Fascinating morning keynotes

Android Open was jam packed with activities including a pre-conference day of workshops and then two days of main conference. Each morning of the regular conference began with a series of five to twenty minute long keynote talks and panels. You can see a complete listing of the speakers for both days in the conference schedule. You can also watch the keynote sessions via the Android Open 2011 Youtube video playlist (click here to access). I would encourage you to watch as many of the keynotes as possible; they contain a lot of interesting and inspirational material to get your Android juices flowing!

O’Reilly founder & CEO Tim O’Reilly (@timoreilly) kicked things off with his Day 1 opening keynote “What Android can learn from Steve Jobs“. Definitely an interesting choice of title for an Android conference! But Jobs’ passing the week before presented O’Reilly with an opportunity to discuss some of the key principles behind Apple’s success, especially the notion espoused by Jobs that a company needs to be “true to its soul”. O’Reilly examined Google’s “soul” at length, suggesting that it needs to never forget its original mission to help connect people to all the world’s information. Key takeaway for Android developers and businesses: Stay true to yourself and your mission while holding Google to its own high ideals, too.

The next keynote that caught my attention was a conversation between conference co-chair Marko Gargenta (@markogargenta) and Robert Stephens (@rstephens), CTO of Best Buy. Stephens is a pretty technical guy, even going so far as to say that Best Buy ought to get rid of their DVD section and replace it with an Arduino section! As you might imagine given the crowd, this was well received.

The thing that really stood out for me as a mobile payments developer, however, was Stephens’ discussion of the many issues with NFC deployment. He said Best Buy may bypass at least some NFC generations completely, going straight to purely cloud-based payments solutions. This joins the rising tide of anti-NFC sentiment and pragmatism that seems to be building, and echoes some of the many things PayPal has said publicly about NFC weaknesses in recent months. Takeaway: Watch major retailers such as Best Buy closely to pick up the beginnings of big shifts in mobile payments.

Day 2 saw a couple more morning keynotes that stood out for me. The first, “Android in Space” by Will Marshall (@wsm1) of NASA, dealt with building very cheap microsatellites based upon Android-based Nexus One smartphones, aka “phonesats“. “Very cheap” in this case means tens of thousands versus millions or billions of US dollars.

Marshall noted that because of the conservative nature of space flight, the CPU in phonesat Nexus Ones will actually be the fastest CPUs onboard a satellite to date when they’re launched into orbit later this year. He also asked the audience some provocative questions such as “What if we could each have personal satellites?” and “What if satellites became a software domain?”. Thing to note: Android software and off the shelf mobile phone hardware can reduce costs in some areas by two or more orders of magnitude versus traditional ways of doing things, and that could change everything in those areas.

You can read more about the phonesat project from this report from O’Reilly correspondent Alex Howard (@digiphile). Among other things, Alex links to an excellent documentary on early phonesat rocket launch testing.

The final keynote that fascinated me was “The African Laptop Killer: Android and the Developing World” by Claire Hunsaker (@chunsaker). Hunsaker discussed the tremendous rise of mobile technology in Kenya and elsewhere and how that technology is revolutionizing lives and economies. Some of the statistics quoted include:

• 99% of Internet access in Kenya is via mobile device.
• Cheap Android phones have dropped Internet access in Kenya from 31% of an average worker’s annual income to about 5%.
• Fully 20% of Kenyan GDP runs through the mobile wallet (predominantly M-PESA).
• According to Hunsaker, “Facebook will have access to most (Kenyan) users before thy can even own a mobile handset themselves” via borrowed/shared mobile handsets.

Please watch Hunsaker’s talk. It may change your perspective on the power and importance of mobile techologies.

