January 31st, 2011

What is the Business Value of an API?

By Peter Goldey, CKO & CIO

I had the privilege to present on a Tech Connect panel during Inman NYC, moderated by Dan Woolley (W&R Studios).  Dan carved the conversation into three parts:  the history of API’s, covered by Adam DuVander of Programmable Web; technology tips and tricks, presented by Andrew Mattie of Diverse Solutions; and the business value of API’s – my part.

As an information services provider, Onboard Informatics is constantly looking at new sources (input) and new delivery mechanisms (output) that can benefit our clients. As Onboard’s CIO, a part of my role is to ensure that how we access and deliver content meet not only our technical requirements but also our business objectives. API’s provide an important component of our strategy to do so.

There are two sides to the coin of business value here:  Why choose to publish via API? And why choose to consume via API?

An API is an electronic exchange of value between two entities. When the business value to the publisher and consumer match – when business value is aligned – great things can happen and both business’s objectives can be met.  When the value is either unknown or out of balance, both sides must evaluate whether the relationship will work.

After the session, the questions from the audience focused squarely on the business implications of consuming and delivering content via API to the marketplace, so I must have struck a chord. API’s provide a valuable means of exchanging services and data without requiring both parties to invest in the content, data management and technology needed to deliver the content. Instead, one party – hopefully the one with a business interest and requisite expertise – can focus on how to deliver the content. The other party – the API consumer – is left to focus on their business (typically selling something or creating UI / UX for the purpose of selling something – such as a home).  The extent to which the content enables the sale establishes an exchange of value to the API consumer.

The focus of my Tech Connect presentation was what the API provider gets in exchange for this value. There is a notion in the marketplace that many API’s are “free”. Well, here’s something to think about:  if they were really free (the provider receives no value in exchange for providing API access) then there would be no API’s other than those powered by not-for-profit organizations. As Adam presented, there are literally thousands of API’s published by for profit companies.

So what do API providers receive in exchange? And, if you are thinking about producing your own API, what business drivers should be behind that effort? It is our position that there are three fundamental reasons that API’s are produced by one company to be consumed by another:

• To generate traffic
• To build brand recognition
• To generate direct revenue

There are generally three reasons why people produce API's. (Hint: It's not just because they're nice.)

Companies may combine these drivers in their API strategy.  Each has benefits and disadvantages for the API consumer.

Traffic-Generating API’s (or Traffic Pushers)

When an API is focused on taking traffic from the consuming website and transferring it to the API provider’s website, the provider will typically focus on cost to the consumer (none) and features for the end user (slick UI).  The goal is to have an innocuous and seemingly valuable offering (perhaps providing contextual information) with the sole purpose of enticing end users to click through to the API provider’s website. Thus, the API is a marketing and customer acquisition investment by the API provider.

A variant of the traffic generator are API’s which are used to submit content to the publisher.  For example, Yelp!, Twitter and others are very happy when you provide your end users with an interface that submits reviews and updates to their accounts.  Much of the value in these companies is the content that users submit to them. So you are sending them traffic in the form of content submission and in exchange you get a cool feature and some leverage from the publisher’s brand recognition (if you need it).

• Key Question: Is the provider’s business aligned with yours or competitive with yours?  (If you are in the business of selling homes, why would you consider sending the user to another site that is pushing the same product?)

Brand Builder API’s

These are API’s designed to build brand awareness and are also typically free of charge.  However, the display requirements imposed by the API provider are generally heavy on brand visuals such as logos and very strict in terms of presentation and placement.  The provider’s goal here is establishing consumer brand recognition through consistent and widespread visualization of their brand to the marketplace. As a result, there is generally little ability to differentiate one implementation of the API from another.  Typically, the API provider is looking to establish themselves as the definitive expert / source of the content and is taking advantage of the marketing dollars the API consumer has spent in attracting eyeballs to their website.  A good example of such an API in RE is Walkscore.  Another is the New York Times real estate market summary API.

• Key Questions: Does the provider’s brand compete with yours and does the content, when combined with the brand display requirements, detract from your own brand and message to consumers? Given the ready availability of the free brand and traffic API’s to your competitors in the marketplace, does integrating this content provide any differentiation for your business?

