat project! Took me about 5 clicks to find out that VRM is defined as 'Vendor Relationship Management'.
Re: A Personal API
#75Love the idea. If you wish to incorporate social stream data, check out http://socialsafe.net
I've used it to back up and then delete my personal FB account, and continue to archive instagram, linkedin, twitter, blogs, etc. etc.
What's more, even though their interface is kinda weird, they store all kinds of granular data in a very nice SQL database which contains more then they represent in their reports, and can be be repurposed in many different ways...
Re: A Personal API
#76This may be a bit of a privacy issue to publish, but an interesting dataset is that of https://openpaths.cc/ ... keep the app running on your phone and it will keep track of your location. This data is then available to you over an API, or to researchers that you approve to get access to your anonymized data.
Re: A Personal API
#77Reminds me of 2net by Qualcomm, except that has a lot of features and uptake already:
http://www.qualcommlife.com/
At CES, Qualcomm had a bunch of devices working with it through a plugin wall unit. They offer free data APIs for storage, etc..
Re: A Personal API
#78As 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.
The quantified self people all claim if you can't measure something, you can't improve it. It is very popular with runners. If you don't track your time or run competitively, you tend not to improve your times. Runners are willing to put a lot of data in, even like how they felt after each run, which has good uses for planning work outs, etc.. But the same concept applies to anything - eating healthy/less, walking more, smoking less, etc.. Like good old Ben Franklin used to track virtues until he mastered them.
Re: A Personal API
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
What data do they hold hostage?
It was on HN[0] a few months ago that they don't give you access to minute by minute data, only daily totals. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5001301
Ah; FYI the API now supports Intraday Time Series fetching.
See https://wiki.fitbit.com/display/API/API-Get-Intraday-Time-Se... for more information. You can retrieve data in 1 min or 15 min increments.
Re: A Personal API
#80This is great! I would love to hear some device recommendations. Fitbit, Fuelband, or Jawbone? Withings scale or fitbit scale?
I've had several Fitbit's and own the Withings scale; love them to pieces. My early Fitbit's broke when I sat down and caught them on the arms of a chair (once at a beer garden, natch) but the new Flex bracelet is incredibly nice.