Bruno Pedro
Posts
2023 (5)
Aug 1
Translating user benefits into API capabilities
This post was originally published on the Postman blog as “Translating user benefits into API capabilities”. The original content was …
Jun 29
How to choose between REST vs. GraphQL vs. gRPC vs. SOAP
This post was originally published on the Postman blog as “How to choose between REST vs. GraphQL vs. gRPC vs. SOAP”. The original content …
May 31
What I learned from interviewing potential users before designing an API
This post was originally published on the Postman blog as “What I learned from interviewing potential users before designing an API”. The …
May 16
Build a successful API by understanding user personas
This post was originally published on the Postman blog as “Build a successful API by understanding user personas”. The original content was …
Mar 24
How to build an API-centric AI platform
OpenAI’s approach with their plugins strategy is a lesson to every founder trying to build a platform. OpenAI announced their ChatGPT …
2022 (2)
Dec 1
Calendar-Based API Versioning
Tim Rogers, a Product Manager at GitHub, recently announced that they are moving from incremental API versioning to something they’re …
Oct 19
Event-driven Feature Development
Sharing information between different features can be done in a synchronous or asynchronous fashion. Following an asynchronous communication …
2020 (4)
Nov 22
API User Experience
API User Experience or, in short, APIUX is the experience that any user interacting with your API will feel. It includes not only the …
Oct 5
The illusion of immediacy
Immediacy is a concept that is often not easy to grasp. Most people think of immediacy as something related to what is happening around them …
Jun 16
A world of messages
The world is full of messages, but we don’t realize that until we stop long enough to pay attention. How so? Look at how people …
Feb 26
Platforms are communities
The platform economy is growing more robust than ever. According to McKinsey, in 2025, digital platforms will be accountable for over 30% of …
2019 (3)
Dec 16
Enabling a two-sided market
If you’re building or growing a platform business, you will face the challenge of understanding how you can enable a two-sided market. …
Sep 5
Happiness at work
What makes you really happy about your work? I ask this question during most of my interviews. Candidates feel surprised with the question …
Aug 27
Non-technical API Design
Yesterday I published a tweet asking people that consider themselves API Designers what their job consists of. It’s interesting to see …
2017 (5)
Nov 8
What are Web APIs
This post was originally published on Hacker Noon as “What are Web APIs”. In this article, I will introduce you broadly to the topic of Web …
Oct 19
5 steps to API frustration
This article is a satire that describes what often happens to developers that are looking for an API and want to integrate with it. I’m …
Oct 18
API Friction
The concept of friction in products and applications is not something new and can be experienced by almost everyone. Product friction is …
Oct 17
Growing your business with an API
This article summarizes a talk I recently gave at the Nordic APIs Platform Summit in Stockholm, Sweden. The full title of the presentation …
Jan 4
Interfaces
What is an interface? Is it something that a user sees on a screen? Is it the border between different elements? Is it a way to get to some …
2016 (5)
Nov 3
GraphQL: 3 reasons not to use it
This post was originally published on the Hitch blog as “GraphQL: 3 reasons not to use it”. GraphQL is a query language created by Facebook …
Apr 13
Machine-readable API Discovery
API Discovery is the process of finding the right API that meets your needs. What is the best way to automate it? Machine-readable …
Mar 2
Complexity in Microservices
As you add microservices to your stack, the number of connections follows Metcalfe’s law. In the simplest case, there’s just a single …
Feb 25
API Testing Complexity
You can think of API testing as a mix of different strategies, each having its own purpose. Unit testing is all about making sure that your …
Feb 24
Latency in Microservices
Generally speaking, you can define latency as the time delay between the cause and the effect of some change in the system being observed. …
2015 (5)
Apr 17
API Lifecycle Operations Stage
This post was originally published on the Nordic APIs blog as “API Lifecycle Operations Stage: Marketing Your API”. By reading this article …
Apr 10
API Lifecycle Development Stage
This post was originally published on the Nordic APIs blog as “API Lifecycle Development Stage: Deploying Your API”. During the course of …
Mar 2
Common Cases When Using SOAP Makes Sense
This post was originally published on the Nordic APIs blog as “Common Cases When Using SOAP Makes Sense”. These days when discussing web …
Feb 19
Using Templates for Documentation Driven API Design
This post was originally published on the Nordic APIs blog as “Using Templates for Documentation Driven API Design”. As an API provider …