These first two API value models have both good and bad points.  On the plus side, fixed costs are low for the API consumer (no licensing / usage fees) and some great contextual content and features are available in these categories.  On the minus side is the very real possibility that the API publisher’s and your business goals are in conflict (lack of alignment). Another note here is that when things are free, there is typically little if any support, focus on data quality / accuracy, SLA, sharing of usage metrics, or implementation assistance.  All of these require resources ($$$) from the API publisher.  There is also the real risk that the API will switch to a paid model or even disappear entirely. About 40% of the API’s I’ve tracked over the last 5+ years in the industry no longer exist.

What is your standard for reliability? What is your standard for quality?

Commercial API’s

These are typically the easiest to establish a value equation for.  The majority of Onboard’s API’s are in this category.  We charge for service – typically either by usage or a fixed tiered cost.  This is precisely how Bing! and Google Maps API’s are licensed.  In exchange for $$’s, we provide reliability (SLA), performance, support, documentation, integration assistance, usage reporting, updates and all the related services you would expect from a top tier provider.  By making the API delivery itself = much (if not all) of the business value for the provider and establishing a reasonable price (approximately equal to the value to the API consumer’s business), the equation is very straight forward.  Because value to the provider is defined by agreement, the provider is able to commit to providing business value in return.  It is only when the business value to the consumer falls below the cost to deliver and service by the provider that this arrangement begins to “leak” and the provider must either lower its price or allow consumers to walk.

• Key Questions: As a consumer, can you define the value of the content + service (support, updates, metrics, etc.) of a content API to your business?  If you can, and that value is greater than the API usage fees, then revenue driven API’s are likely to provide a reliable content or feature building block – or even foundation – for your business. If you can’t define this value, it’s impossible to establish the business value of the API.

Up next – it’s all about control (sometimes)

Tags: APIs, types of APIs, value of APIs.

January 26th, 2011

BestPlaces.NYDailyNews.com in Action

By Jackie Berg, Marketing Director

The New York Daily News relaunched their real estate website this week, powered throughout by Onboard Informatics content. This site is an end-to-end implementation of our services that work in concert to help NYDN bring their city and its dwellings to life. We figured we’d give you a little behind-the-scenes tour on how these pieces fit together and what it means for our client.

Building a site that will build a following

NYDN approached Onboard Informatics in the hopes of creating a new and unique website to highlight the Best Places to Live in the metropolitan New York City area. In the process of creating a destination real estate website, NYDN needed to employ techniques to drive search engine rankings, enable highly targeted on-site search, and deliver compelling navigation capabilities.

One of the most crucial pieces of the development of this project was the delivery of rich content to create a user experience enabling consumers to immerse themselves deep in communities and neighborhoods of the city without going further than their browser. The result is Best Places to Live in NY, an intersection of hyperlocal editorial content, accurate neighborhood data and property listings for buyers. Here are some of the key pieces of the site:

One of the reasons our clients come to us is for a complete solution that is non-disruptive with parts that are capable of creating a synchronized user experience. So how exactly are these parts intertwined?

• The Best Places Lifestyle Profiler is NYDN’s implementation of Lifestyle Search Engine
• Results of neighborhood recommendations feed to neighborhood profiles that are based on real boundaries that truly reflect the vibe and culture of the city’s hundreds of neighborhoods
• Neighborhood profiles are supported with Community and School data (also part of the “Explore NYC Neighborhoods” section)
• Best Places guides are interspersed throughout, including custom top neighborhood lists for niche lifestyles based on our Best Places methodology
• Listings Search Engine drives property search with advanced search criteria (filter by distance to parks/transportation/schools, find a house with pets allowed or a roof garden, etc.)

We invite you to check out the site, find your ideal hood, drool over some ridiculous real estate, and see the city come to life in the process.

Tags: Best Places, Best Places in NY, Best Places to Live, New York Daily News, real estate websites.

December 15th, 2010

Tis the Season

By Joe Rugolo, Director of Data Operations

I’m a sucker for trivia.  It’s my Achilles heel, if you will. I hit Wikipedia a hundred times on a daily basis looking up dopey facts about things I see or hear during the day. So my ears perked up the other day when the radio station I was listening to had a trivia contest about the holiday season. The first question that was asked was “How many places are there in the U.S. named Santa Claus?” I had no clue what the answer was (it was two), but I thought that was kind of cool.  First of all, that such a place even existed at all is neat…the fact that there are two is even better. I imagined a population full of elves; a place where reindeer were as common as squirrels and houses were made of candy and sugar instead of brick and mortar. Then reality set in and I landed at my desk in front of the massive amount of geographic data that I have access to and I wondered which place the real Santa would choose if he ever decided to leave the North Pole.  So here’s how they measured up using Onboard’s Lifestyle Search Engine, with me playing the part of Santa trying to select my next place of residence.

