Tag Archives: standard

Tictail API launch focuses on UX

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Tictail, a Swedish e-commerce platform that manages over 24,000 stores spread across 110 different countries, launched their API on September 16, 2013. Because Tictail’s main focus is simplicity of use, they decided to offer developers the same tools they use internally to build this new platform. According to Carl Waldekranz, Tictail CEO, they “want developers to have that same opportunity as [the company] continues to grow internationally.”

TictailDeveloperPortal

Their developer platform includes the API but also their open application store, which is where all the action is for companies that want to make money selling apps. The whole project took them 3 months to carry out and everything is being managed without any external tools. Continue reading “Tictail API launch focuses on UX” »

Webhooks, REST and the Open Web

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Back in 2006, Jeff Lindsay proposed a different way of consuming Web resources that would eliminate the need for constantly polling APIs for changes. This new pattern was called webhooks and has since been adopted by companies such as GitHub and Google.

REST and webhooks are two sides of the same coin. In “Web Hooks and the Programmable World of Tomorrow“, Jeff Lindsay, October 2008

The main advantage of the webhooks pattern is that your application doesn’t have to make periodic calls to APIs while it’s waiting for changes. Instead, APIs will call your application on a specific endpoint informing that something interesting has happened. What’s missing is a way to programmatically tell APIs that you’re interested in receiving calls and registering endpoints.

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How to localize your API

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Full disclosure: I was born and live in the USA, American English is my native language, and I spend USD every day. However, I work with customers in 18 countries and regions on five continents, and the list is getting bigger all the time.Internationalization localization and currency

Operating a business in the global market is not as trivial as it might seem, if you’ve never seen it through. Everyone not only speaks different languages and has different currencies (not to mention driving on the different sides of the road), but they also have different cultural norms. In many situations, we can merely provide raw values for dates and currency and avoid formatting. However, when content includes localizable information, especially dates and currencies, display formatting needs to be sensitive to the localized culture.

If you’re considering making the jump off of your own soil to the rest of the globe, hopefully this will give you some insights.

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