Jan 30
Is REST better than SOAP? Yes, in Some Use Cases
This post was originally published on the Nordic APIs blog as “Is REST better than SOAP? Yes, in Some Use Cases”. What is REST? What about …
2014 (12)
Nov 27
Designing APIs for Machines
This post was originally published on the Nordic APIs blog as “Designing APIs for Machines”. The number of Internet-connected devices is …
Nov 17
Designing APIs for Humans
This post was originally published on the Nordic APIs blog as “Designing APIs for Humans”. One of the most discussed topics at this year’s …
Nov 5
How to stay ahead of third-party API changes
This post was originally published on the ZDNet Service Oriented blog as “How to stay ahead of third-party API changes”. While most …
Nov 4
How to Spark API Adoption With Good Documentation Practices
This post was originally published on the Nordic APIs blog as “How to Spark API Adoption With Good Documentation Practices”. While almost …
Oct 31
How to Release a Free API and Get Paid Indirectly
This post was originally published on the Nordic APIs blog as “How to Release a Free API and Get Paid Indirectly”. API-related business …
Oct 21
How to Achieve Accelerated Growth with APIs
This post was originally published on the Nordic APIs blog as “How to Achieve Accelerated Growth with APIs”. Growth is a word on every …
Oct 16
API Design & Testing State of the Art
This post was originally published on the Nordic APIs blog as “API Design & Testing State of the Art”. Ensuring proper APIs …
Oct 3
5 Reasons Why Developers are not Using your API
This post was originally published on the Nordic APIs blog as “5 Reasons Why Developers are not Using your API”. Have you launched your API …
Oct 1
Should you Control How your Public API is Used?
This post was originally published on the Nordic APIs blog as “Should you Control How your Public API is Used?”. The more open your public …
Sep 1
How to Monetize Your API
This post was originally published on the Nordic APIs blog as “How to Monetize Your API”. You’ve spent countless hours working on your new …
Aug 27
5 Ways APIs will Increase your Revenue
This post was originally published on the Nordic APIs blog as “5 Ways APIs will Increase your Revenue”. What is the most important thing …
Jul 17
Product Hunt, The Popular Tech Product Discovery Site, Is In Current Y Combinator Batch
Is Product Hunt the next big thing?
2013 (15)
Sep 25
My first job
An old friend just sent me a scan of the business card of my first job.
Thanks!
Aug 22
Melon Bruño
Jun 3
Bridging the Gap Between APIs and Customers
I recently gave a talk at the APIdays Mediterranea in Madrid where I started with a question: “Who are your customers?”.
The …
Apr 20
Sun
Apr 18
Still using HTTP Basic Auth?
Great article by Steve Graham about why you should stop using HTTP Basic Auth immediately!
As well as being tremendously simple, HTTP Basic …
Mar 11
Who’s using your API?
“Who’s using your API” was the title of my presentation at the API Strategy & Practice Conference that happened on …
Mar 2
Montserrat
Feb 17
American boy
Interesting art by Eulalia, at the MACBA museum in Barcelona.
Feb 11
What is an empty XML element?
Following a very enthusiastic discussion today at work, here’s the proper definition of an empty XML element, according to the W3C …
Feb 10
Kung Hei Fat Choi
Happy Chinese New Year!
<figure > <label for="marginfig-1" class="margin-toggle …
Jan 22
Speaking at the first BarcelonaJS meetup
I’ll be speaking at the first BarcelonaJS meetup on January 30th in MOB, …
Jan 20
NoSQL Distilled
The term “NoSQL” is very ill-defined. It’s generally applied to a number of recent nonrelational databases such as …
Jan 18
Home made mussels
Delicious steamed mussels paired with a chilled Albariño.
Jan 3
Do small experiments, often
A long time ago, I realized that every successful business was a continuous process of small experiments that operated in the context of a …
Jan 1
Deliver on your promises
So if I can give entrepreneurs a single piece of advice for 2013 it would be to deliver on your promises. Not just to your investors but …
2012 (40)
Dec 24
Lager Hell
Dec 23
Raclette
Dec 19
Fantastico
Dec 18
Why refactoring?
Interesting thoughts about refactoring, starting with a comprehensive post by Jim Bird, stating what is not refactoring:
Fixing any bugs …
Dec 17
It’s all about retention
The most important metric today is retention. It tells you how often a customer comes back and uses your product again. – in Bullshit …
Dec 1
Red AGBAR tower
Nov 27
Writing great documentation
Writing great documentation
This advice will mostly be targeted towards those documenting libraries or frameworks intended for use by other …
Nov 21
Dinner in Granada
Nov 16
Dirty Duck
Nov 10
RethinkDB looks promising
RethinkDB is out – an open-source distributed database
RethinkDB is built to store JSON documents, and scale to multiple machines with very …
Nov 9
Is the World socialist?