There are a lot of factors that I (as Santa) must take into consideration when selecting where to move to. Health & Safety is a major concern.  As the proprietor of a large scale toy manufacturing operation, I need to make sure that my workers aren’t afraid to come in to work everyday. Elves are a fragile lot and can get easily intimidated. Both Santa Clauses are lower than the national average of 100 when it comes to health and safety, so I think I’d be ok no matter which one I chose.

Having a place that is family friendly is also important. I want my elves to be able to enjoy the weekends and downtime with their spouses and children, plus Ms. Claus and I enjoy the occasional night out on the town. Santa Claus, Indiana gets a slight nod over Georgia but it’s marginal. Not really a true influencing factor.

Now come the reindeer…oh, the reindeer. Where would I be without them?  They are the lynch pin to the whole operation.  If they’re not happy, everything goes to pot. Santa Claus, Georgia more than triples Indiana’s score when it comes to the Pet Friendly index.  I can already hear the tapping of their happy little hooves. Obviously Rudolph will have to weigh in heavily on this one, but I have a feeling I already know what he’s going to recommend.

Contrary to popular belief, I can’t just wave my arms to magically create toys and the elves don’t work for candy canes.  I need to think about how the little guys are going to shelter themselves throughout the year. Neither place is particular pricey when it comes to home sale prices (at least when compared to the North Pole), so I’d probably need to take a look around to check out the area.  I hear that Indiana has some great Christmas themed housing developments, which may end up swaying some of my supervisor elves into wanting to fork out the big bucks for housing.

Last…but certainly not least…is the climate.  My natural girth is prohibitive of anything much warmer than freezing. I sweat like a fat man in Florida, even when it’s in the 40’s. Add to that the heavy coat and hat that I wear and I’ll melt like Frosty the Snowman when he got locked in that greenhouse (poor guy…didn’t stand a chance). I need a place that is cool in December when I do the lion’s share of my work.  But it’s not just for me. The reindeer need it cool, too.  Ever been around a sunburned reindeer?  It smells like venison and can be very, very distracting.

Decisions, decisions…this is going to be a tough one. Too close to call, really. I still have some more information to process, but at least I know that I’ve got a mechanism to do it with. So with that I say: Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Tags: Lifestyle Search Engine, Santa Claus Georgia, Santa Claus Indiana.

October 22nd, 2010

This House is Perfect…and so Close to KFC!

By Joe Rugolo, Director of Data Operations

It seems like an eternity ago that I bought my house, but in actuality it was only a few years back. Since that fateful day at my closing I’ve seen siblings, cousins and friends all go through the same process that I did: looking for the area that best fit their needs. For me it was a relatively easy process. Being in close proximity to my family was the most important thing, so that narrowed it down to a handful of areas.

Since my parents still live in the town I grew up in, it was a relatively easy evaluation process because I was very familiar with the surrounding areas. Once I had narrowed down my search, strong schools became next on my list, because I wanted my future kids to be able to attend public school and get a good education. In the end I bought a house right back in the very town I grew up because I knew exactly what I was going to be getting in terms of environment.

Not everybody is a homebody like me though. Some people want to branch out and see what else is out there in the world. I personally don’t envy people that try to do this without help. Buying a home is a HUGE decision, one that shouldn’t be taken lightly. With so much at stake, it seems as though the more information you have at your disposal, the better. The concept of “lifestyle” is bandied about by people in the Real Estate industry without a real clear notion of what it means. Just for kicks I Googled the term “Lifestyle” and one of the first hits came from Wikipedia. Its definition:

In sociology, a lifestyle is the way a person lives.

So let’s go with that as our basic definition. How does a person live? Do they live for their family?  Do they live for entertainment? Do they live for their job? These are all valid questions and definitely things to be taken into consideration when deciding where that next big move is to. Unfortunately, there’s no super computer out there that can scan your brain and tell you exactly where it is you should buy a house. However, we’re making the decision process easier on the consumer by narrowing down the search based on key criteria that they find relevant to how they live their life.

Won't you be my neighbor?