Session highlights

There were a lot of great sessions at Android Open. Here are some notes from my favorites:

• Aleksandar Gargenta (yes, Marko is his brother) presented an excellent “Securing Android” session discussing how security is enforced. He made a number of comparisons to Java ME and desktop Linux security, noting that “Anytime something is in RAM, there are ways of recovering it”. I’d recommend spending a little time reading through Aleksandar’s slides (click here).
• Eric Burke (@burke_eric) from Square gave a nice “Beautiful Android” talk. I’d been hoping for a few payments fireworks, but Burke stuck closely to how to build attractive and functional Android apps. Among the things he noted, Android clip paths don’t handle antialiasing. This leads to very ugly interfaces unless you use offscreen bitmaps.
• Nick Farina (@nfarina) spoke about the importance of using WebViews in “From iOS to Android” (also, XCode is painful).
• Sean Byrnes of Flurry knocked it out of the park with his “Android App Engagement by the Numbers” talk! In particular, he called out the importance of releasing early and quickly to your followers, as statistics show that on average, an Android developer loses 38% of their users on the day they install your app, 50% in one week.
• Jesse Vincent (@obra) talked in “Dancing App Stores” about the somewhat suprising fact that new app versions dramatically increase sales, even with minimal changes to the app itself. He also made some good suggestions on secondary and tertiary app markets besides Google’s Android Market; check out his slides for more details.

All in all, the sessions had enough code and technical details while still being able to spark ideas in a wide variety of attendees, some Android programmers, some not.

Additional coverage and news from the conference

Conference organizers made a number of other news and information sources available to attendees. You can search some of the best via these links:

• Read the round-up of news and coverage curated by O’Reilly.
• Access all of the speaker slides provided to the organizers.
• View official conference photos.

One more highly recommended resource: The online show “All About Android” (@androidshow) broadcast live from Android Open at the end of Day 1. The conference co-chairs along with several speakers including Tim O’Reilly make appearances on the show. It’s probably worth your time to watch and get their perspective on the major Android developments flowing out of the conference.

Did it blend?

I found this first ever Android Open to be a great mix of community and technology. It struck the right tone of openness and provided both developer how-to and business oriented material. If you are interested in Android and appreciate a balanced perspective of the entire ecosystem, I would recommend this conference as a good place to tap into all things Android.

Click here to access the full article on X.com.

DEVELOPER EVANGELIST

Can you evangelize products for one of the largest local ad networks? Do you have an infectious enthusiasm for technology and mobile and web development?

CityGrid Media is an online media company that connects mobile and web publishers with local businesses by linking them through CityGrid®, its local content and advertising network. CityGrid Media owns and operates leading local consumer properties including Urbanspoon, Citysearch, and Insider Pages.

More local data and content for all. New local ads for everyone. And better performance all around. And it’s free. Our #1 goal is to see developers of all sizes thrive in local. We help developers give their local audience a better experience and get paid to do it. The CityGrid® network APIs give developers access to premium local content including user reviews, editorial content, merchant messages & more, across 75K neighborhoods nationwide.

We are looking for a Developer Evangelist to be the spokesperson, mediator and translator between the development community and our company; and facilitate the proliferation of our APIs through code tutorials, workshops, blogging, public speaking, training, and social events like MeetUps.

Our ideal evangelist will have experience with:

• hands on development with Java, Ruby, Python or other open source languages
• architecture and implementations utilizing APIs
• open source community through blogging or contributions
• involvement with conferences, MeetUps, and other social web coverage
• experimentation with new development languages, architectures, and tools

Additional qualifications include:

• B.S. in Computer Science (M.S. or Ph.D is highly desired)
• a true passion of innovation and open source technologies
• a willingness to be the “go to person” for a development community
• ability to give technical presentations, manage MeetUp groups and online forums
• 10+ years of software engineering experience + development utilizing Big Data tools
• willingness to travel 20% – 40% of the time

If you can carry the flag for our data products to the development community, we want to hear from you today!

CityGrid Media is an equal opportunity employer.

I was recently privileged to attend both the O’Reilly Android Open and X.commerce Innovate conferences back-to-back in San Francisco. Both were mind and network expanding events, and I’d highly recommend either to developers and business colleagues considering attending next year.

I hope to write more about my key takeaways from Android Open at some point in the future. For this article, let’s focus on Innovate.