Revisiting an old story by Dave Winer: Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. Rand is best …
Nov 6
Without dissent there is no creativity
![Sticker advocating dissent: “dissent …
Nov 6
Pizza
Oct 8
A crise da crise
O verdadeiro problema de Portugal não é a crise em si. É a crise da crise.
Passo a explicar: a palavra crise tem vários significados, entre …
Sep 23
Tapas and beer
Tapas and beer
Sep 17
Use computers to do things
Use computers to do things
As you grow, your team’s development environment becomes really important. How long does it take to clone, …
Sep 15
4 Time-Saving Tumblr Tips
There are also plenty of third-party apps that can perform multiple tasks in one place. Tarpipe will automate your publishing on up to 22 …
Sep 12
AsciiDoc
AsciiDoc is a text document format for writing notes, documentation, articles, books, ebooks, slideshows, web pages, man pages and blogs. …
Sep 11
Advertising’s bumpy transition
Advertising’s bumpy transition
Until advertisers start to value the focused, memorable, impactful opportunity they have in buying the …
Sep 11
Black Swan Farming
Black Swan Farming
The total value of the companies we’ve funded is around 10 billion, give or take a few. But just two companies, …
Sep 6
Use sprints to maximize productivity
Use sprints to maximize productivity
The powerful thing about Sprinting is that it helps you break projects down into actionable steps. …
Sep 4
Agile development & WMSS
Agile development & WMSS
I think what I called We Make Shitty Software is in other words the same thing as the agile process. Whatever …
Aug 27
A Hardware Renaissance in Silicon Valley
A Hardware Renaissance in Silicon Valley
Today some of the most successful hardware start-ups in Silicon Valley have been formed from the …
Aug 23
Water LED Art
Water LED Art
When art and electronics meet some very beautiful things can be born. Here Antonin Fourneau made this wonderful piece, …
Aug 23
Tent: Open Social Networking protocol
Tent: Open Social Networking protocol
Tent is a protocol for open, decentralized social networking. Tent users share content with apps and …
Aug 22
Ghosts in the ROM
Ghosts in the ROM
(…) we noticed that there was a large amount of non-code, non-audio data. Adam Mayer tested different stride widths …
Aug 21
Amazon Glacier
Amazon Glacier
Amazon Glacier is an extremely low-cost storage service that provides secure and durable storage for data archiving and …
Aug 18
Harvard cracks DNA storage
Harvard cracks DNA storage
A bioengineer and geneticist at Harvard’s Wyss Institute have successfully stored 5.5 petabits of data …
Aug 16
A Casa Portuguesa
Aug 14
Falta de mão-de-obra qualificada
De acordo com alguns autores estamos a caminhar para uma falta generalizada de mão-de-obra qualificada. Este cenário começará por afectar o …
Aug 14
What is branch.com?
What is branch.com?
A mix between Convore, Google+ circles and some of FriendFeed… Their killer feature is called branching and it …
Aug 13
Greece
Will Greece leave the eurozone?
Aug 13
Portugal as a source of cheap talent
Portugal as a source of cheap talent
Western technology companies have traditionally looked to developing economies as a place to find …
Aug 10
Beer
Aug 9
Apple store Barcelona
Aug 9
pandoc
http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/index.html
If you need to convert files from one markup format into another, pandoc is your swiss-army …
Aug 9
If Xerox PARC Invented the PC, Google Invented the Internet
Google did a great job of slurping up some of the most talented researchers in the world at a time when places like Bell Labs and Xerox …
Aug 8
My stuff stretches the boundaries
my stuff stretches the boundaries of what’s possible, which makes it a mystery for many of the people I would like to have use it. …
Aug 7
Coffee
Aug 6
Force of Nature
I just found out about this great work by Robert Buelteman.
2011 (9)
Sep 26
MapReduce related patterns
Here’s a list of possible MapReduce related patterns I’ve been thinking about:
map-update: update each mapped document and emit …
Apr 14
node-fs npm package
node-fs is now available as an npm package. Just run npm install node-fs, require(’node-fs’) and have fun.
Apr 13
Blog posts firehoses
Three more firehoses to get all blog posts from the following platforms:
blogger posts, through their changes.xml; tumblr posts, through …
Apr 12
Drinking from the firehose
Some firehoses to drink read from, other than twitter’s:
Google Buzz, through their activity firehose API methods; FriendFeed, using …
Apr 11
Are we inside a bubble?
Very interesting post by Brad Feld about technology cycles.