Just think about how much less daunting of a task it is moving far from where you are now if you are armed with a list of areas that fit your life needs as a home buyer as opposed to starting from scratch. I’m talking real life needs too…not just general information about an area. I love Colonel Sanders as much as the next guy, and when I think of the 11 herbs and spices on a KFC drumstick I get a little choked up. However, I’d never buy a house BECAUSE it was located close to a KFC. Eating the Colonel’s chicken isn’t usually a lifestyle choice; it’s an impulse because you’re hungry. I think the same can be said about letting any kind of local establishment drive a purchase decision. Are you going to buy a home because it’s near your bank or are you going to buy a home in an area that’s right for you and just switch banks if need be?

In the end I think it all boils down to priorities. If your priority is to live near a McDonalds, Citibank or Best Buy then we can agree to disagree over what choosing where to live based on lifestyle really means. However if evaluating the quality of what’s there and finding people with shared interests to go along with local amenities in an area ring truer with you, then you’re reading the right blog.

April 29th, 2010

The Rise of Neighborhood Search

By Colleen Staunton, Product Manager

The tagline ‘Real Estate is Local’ is often echoed by those in the Real Estate industry. Consumers are not only buying a house but they are ‘investing’ in the surrounding neighborhood as well. They often look to see if there are others with kids the same age as theirs, what the closest schools are, and where are the places to eat. All of these things are part of a neighborhood’s make-up.

In an article posted by Matt Carter on Inman News, Name your neighborhood: the new wave in real estate search, he discusses the growing importance of neighborhood search. While more and more real estate portals/brokerages are trying to implement this type of search, the concept is far from new. Onboard has for years talked of the need to provide consumers with the right type of information. This includes giving them insight into the local community, or neighborhood. Onboard clients Washington Post and Redfin are a few examples of clients of ours that use neighborhood boundaries on their websites. Others, like Prudential Douglas Elliman and NY Post provide neighborhood profiles using neighborhood level demographics, as opposed to the usual zip code level demographics.

Matt Carter pointed out how not everyone is in agreement on what the actual boundary of a neighborhood might be. Washington Post is a perfect example of this. They prefer to define their own boundaries since they feel they have the local knowledge. Onboard is able to easily geocode their boundaries and provide the matching community information. This site allows the user to research the neighborhoods and see the polygons laid out on a map all together. When searching for houses in a neighborhood on Redfin’s site the user will see the distinct outline of that neighborhood. Their listings are then shown within that neighborhood. Both use boundaries for slightly different reasons but are highly effective.

Washington Post Neighborhood Boundaries

Redfin Neighborhood Boundary - Back Bay, Boston

Another option is to allow users to ‘find’ what neighborhood is best for them. This is especially helpful in bigger cities or when home buyers are moving to new areas. They may know what they want in a neighborhood but may not know where to look. Giving users the option of selecting from a set of lifestyle criteria will result in a much better search experience.

Neighborhood boundaries are really only the tip of the iceberg. Brokerages and real estate websites have many options when they consider their website strategy. Implementing neighborhood boundaries means you must also have the appropriate neighborhood-level demographic, school and market information. Users will want to know how many single-family homes are in the area, what the crime rate may be, which schools are in the immediate area and also what some recent home sales have been. For those that do not want to implement a map search on their site they can easily tag their listings with the neighborhood and link that to the relevant content.

The advantages of allowing users to search by neighborhood are extensive. You can improve your SEO while becoming the neighborhood expert. It’s no longer acceptable to just provide basic census data at the zip level on websites. Realtor.com and Zillow, who both offer their users neighborhood level search, are the top two sites in US internet usage for the Real Estate category, according to a Hitwise February 2010 report. Combined they account for 10% of the market. The Top 20 contains a number of other sites that have one or more neighborhood features on their site, including #3 Yahoo! (profiles), #6 Trulia (Search, boundaries and profiles) and #20 Redfin (search, boundaries and profiles). Consumers are very savvy and will ultimately go elsewhere to find the information they are looking for if your site does not offer it.

Tags: neighborhood boundaries, neighborhood data, real estate mapping, real estate neighborhoods.

March 25th, 2010

Listings Search Engine Pre-Wired for Touchscreen Search

By Scott Petronis, Chief Product Officer

Joel Burslem at 1000watt had a great post yesterday about the potential for application developers in using Apple iPad. Multi-touch technology, as Joel says, will bring back simplicity in search.

