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A Personal API

x.naveen.com

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Re: A Personal API

#81

Post by msvan »

rasur wrote: post #34
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…

Have you read Jaron Laniers new book "Who Owns the Future"? You have similar ideas ("Imagine if the wealth of data collected about you all went to one place, and, most importantly, was controlled by you. Imagine if Company X had to pay you to know about your Amazon spending habits instead of paying Amazon.") It's a thought provoking book.. and slightly worrisome to boot (about the state of things at the moment, with…

Jaron Lanier looks and behaves like a total eccentric, and his ideas can seem pretty out there, but I found his latest book to be a really interesting read. This idea is not the same thing though, because the data ends up being more or less public and demonetized. Companies are already collecting lots of data about you. This, in theory, just gives them even more of it, free of charge.

Re: A Personal API

#83

Post by iusable »

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…

Agree 100%! The point that's important to remember about discoverability is that it is usually mission-centric.

e.g. - you want to discover the 'right' kind of people to follow, as to have better or more entertaining or more useful or _____________ information. What is 'right' for you may not be 'right' for me, since our goals most likely aren't the same.

I love Naveen's idea (and more importantly his implemention) & will be playing with it a bit more this weekend. But, the value may not be apparent right away.

Aggregating and mining one type of data across a relationship may be more valuable. It may be that I have to track a similar set of data for myself and my significant other to make sense of the aggregates.

Re: A Personal API

#84

Post by iusable »

EternalFury wrote: post #25

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

Would love to show you a working example of a similar project with a public API. We have a number of users giving it a spin and would really appreciate the technical feedback. Email?

Re: A Personal API

#85

Post by quantumpotato_ »

wslh wrote: post #47
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…

In my spare time I am doing something like it. It's called Egont (No Ego OR Ego New Technology). If you liked this article, you might like: i) Egont, a web orchestration language: http://blog.databigbang.com/ideas-egont-a-web-orchestration-... ii) Egont part II: http://blog.databigbang.com/egont-part-ii/ iii) Parsing s-expressions in C# using OMeta: http://blog.databigbang.com/parsing-s-expressions-in-c-using... Beca…

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_acyclic_graph ? Can you explain more for us layfolk?

Re: A Personal API

#87

Post by quantumpotato_ »

psycr wrote: post #24

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 a…

Some of your links at the bottom are broken.

Re: A Personal API

#88

Post by amirmc »

naveenium wrote: post #51
rasur wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read Jaron Laniers new book "Who Owns the Future"? You have similar ideas ("Imagine if the wealth of data collected about you all went to one place, and, most importantly, was controlled by you. Imagine if Company X had to pay you to know about your Amazon spending habits instead of paying Amazon.") It's a thought provoking book.. and slightly worrisome to boot (about the state of things at the moment, with…

yes, i do think of it that way: as we leave all this data exhaust behind us, i keep wanting a system to have it all in one place – or at least, an "interface" that shows it to me in one place, even if that's not how the backend really is. thanks for the book recommendation - i will check it out this weekend!

Academia has been thinking about this for a while. I'm involved with several projects that aim to put users in control of their 'digital footprint' and what you've described are two aspects of the work. First is how to collate and access all the data and second is how to allow third parties to query/process that data in a way that respects a users' privacy. [1]

I'm keen to commercialize the work when it's ready but it's a research project precisely because it's a tough problem. Of course, one approach is to just make that personal info public but I don't think that will really benefit users in the long term (companies would certainly benefit, though)

[1] http://perscon.net/overview/dataware.html

Re: A Personal API

#89

Post by amirmc »

spdy wrote: post #69

One day we will own our own node. Where we have control over everything, what we want to share with whom and why. All we need is a place for storage and we add services like apps. With ipv6 around the corner everyone will get his personal ip attached anyway so we can build upon that. Many of us have this idea but no one made a breakthrough so far but it will emerge. We have not figured it out quite yet we have the te…

I'm working on exactly the kind of thing you're describing. Except ipv6 isn't really going to solve the connectivity problem as all the NATs and middleboxes on the network aren't going anywhere. We'll be using DNS instead as the 'identity' piece.

Since you said you would pay for such a thing, can you elaborate how much and what you'd expect (in terms of functionality)?

Re: A Personal API

#90

Post by icebraining »

j_s wrote: post #74
icebraining wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'.

Hmm, it's the first phrase of the first link.

  About VRM

  VRM stands for Vendor Relationship Management. (...)
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