So much transpired in a few short days that it would be impossible to capture everything in one short article. I’ll do my best to give you the overall flavor and major highlights, then I’ll dive a bit deeper to discuss some of the particular technical “breakout” sessions I attended.

Ready? Let’s go!

Keynotes and major announcements

The conference began each morning with a series of general session keynotes. You can access the conference schedule to see a full list of speakers, or better still, watch the keynotes (as well as breakout sessions) from the Innovate 2011 video site (click here to access).

Watch the Day 1 keynotes for yourself below (click here if the embed doesn’t work below):

Naveed Anwar, head of X.commerce community, discussed many of the key Day 1 developments in his blog post here. Some of the big ticket items for developers and merchants included:

• Launch of the “X.commerce Fabric“, a message-broker based system allowing developers to integrate and use various commerce capabilities. The Fabric ties together various components from eBay, PayPal, Magento, and other eBay companies with capabilities built by third parties, large and small. Much more on this to come.
• PayPal debuted “PayPal Access“, a new online “commerce identity” comparable to social identity, but for making commerce transactions faster and easier for the consumer. Read more about PayPal Access from the Janrain blog; I’ll also have much more to say about PayPal Access in coming months.
• Magento launched much tighter integration with eBay, allowing merchants to push products from Magento into eBay with just a few short clicks. You can read a third party take on the many and central Magento-related announcements via AuctionBytes (click here).
• Facebook announced Open Graph integration with Magento and GSI Commerce enabling, among other things, “Want” and “Own” buttons analogous to the already ubiquitous “Like” button. You can read much more about the eBay-Facebook partnership in this ZDNet article.

With the major announcements out of the way, the Day 1 afternoon and Day 2 morning keynotes could focus on inspirational higher ordered bits. These sessions were great motivation for attendees to take advantage of all of the technical tools at their disposal to make the world a better place. Whether by building corporate giving into their fundamental commercial business model, or by thinking about the effects of the current recession and the innovation that could get us out of it, or by imbuing everything we do with thoughtful design, these sessions were all meant to light the creative spark.

I particularly enjoyed seeing Steven Cooper (@developersteve), whom I featured in an interview article for the X.com site last year, receive a community award at the beginning of the day 2 morning keynotes. You can watch the awards presentation and all of the Day 2 keynotes here:

If the embed fails to load, you can alternatively click here for the Day 2 morning general session.

Other things I found striking during the second morning’s general session:

• Marshal Cohen spoke at length about the current recession and what might need doing, especially in the United States, to innovate our way out of it. One item in particular stuck with me: He pointed out that while the current recession is not the longest in US history (yet), it is the deepest by job losses. I have to agree with his conclusion that a fundamental shift is underway and many of the lost jobs aren’t coming back, so it’s more important than ever to focus on new commerce opportunities. Build your business to take advantage of inevitable innovations and the sky’s the limit.
• X.commerce developer evangelist Praveen Alavilli (@ppalavilli) showed some live X.commerce code in front of thousands. Always a gutsy move! Access his demo code yourself from GitHub here. By the way, Praveen has written a great blog post about getting started with the Fabric since Innovate completed; click here to check it out.
• Hip-hop artist Chamillionaire (@chamillionaire) stole the show discussing how he used community and tech skills to build his fan base from the streets of Houston to the Grammys and beyond. What an amazing innovator! I’d highly recommend watching at least his portion of the day 2 keynote; prepare to be impressed and inspired.

I could write several more articles about the various keynote speakers and their stories. Instead, I’ll encourage you again to watch the videos for yourself.

Partner pavilion and a free O’Reilly book for you

There was a wide range of X.commerce partners showing their wares in the Partner Pavilion during and in between sessions. Somtimes I wondered just how they were packing so many thousands of attendees in such a small space! (The secret, of course, was lots of free coffee, snacks, and soda.)

Here’s a shot I took the first day of the X.commerce booth to give you a feel for the foot traffic:

One other cool thing going on in the Partner Pavilion, in my not so humble opinion, was that O’Reilly Media was giving away printed copies of the new book “Building eCommerce Applications”. This book is a collection of some of the most interesting and varied articles written by contributors to the X.commerce DevZone.