Case in point: Yahoo’s new Sketch-a-Search application. A user can draw on the map to “lasso” results and confine their search for places of interest to specific regions.

Finding lunch near our office is now as easy as creating a fingerprint.

The adaptation of touchscreen and multi-touch services for real estate search will depend on the flexibility of the content it is attached to.

It’s worth mentioning that our Listings Search Engine API is equipped with the capabilities to take advantage of rich search experiences quickly.

Onboard’s Listings Web Service API allows you to send in a polygon and retrieve all the listings within that polygon, whether it was drawn in a computer browser or on a touchscreen.

In addition, applications built with widely available services like Yahoo! Sketch-a-Search, Google Maps or Bing Maps can be easily integrated with our web service to deliver a cutting-edge search experience. The developer simply needs to capture the polygon created in that app and send it to our service.

These advances in mapping applications will continue to help reduce development time and effort. Keep in mind, most of these devices also have GPS capabilities so a latitude/longitude point can be quickly determined so the user doesn’t have to input anything. Of course, the Onboard Listings Web Service also accepts a point and radius to conduct a search. For more accurate results, the service also approximates drive times and walk times so people can search for listings within a 20 minute walk from where they’re standing, for example.

Tags: 1000watt, Listings Web Service, mobile, mobile real estate, neighborhood search, search polygons, Yahoo Sketch-a-Search.

February 10th, 2010

Looking Under the Covers at the NYC Market

By Peter Goldey, CKO & CIO

The Inman Connect show in NYC this past January included a panel focused on using data to understand and forecast the NYC housing market. Sitting on the panel were two chief economists, a provider of active listings metrics, and yours truly. The room was packed, and Brian Boreo of 1000Watt Consulting led us through the presentations. We had each been asked to produce a single slide illustrating how our company looks at the marketplace.

The Panelists

Mark Fleming – Chief Economist, First American CoreLogic
Mike Simonson – Founder, Altos Research
Stan Humphries – Chief Economist, Zillow.com
And me – CIO at Onboard, Folklore and Mythology BA and Olympic Curling enthusiast

The Approach

I’m not an economist.

I am a data junkie and trend analysis enthusiast.

Stepping back, I took a moment and considered what content the other panelists were likely to focus on. All of us have access to essentially the same types of content including:

· Public records
· Listings records
· Search metrics

I surmised that Mark and Stan would likely focus on what I consider “near past actuals” by looking at sold data tends (volume, price) and perhaps listing volumes and days on market information, either as a snapshot or trended over time. This type of content paints an accurate picture of what has just happened in the marketplace, generally reflecting buyer activity on market prices sixty to ninety days aged (the typical time between agreeing on price and the transfer and recording of the transaction). The trend lines created are typically projected into the future as a predictive tool. I also figured Mike would look at listing activity metrics trends such as list price trends, price reduction activity, days on market and volumes. This listing activity content is more of a forward looking indicator as it provides information about properties that are likely to transfer in the next sixty to ninety days but relies significantly on pricing data which actually indicates what the seller thinks – or perhaps would like – their property to sell for. We’ve seen periods where list and sale price vary hugely and other times where they are close in proximity.

The analysis the panelists provide on top of this data was informative, timely and well understood by those familiar with typical housing statistics.

But I felt there were other ways to look at this…

Look at underlying factors, not end point results

At Onboard, we also look at all the numbers, statistics and trends we can in sold data, tax basis, distressed property volumes, pricing trends, listing activity and construction data. The issue with looking at these as predictors of the marketplace is that these data points all represent past activity and are, in turn, the result of buyer/seller decisions, the availability of money and other underlying factors. The key to predicting the market is in accessing the drivers that impact what a buyer/seller will do rather than looking only at what they already did.

We believe that understanding the underlying factors and then applying local market knowledge is a different and meaningful perspective that can, when combined with a hyperlocal analysis model, provide startling insight into why the market is behaving as it is and how it is likely to behave in the future. This insight must be reflected against the actual local market activity (once it occurs) on a continuous basis.

During the initial financial turmoil two years ago, we were approached by a number of private and government concerns regarding how one can identify housing risk as a local level. With Onboard’s hyperlocal modeling expertise and access to data, we were able to approach the problem from a number of directions.

