API Decisions : Introduction

Over the coming weeks, my colleagues and I will blog about the various decisions that we made while developing the API. The posts will discuss the following topics:

* Output formats
* OpenID
* Query generator
* Caching layer and performance
* Number of requests per user per day
* Audio stream vs. Download
* Amount and type of content offered
* Terms of use
* Rights
* Metrics
* Station content
* The archive and the deep NPR archive

I am sure that during the course of this series other topics will be added, but these capture some of the more prominent issues that were discussed. As you can see, these topics involve technical issues as well as legal and business ones.

Before we can get to any of the above topics, though, we have to address the single most important decision that we made: Should we open up the API?. That will be the first post in this series.

The purpose of this series is to continue to be as transparent as we can be and to be an active, engaging part of the technical community. We hope that some of these decisions that we dealt with will help others successfully pursue creating APIs as well. We also hope that this blog will act as a forum to continue the discussion and will help us continue to better deliver useful tools and services.

I am looking forward to the discussion!
--Daniel Jacobson

Tags: API | Atom | JSON | NPRML | RSS | XML | decisions | rights | technology

3:36 PM ET | 09-12-2008 | permalink

comments | | e-mail