Even if you weren’t able to attend the conference, you can still download a free e-book copy from O’Reilly (click here to get your copy).

And yes, yours truly does have four articles included in the book, so I am a bit biased. Still, you can’t beat free, right?

Session highlights

I attended a number of interesting sessions at the conference. Rather than try to list them all, I thought I’d focus on the key points from the most interesting and useful for me.

• Two related sessions, “Introducing the X.commerce platform” and “From Code to Capability“, showed developers how to get started with the dive deep into the new X.commerce Fabric. I’d highly recommend clicking on the session titles and watching the sessions to get up to speed asap. You should also download the X.commerce Developer Package and the X.commerce Innovate demo code so you can try it out for yourself. Fabric will be a very important piece of the commerce development puzzle in the months to come.
• We all know mobile commerce is a BIG opportunity, right? What you might or might not know is how to take advantage of the various social, local, and mobile development strategies to capitalize upon it. “Commerce goes SoLoMo: Social, Local, Mobile” discusses what’s possible, focusing on Milo and Where.com (both eBay companies) in particular. I’d also recommend watching the “Mobile face-off: HTML5 vs. native apps vs. mobile platforms” panel to get a grip on the realities of native, HTML, and hybrid mobile development. I enjoyed both sessions and took away the point that we can do almost anything with today’s mobile technologies (boy have we come a long way since WAP and J2ME!).

Things to watch in the coming year

In summary, Innovate was crammed full of technologies to watch and good information on getting started with them. I’d recommend trying out Fabric and Access as soon as possible and paying attention to both as they roll out in the months ahead. There are also some very nice Magento and Facebook commerce opportunities coming; pay attention, and profit!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the conference, the news coming out of it, and the new commerce possibilities available as a result of those announcements. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think. And happy commerce hacking!

Click here to access the full article on X.com.

• Puzzled why this @Infochimps @YQL query works in the console http://yhoo.it/gYZ17r but not in this Python program http://bit.ly/f8URm9 #
• Ways to donate to Japan earthquake and tsunami relief using @PayPal http://bit.ly/dJXTU3 (100% of your donation goes to charity of choice) #
• This pointer to Python-YQL env info http://bit.ly/hYyCjX from @pjdonnelly solves my earlier "use" problem without the "use" being required #
• Part 2 of @PayPalX "Selling Digital Goods in Data Markets" http://bit.ly/esITZ5 discusses @factual & @infochimps Twitter influence #bigdata #
• Read http://bit.ly/dQ5oUU and http://bit.ly/gVAQGe for more on the @Infochimps Twitter metrics @YQL in @PayPalX article http://bit.ly/fL8jRd #

Big data

• Quora: What underlying technologies are used to implement the major data markets? Answer: http://qr.ae/i6UX #

APIs and development

• "The Node Ahead" http://bit.ly/gNlEjr provides great info including creator Ryan Dahl's JSConf talk on Node: http://bit.ly/eh20qn #
• I hope @factual is talking with @foursquare about cross-walking as part of the latter's "Venue Project" http://on.mash.to/edXsj7 #
• How to optimize your LinkedIn profile's new Skills section http://on.mash.to/gjzMAB #
• #PyCon 2011 sessions are already online http://bit.ly/gB1foJ via @ptwobrussell #
• Presentation: REST API design for SQL programmers http://bit.ly/hBgMjO from @Apigee CTO Greg Brail @gbrail #
• Another great @Apigee post, this one on #winning with JSON and JSONP http://bit.ly/gfz7PG #
• #Python links: "Think Stats" probability and statistics book http://bit.ly/i8g3ce and Milk machine learning toolkit http://bit.ly/ibUC20 #