Ultimately, we created a forward looking housing distress index which provides comparative information between local markets. This allowed us to look at the health or deterioration of underlying housing distress factors of any city, county or neighborhood and identify – relative to other parts of the country – how the area is likely to perform. This was a critical concern for anyone analyzing a portfolio of properties for either investment opportunity or relief direction as it provides a basis for comparing area risk. Typically this local area risk is then considered against specific property risks (mortgage details, resident credit, etc.). We looked at a large number of data points over time and found that the following – in combination – provided a locally reliable evaluation method:

· Vacancy and occupancy data
· Employment statistics
· Household income
· Change in HPI (home price index) from highest value
· At risk mortgage origination volumes

In each case, we considered the change in these values over time and the velocity of that change relative to the larger marketplace. The results were normalized to a 1 – 10 index with low values signifying indicators of continuing distress and high values indicating little or no such indicators when compared to the national landscape. We found – within reason – that these values forecasted activity in the marketplace so long as both global market factors and local knowledge was applied on top of this analysis. Global factors might currently include the federal home buying incentive and low interest rates. Local factors might include knowledge of new construction units soon to hit the market or a large factory closing.

Over the past two years we’ve compared the results of this model statistically to three, six and nine month trailing indicators (sales volume and pricing, days on market, foreclosure volumes) and found a surprisingly tight correlation.

Visualization

If that explanation left you cross-eyed, take a look at the map image below. It represents the underlying Q2 and Q3 2009 factors and we believe predict conditions for the current and near term market in NYC. When compared to the previous forecast, the model predicted the uptick in sales and the reduction in gap between list price and sale price experienced in much of the market during the recent 4th quarter.

To analyze this map, the dark areas indicate a stronger market where houses are likely to hold their value through the sales cycle, inventory is not flooded, and the number of properties in distress relative to overall inventory is likely to remain low. Lighter areas show significant downward pressures on the market. Depending on where in the market correction cycle the local market is, this could mean significant foreclosure activity will continue or simply that properties will be slow to move without some discount. It is at this point that local knowledge must be applied – something that Onboard believes the local broker and Realtor are uniquely positioned to do.

The level of detail here is to the neighborhood and block group level – a very fine level of analysis made possible by the application of Onboard’s geography model to all the underlying data points supported by specific spatial analysis techniques. The result is that one can see the market differences between Jamaica, Queens and the neighborhoods that border it.

What we don’t know

This model appears to work well now and for this type of volatile marketplace. This same volatility makes some traditional analysis methods (Case-Schiller, etc.) less reliable in our opinion. When the market stabilizes or during a period of rapid price increases, it is unclear whether this model will continue to offer value as a predictive tool. It is likely that we will find additional underlying factors that need to be considered during an up market.

In the meantime, it’s fun to look at….

Tags: distressed properties, foreclosures, Inman Connect, Inman NY, NYC foreclosure activity, NYC housing market.

February 8th, 2010

What is an API?

By James Wilson, VP of Development

First… it is an acronym

API is an acronym which means Application Programming Interface.

What is it?

It is a contract that allows computers to talk to each other. Another name used widely is a protocol which is a set of rules that must be followed to exchange information. By “talk”, I mean the ability to ask a question and get a valuable answer back.

How does it work?

A really smart computer person (a developer) defines and builds a system that accepts questions (request for information). Next, that same developer writes instructions (the contract or protocol) that must be followed in order to properly accept questions so that the valuable answers can be computed and returned. Another developer, somewhere else in the world, reads the fascinating and tantalizing contract documentation. She then sets out to build a unit within her own system to ask questions at the proper time. Her system then uses the subsequent answers to deliver great value to that system’s end users.

What should be in an API’s contract?

1) Location, Name and Protocol

• Mechanism or protocols to be used to establish a connection. These are typically another lower level type of API or contract.
• The address or location of the system that can answer the questions.
• Name of the service.

Let’s give an example of a typical business to business (B2B) scenario. Just below is a URL or web address used to locate a service which finds nearby pizza delivery services.

http://www.pizza-store-locator.com/service/find-the-closest-pizza-delivery

The protocol used is established with the text: “HTTP”. HTTP is another acronym which stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. This is another contract which specifically defines how a web browser, like FireFox or IE, can communicate with a web server. Many higher level business services are built on top of this lower level API.

The location of this API is defined as “www.pizza-store-locator.com“. This type of string is typically called a domain in web parlance.  A domain is always associated with an IP address. This is a unique identifier and allows request to be reliably routed to the appropriate web server. An IP address is an acronym meaning “Internet Protocol” address. There is that word, “protocol”, again. The whole WWW, World Wide Web, is just a series of layered protocols that allow everyone to talk to everyone else.