If you recognize that we are in a strong, positive, upward segment of the …
Apr 8
FPC: a floating-point compressor
FPC is a very fast lossless compressor with better results than most traditional algorithms:
FPC compresses linear sequences of IEEE 754 …
Apr 8
Three things to remember
Three simple things that can make all the difference.
talk about things you’ve done, not about things that you wish you did; measure …
Jan 5
node-fs
Following my previous post about recursive directory creation with nodejs, I created the node-fs repository on github. node-fs is a way to …
Jan 5
Is OAuth Really Secure?
“Is OAuth Really Secure?” is the title of a talk I gave at the IBWAS'10 conference, last December.
Is the OAuth protocol really …
2010 (12)
Dec 22
MapReduce literature
Just a quick note to point to two valuable MapReduce related resources:
“MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on Large …
Dec 21
JavaScript filesystem database
I couldn’t resist and, after many conversations with Mário Valente, I challenged myself to build a complete JavaScript filesystem …
Dec 15
Recursive directory creation with nodejs
I’m doing some code in nodejs and I found the need to create directories recursively. Basically I need to have the same functionality …
Dec 1
Developing a Sales Model
Very interesting thoughts about developing a repeatable sales model:
Start with one or two salespeople and restrict them to a local …
Nov 27
It’s demo time
I’m doing a demo of the new tarpipe WordPress plugin on the WP Portugal meeting.
Nov 26
Testing a new tarpipe plugin
This is just a test of a new tarpipe WordPress plugin that I’ve just created.
Sep 15
Your Google Alerts can be deleted by anyone
I found out the hard way that my Google Alerts can be deleted by anyone, if they have access to the “Remove” URL.
Here’s …
May 13
Where is the Web going?
I need to share a great video documentary by Kate Ray called Web 3.0. Here’s a transcribed quote:
If I was gonna start a news business …
May 10
Re: Afternoon sellout notes
Dave Winer praises Dropbox technology and goes further by suggesting that everyone should be able to run their own private servers: …
Mar 8
DecentralizedAddresses Chrome extension
After much discussion around the @replies subject I started thinking about a system that could automatically resolve social network …
Feb 16
More on the @replies subject
I just stumbled on a Buzz by DeWitt Clinton about a possible solution to the use of decentralized @replies. From the Buzz:
I want to throw …
Feb 15
On the use of the @ syntax by Google Buzz
Just a quick note to archive the way Google Buzz is using the @ syntax. From “Google Buzz Tips”:
If you’d like to send a …
2009 (23)
Dec 28
For free? Why?
Great post by Pedro Pinheiro about making a business around art. I particularly like this excerpt:
For free? Why?
Because the money to be …
Dec 15
Re: Twitter URLs: Are Microformats The Answer To A Real Problem?
Stowe Boyd writes about a possible approach to address different user profiles on different clients. After exposing a possible microformats …
Dec 2
Cliqset FeedProxy and the ActivityStreams format
Great news:
the Cliqset FeedProxy tool will normalize feeds from more than 70 other services into new feeds in the ActivityStreams format. …
Nov 23
Re: Bing Tries To Buy The News on TechCrunch
In order to actually make a dent in Google’s market share, Bing would have to pay such exorbitant sums to so many different news …
Nov 22
foursquare is finally available in Lisbon
That was about time! They added Lisbon and a bunch of other cities around the world. I’m finally using the Android application and, so …
Nov 21
Re: More On Cross-Platform Tumbling: Following Is Mostly RSS on /Message
You say:
My sense is that cross-platform following can mostly be achieved by RSS subscription, although following does include a …
Nov 21
Re: Where is RSS? on Scripting News
This is a post to test a communication flow using a feed reader and a blog post as a “distributed twitter”.
Read the original …
Nov 21
A possible future for Chrome OS
I’m writing this after building Chrome OS from scratch and running it from a USB drive. In fact, what I built and ran wasn’t …
Sep 12
Small experiment
This is a very short experimental post.
Published via tarpipe.
Sep 8
Mirror Worlds
A comment to my recent post “Streamnets” caught my attention to dig further because it mentioned the concept of Mirror Worlds, a …
Sep 7
RSSCloud, a PubSubHubbub alternative?