Personal things

• Move the slider to see before/after photos of Japan's tsunami devastation http://nyti.ms/exUJ74 via @nytimes #prayforjapan #
• 7 simple ways to help the Japanese people http://on.mash.to/gCTfzB #prayforjapan #
• WeatherSpark is fantastic! http://bit.ly/gXKzL4 via @flowingdata #
• An incredible and touching TED talk: "The Birth of a Word" http://bit.ly/fmSbA0 (parents and speech paths *must* watch) via @gnestor #
• Sun domain going away June 1st http://engt.co/eEGUmF is a bit of a bummer; I wonder what it'd cost to buy it for old times sake? #

Running

• My early summer training goal: Turkey Track Trail Half Marathon http://bit.ly/gDf9Ij in CO. Love the San Ju… http://dailymile.com/e/Omf4 #
• More on the Turkey Track Trail marathon races http://bit.ly/i1pXOz via @runnersworld and http://bit.ly/dZY7Za @trailrunnermag #
• Beginning Hal Higdon advanced Half training http://bit.ly/e3nSRS March 21st for the Turkey Track trail race June 11th http://bit.ly/gDf9Ij #
• The Religion of Running Technique http://bit.ly/fy62kN is actually a fantastic, scientifically grounded analysis (via @irunfar) #
• Ran 3.19 miles in 35 mins and felt great. Family run, stroller and all. http://dailymile.com/e/Ox8K #
• Interval training plans to build fitness fast http://bit.ly/gs6Jfk via @activenetwork (I'm curious to try the pyramid on my next "fast" day) #
• Ran 3.34 miles in 29 mins and felt great. 30min tempo run. Warm. http://dailymile.com/e/P2Jc #
• Exercise "afterburn" (aka EPOC) can burn more than a third of your total calorie expenditure http://bit.ly/eRQBLC via @runnersworld #

• Now that @PayPalX Digital Goods is out of beta http://bit.ly/gd5JZm here's a refresher on how to use it: http://bit.ly/hqPf1E #
• New @PayPalX DevTalk newsletter http://bit.ly/i2x3z0 includes free @OReillyMedia epayments report http://bit.ly/fh6ysK (login required) #
• Fav line from this new @PayPalX ecommerce article http://bit.ly/hRBoRg "If you're paying for things upfront nowadays, you're doing it wrong" #

Big data:

• Looking for a succinct description of the Big Data harvest and analysis process? Here you go: http://bit.ly/esUeQJ by @hmason on dataists #
• Nice report on the final day of #StratConf http://bit.ly/dSSmim again from @JanWillemTulp #BigData #
• Working through the #StrataConf Data Bootcamp http://bit.ly/fceOVi asap (ZIP of materials is at http://bit.ly/campyslides) #
• More #StrataConf recap http://bit.ly/dHaAah including the Data Bootcamp #
• An oldie but a goodie: Sensors smash social networks in creating Big Data http://bit.ly/ebunOV (the flight data numbers are incredible) #
• Congratulations to Digital Reasoning @dreasoning on their public beta of the Synthesys Platform http://bit.ly/hlxfed at http://bit.ly/gu5hdj #
• NPR discussion with Bitly dataist @hmason http://n.pr/hFd06e delves into divining emergent props from data, plus what happens if Bitly dies #

Wireless and mobility (never would have thought Nokia would pick Microsoft):

• Please let Nokia's announcement tomorrow *not* be that they're going with Windoze Phone http://tcrn.ch/fVPbxS #
• PC mag got the key points of Nokia's Microsoft deal spot-on. Big winner: MS. One of the big losers: Nokia
  http://bit.ly/fA4ZeK #
• More on the Nokia-Microsoft two turkey marriage http://bit.ly/g2hPbd & NOK heads are already being replaced by Softies http://tcrn.ch/ftjyEm #
• The End of the Nokia Raj http://bit.ly/gIF2TS by @om gets the key details, including the importance of Indian and Chinese hardware, spot-on #
• Mobile World Congress trends to watch http://bit.ly/hMLa1p via @gigaom (mobile payments is a big one, @PayPalX fans) #

APIs and web development:

• I'm giving ActivePython community edition http://bit.ly/ezmHTv a try after "fun" with Cygwin Python #
• Investigating BeautifulSoup for HTML scraping in Python http://bit.ly/hctlSS on the recommendation of @ptwobrussell #
• "Paul's Python Pearls" @OReillyMedia webcast recording is now available at http://bit.ly/epX0c4 (12min preview at http://bit.ly/fIWeeG ) #
• Git in 5 minutes http://bit.ly/fPrYIp has been useful in getting my first project up on github http://bit.ly/hMYMRS #
• My github feed: http://bit.ly/hclz8Y (includes commits, new follows, etc.) #
• Using PHP, YQL, and RSS to add living data to your site http://bit.ly/e9AOG1 by my friend Peter Mancini @nectarineimp writing for @wpmods #
• I am *loving* the elegance of @CoffeeScript code vs JavaScript http://bit.ly/i1wvmL (worth trying Node just to fire up 'coffee') #
• Understanding prototypal inheritance in JavaScript http://bit.ly/hNE3ht #
• Google's new 2-step sign-in security http://bit.ly/gxvOlP; I wonder if they've managed to keep it simple or not #
• I'm looking forward to seeing more details on @RedDirtRubyConf posted Monday http://bit.ly/hS82ev #
• Research on Scala http://bit.ly/gkPUMT and Lift http://bit.ly/e4czbK turned up this Manning sample chapter http://bit.ly/fR12uj #
• I'm also looking forward to this SproutCore webcast http://bit.ly/fLkjEW to be hosted by @OReillyMedia on February 22nd #

Personal things:

• Trying out the LinkedIn Labs "Resume Builder". What do you think? http://bit.ly/g3VGGe #
• Contact information from the top of my resume, available in HTML and PDF formats http://bit.ly/bundles/billday/1j http://twitpic.com/3ydcjb #
• The people of Egypt have their liberty. I pray they see this through to protecting it with a just democractic government. #Jan25 #
• Great @FortuneMagazine piece on how @ConanOBrien resurrected himself via @TeamCoco and other #SocialMedia http://bit.ly/ibGjyN #

Running:

• Ultramarathon training for beginners http://bit.ly/eP1YhV via @dailymile #
• Ran 5.01 miles in 1 hour and 2 mins and 25 secs and felt great. Slow, slippery run with family as the snow starts to… http://bit.ly/gCw8Td #

You can also follow along via Twitter with O’Reilly Media’s @strataconf and hashtag #StrataConf.

If that sounds like a great opportunity to you, you need to look closely at PayPal Apps. PayPal Apps allows you to develop a lightweight, web standards based “gadget” that will embed your application functionality into PayPal’s site on a new PayPal Apps tray, making it available to the masses of PayPal account owners.

Intrigued? Good! Let’s dive into the details so you can start developing and deploying a PayPal App of your own.

What is PayPal Apps?

First, a bit of terminology. “PayPal Apps” does not refer to a native smartphone or tablet application (sorry iOS and Android), nor to a client-side Windows or Mac or Linux application. Neither is it a reference to PayPal-based applications in general. It refers very specifically to a HTML, CSS, and JavaScript based software “gadget”, packaged via an XML-based module referred to as the “gadget specification” or “gadget spec”, and served by the PayPal Gadget Server to a customer’s web browser. This gadget runs within the web browser and is rendered in an HTML iframe. Besides communicating back to the PayPal Gadget Server, a PayPal App may only communicate from the browser to one other domain in the network cloud; this domain is specified during App submission and the service running there is referred to as the “service endpoint”.

PayPal Apps are built by developers, tested in the PayPal Sandbox, and submitted to PayPal for review and approval. If approved, they are made available via a PayPal Apps tray on the live PayPal.com site. From there, they will be visible to millions of PayPal customers. Build the right App, and you could see tremendous traffic in short order!

You can read more about what PayPal Apps are and aren’t, as well as things to note as you begin Apps development, via the excellent “Developing a PayPal App” technical overview page.