The name of the  service is “service/find-the-closest-pizza-delivery”. This name is mapped to business logic, or a program, on the web server in this case that is responsible for formulating an answer. Just guessing, but this service probably helps find pizza delivery services. It is nice when the name of a service is self describing!! That is the sign of a good API.

2) Input Definition

• What questions can be asked?
  • Is there only one questions or different types of questions?
• What are all the pieces of information that must be included in the question so I can answer it?
  • In the example above, for the pizza delivery service, what information is required to find the closest pizza delivery shop? The contract could specify an address is required like 90 Broad Street, Suite 2002, New York, NY.  But it could also just be a latitude and longitude.
  • Lets keep going… how far away are you interested in searching? 5 Miles, 10 Miles or do you care? No, you don’t because it is not you that must do the driving to the pizza shop so… perhaps you only want a certain number of shop results back like 20 or 5? Perhaps you do need 20 but want to have at least 5 different pizza shop options returned so you can get a good selection.
  • All this stuff needs to be defined by the service creator based upon research by a product manager into how people actually think and what they want.
• How should all of those pieces of information be structured?
  • There are many ways to send information to the service.
    • We can send it as query string parameters.  For example..
      • http://www.pizza-store-locator.com/service/find-the-closest-pizza-delivery?LATITUDE=108&LONGITUDE=-47&number-of-different-types-of-shops=10.
    • We can send it as XML
      • <latitude>108</latitude><longitude>-47</longitude><number-of-different-types-of-shops>10</number-of-different-types-of-shops>

3) Outputs

• A description of the answers that can be returned
• Format of the answers
• Exceptions or errors that can be expected
  • A good API will defined all of the possible bad scenarios that can occur and how it will notify the calling program. This allows the calling program to respond gracefully.
  • Here are some examples to possible bad return results:
    • Not enough information was submitted, and here is specifically what was missing: the latitude.
    • The service is temporarily down.
    • The service is too busy, please try again later.
    • No results were found.
    • Results were found but not as many as you asked for because we only search within a maximum distance of 10 miles
    • This service has moved to a new address…
    • …and so on…
  • Typically each of the possible errant answer is give a unique identifier or code which allow computers to respond easily.

An “out of this world” example…

Do you remember “Close Encounters of a Third Kind” when the scientists first started communicating with the huge alien ship that came over the mountain? Sure you do… who can forget this brilliant movie that is now such a fundamental part of the fabric of our existence. Well… in this movie, the scientist use mathematics manifest through sound and lights to try to establish basic communication with the aliens. Once the alien understood, they repeated back the message to say to the scientists, quite loudly, “Yes, we heard you!” An interface was established, an agreement that if you flash your lights and send over sound waves, we will capture that information, process it, and send you back beeps and blips along with flashing light signals too (and the result of this will be that we land our ship and change the very nature of your lives!).

References

I have listed some common websites to give other definitions of an API; however, they commit some of the cardinal sins when defining a entity.

1.     Wikipedia

1. Sin! – They use the object in the definition itself.

2.     How Stuff Works

1. Sin! – They use the noun in the definition itself.
2. And worse still they limit the definition of API’s to web technologies.  It is important to understand that API’s are EVERYWHERE… for example… inside a computer, API’s are established to allow software to run  successfully on a computer’s hardware which has nothing to do with the web.

Tags: API, Application Programming Interface, James John Wilson, James Wilson PMP, Onboard Informatics, What is?.

January 7th, 2010

Census MMX: This Time It’s Personal

By Joe Rugolo, Director of Data Operations

The dawn of a new decade is upon us. Wow…seems like just yesterday I was getting ready for the non-event that was Y2K and now 2010 is here. For those of you keeping track at home, this also means that it’s time for good ol’ Uncle Sam to send around those two pound envelopes containing your U.S. Census form. As if being constitutionally obligated to fill out and return this wasn’t incentive enough, the Census Bureau is kicking off its “2010 Portrait of America Road Tour”, a $340 million publicity blitz that they are hoping will increase awareness and calm fears as to what the census population count really means. They are even planning on airing two commercials during the Super Bowl pregame show. My fingers are crossed that these ads have either Peyton Manning or monkeys in them. Everyone knows that either of these are comic gold when it comes to TV advertisements.