Great news for all RSS advocates: Dave Winer somehow convinced Matt Mullenweg to automatically support RSSCloud on all WordPress.com blogs. …
Sep 6
Streamnets
IDEA
The Internet is the infrastructure needed to interconnect machines to one another and guarantee that they’re online most of the …
Jul 20
To REST or not to REST
Yesterday @esjewett pointed out that tarpipe’s API 2.0 might not be considered RESTful. Quoting the previously written article …
Jul 17
Performance oriented FFT
Worth checking out. Quoting the FFTW Home Page:
FFTW is a C subroutine library for computing the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) in one or …
Jul 17
Pie charts are overrated
Quoting Seth’s Blog: How to make graphs that work:
Pie charts are spectacularly overrated. If you want to show me that four out of …
Jul 16
What is a CouchApp
Quoting the CouchApp wiki:
[CouchApps are]
utilities to make standalone CouchDB application development simple.
Some interesting links: …
Jul 15
Focus on your active users
Quoting The Difference Between Total Users and Active Users:
It is not a problem for a service to have a large group of non-active users if …
Jul 14
Vimeo will delete originals after one week
Quoting New source file policy on Vimeo Staff Blog:
Starting August 1st, basic accounts’ original source files will be stored for one …
Apr 21
Should twitter have its own data storage?
Now that twitter OAuth feature is in public beta, some people argue that twitter should also provide a data storage facility through their …
Apr 21
Do you agree with twitter following limits?
Quoting the twitter status blog post “Twitter Status – A note about per day following limits.”:
While there are technical …
Apr 21
Testing the tarpipe WordPress plugin
Testing
Apr 9
The real time Web?
Much has been said about friendfeed‘s latest UI redesign and how it enables a real time view of content from across the Web. Is it really …
Jan 3
How to share a secret
“How to Share a Secret” is the title of paper written in 1979 by Adi Shamir (best known for his work on the RSA algorithm). The …
2008 (3)
Jul 30
Cloud Balancer
The latest Amazon S3 blackout made me think what could be done to try to solve this problem, when your application depends on S3 or any …
Mar 22
Lifestreaming aggregators
Lifestreaming aggregators became popular as the number of different applications where you could participate – either by updating your …
Jan 29
Sending errors to your ticketing system
I’ve been thinking about developing a PHP Logger that will talk to your favorite ticketing system. The idea is to capture code and …
2007 (12)
Oct 31
O paradoxo de Abilene
O paradoxo de Abilene define uma situação em que um grupo de pessoas se vê forçado a agir de uma forma oposta às suas preferências. No …
Oct 16
Collaborative filtering
Are you tired of your feed reader? Do you wish you could find more interesting posts, or perhaps new blogs related to your current tastes …
Oct 14
Adegga and AVIN
Do you enjoy wine? You’re gonna love Adegga, the place where you can discover new wines by looking at other people’s tastings …
Aug 12
What have you been doing all these years?
Do you know Netvibes? What about Eskobo, Pageflakes, Protopage, Schmedley and Webwag, to name just a few?
Netvibes calls itself the pioneer …
Jul 17
Placestreaming
The guys at Brightkite came up with the idea of capturing user-generated content and associating it to a particular place where the user is …
Jun 26
PHP and Smarty on Large-Scale Web Development
Do you have to deal with large projects on a daily basis and feel that you’re always behind schedule? Have you tried all the available …
Jun 8
Hackday network
The guys at backnetwork did a great job by providing a full social network for the London Hackday 2007 event. You are encouraged to …
May 20
PHP and Web Services
I’ve been kindly invited by Prof.Carlos Costa to present a workshop at the CITOT 2007 conference. The conference has just finished and …
May 18
London Hack Day
Yahoo! and BBCBackstage are organizing London Hack Day. The event will take place in London, at the Alexandra Palace, on the weekend of June …
Mar 10
Social Complexity in Software Development
Software complexity is increasing as time goes by and is now becoming a nightmare for every developer. To begin with, let’s find out …
Jan 30
Large-scale reuse and remix on the Web
Javascript Dataflow Architecture (JDA) is a project from Maya that attempts to solve the issues associated to large-scale reuse and remix on …
Jan 9
The Web Browser as an Information Broker
How can the Web Browser stop being simply a layout renderer and start using data in an intelligent way? Alex Faaborg of Mozilla sheds some …
2006 (4)
Nov 30
The Unfolded Web
People all over are talking about the end of Web 2.0 in favor of a new, distributed network of information. Some people even suggested that …
Nov 14
Widgets are everywhere
An interesting breed of applications is showing up all around these days. Yes, I’m talking about web widgets. Usually these widgets …
Nov 1
Like Java for content
Java original motto was (and still is) “Write once, run anywhere”. Software written in the Java language can run on virtually …
Oct 22
Unfolding the Web
Originally posted at the O’Reilly ONLamp Blog:
What if you could use the Web as a whole as a data storage object? What if you could …