As I wrote in a recent DevZone blog post, PayPal Apps were launched at Innovate 2010 to much fanfare. There was a good introductory session given on Apps, “PayPal Apps: The Future Starts Here“, and it is worth watching to familiarize yourself with the technology and its use:

You should also read through PayPal Technology Evangelist Rasesh Shah‘s series of blog posts on PayPal Apps. The first installment does a good job of defining Apps and how to get started with them. Read any or all of his four installments by clicking on each of them here: “Getting Started With PayPal Apps“, “Building Your First Hello World PayPal App“, “Making payments from a PayPal App (Gadget)“, and “Building an advanced PayPal App“. And remember his “HelloWorld” example in particular, as we’ll refer to it again later.

If you cut PayPal Apps, it bleeds OpenSocial

If you decide to try your hand at PayPal Apps development, you will want to dig a little deeper under the covers. PayPal wisely chose to build Apps on top of the OpenSocial gadget framework. OpenSocial originally spun out of the Google Gadgets framework as an attempt to guarantee an open alternative to the proprietary Facebook Platform for social application development. By embracing this open model, PayPal has guaranteed maximum transferability of skills and availability of tools with minimum overhead. Very smart.

OpenSocial supports both general purpose (non-social) gadget-based development as well as building and deploying social networking types of applications. For more information on the OpenSocial technologies, please refer to the OpenSocial Foundation’s web site and especially to the OpenSocial specifications page, JavaScript API reference, and Articles & Tutorials (strangely enough titled “My Life”).

Read the full article on the PayPal X Developer Network to learn the details about what is included from OpenSocial in the PayPal Apps framework, the Apps security model and implementation, how to build and deploy a HelloWorld App, and where to turn for more information if you encounter issues. Click here to read the article now.

I briefly introduced Apigee’s PayPal API Console in a recent PayPal DevZone blog post. There’s much more to be said and shown with the console, however, so let’s explore!

What is the Apigee PayPal API Console?

First up, let’s briefly revisit just what the console is and the kinds of things you can do with it.

Apigee announced their free PayPal API console at the Innovate 2010 conference. They noted in their announcement:

The API Console provides a really easy way to learn, debug, and test the APIs by allowing you to view request and response pairs, drill into errors, and share code snapshots with others.

PayPal Senior Director Damon Hougland provided his own description in a post on The PayPal Blog:

If you’re like me and want to play with APIs before actually writing code, I think you’ll really like what our friends at Apigee.com have just built. They’ve released a new API console that provides a great way for PayPal X developers to send and receive API calls…using various input parameters to see how APIs work and interact

Key point: You use the console to send test requests and it then displays the PayPal development sandbox responses back to you.

The console is in effect a sort of browser based cURL for Web API programmers. As such the console lets you very rapidly explore APIs and test out ideas before you code them into your application. (By the way, if you are interested in seeing how cURL itself can be used to make PayPal API calls, refer to Travis Robertson‘s post “Chained Payments Using NVP and CURL in 4 Easy Steps“.)

You can get a good feel for what the console enables you to do and how to use it from this Apigee video demo:

Click here to read the rest of the article including the APIs available to you, how to use the console, and linking multiple calls together on the PayPal X Developer Network.

My friend and former Digital Reasoning Systems colleague Peter Mancini, now the Principal at Nectarine Imp LLC, has put together an eighteen slide presentation introducing WordPress plugins and their use. It includes a section on creating your own, too. If you’re new to WP or want to patch any holes you might have in your WP plugin knowledge, I’d recommend it.

From Peter’s announcement of the posting of his slides:

WordPress is software for organizing blog posts, documents, multi-media and hyperlinks. This presentation is the one I gave 11 January 2011 to discuss the technology used to extend the system. As of this writing WordPress is at version 3 and has 12,000+ plugins available for it. The process of managing plugins is not difficult and the act of creating new ones, while challenging in some respects, is fairly straightforward if you know what you are looking for.

Click here to access the PDF slides with speaker notes for the presentation.

Now I want to encourage you to take what you learned last year and use it to achieve success in 2011 and beyond.  Ask yourself how you can build upon previous technology expertise and business while opening up entirely new lines of thinking, development, and income.

Click here to read the complete article on the PayPal X Developer Network.