The Census Bureau is putting up $340M to show they've come a long way from here.

I, for one, think that this is a great idea (the Road Tour, not my commercial proposal).  Taxpayer money has been tossed around carelessly for years; everything from the recent bank bailout to the continuous funding of space exploration. Yeah, we get it…the sun, the moon, the stars. All very nice. Show me video of a real live Ewok and I’ll be impressed. But I digress. My point is that there are several reasons why this type of initiative could payoff for data geeks like me in addition to resulting in better appropriation of government funds (I’ll be focusing more on the former).

Refresh of Stale Data
Think back to the year 2000 and then think about how much has changed since then. Tiger Woods had a squeaky clean image, an iPod sounded like something an alien would pop out of, and when you thought of the term “hybrid” the image of a centaur or dog-faced boy would pop into your head before that of a car. So how can we rely on data that is 10 years old to provide us with accurate info for making decisions or performing statistical analysis and projections? How many housing developments have you seen spring up in your neighborhood and the surrounding area, especially during the real estate boom? Look back on some of the awful events of the last decade that have pushed people from their homes. All of these events need to be accounted for, and the more precise the reporting, the more useful the data. The fact that the census only happens once a decade makes this even more important. There isn’t a lot of room for error here because there won’t be another opportunity for quite some time (10 years to be exact).

Improved Sample Size
There’s an old adage that says that one out of every 10 people is nuts. So think of nine people that you know and if none of them are crazy then you must be the one. But expand that to think of 11 people and maybe there’s a slight chance that you aren’t the one. Move on to 20 or 30 and all of the sudden you can justify your sanity a little bit easier. The same can be said with increasing the sample size of the census (ok, so my example was a bit of a reach).  In a perfect world, 100% of the country would be represented by census data and we’d have an exact picture of the U.S. population, if only for a moment. That is completely unrealistic. More realistic would be an improvement over the mail return rate of 67% from 2000. As long as any gains shown represent a somewhat even distribution across the country then this would be seen as a positive. The closer this percentage gets to 100, the more confident a user can be in the data that they are consuming. I imagine that one concern would be that any gains in the response rate would come from specific pockets of the country where extra attention was paid, which could skew the overall results.  However there are people way smarter than I am analyzing these types of things, so I don’t think there’s reason to panic.

New Data Available
As an avid “Seinfeld” fan, I’ve seen pretty much every episode about a hundred times. In one episode in particular, George buys a sweater for Elaine that he knows has a spot on it because he can get it at a discount. This becomes a running gag throughout the show and hilarity ensues. If you think of the 2000 census as the sweater, then the 2010 census is taking several measures (or at least there are measures proposed) that would remove this spot. Things like tallying results from married same-sex couples, counting prisoners in their communities as opposed to where they are incarcerated (proposed), or increasing the representation of the Latino community would all go a long way towards painting a better picture of what is going on out there. A change in methodology would make trending a little bit more difficult but it would be laying the foundation for more accurate reporting in future censuses.  Tradition isn’t an excuse for not making change, especially at the expense of accuracy. If the country’s current landscape warrants a change to the data that needs to be captured, then so be it.

I know the census isn’t a perfect system but at least efforts are being taken to bring about some positive changes. You can do your part by fulfilling your civic duty and sending in your forms after you receive them. It’ll be 10 years before you have to do it again and if movies about the future have taught me anything, it is that in 2020 everyone will have robot servants to fill out these forms for them. That and hover-cars.

Tags: 2010 Census, census data, population counts, population data, U.S. Census.

November 16th, 2009

Onboard Powers Real Estate Mobile Apps

By Colleen Staunton, Product Manager

We are excited to release, Onboard Mobile, our newest product platform providing real estate companies with access to property listings and community data, enabling their development team to create custom mobile sites and applications.

With more and more real estate companies getting into the mobile app space and having been in the business of providing real estate data for almost a decade, it only made sense for us to put a mobile platform together.

Key features include property listings, real-time photo web service, community demographics, school information, home values, home sales trending, home sales transactions and local establishments. The platform is compliant with the most innovative GPS capabilities, such as the ability to show users the proximity to schools and nearby businesses while they are out touring homes.

Benefits of Onboard Mobile

Tags: applications, iPhone apps, Mobile, mobile sites, real estate and mobile, real estate mobile apps, smartphones.