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Welcome to the webinar. We are excited to have this one today. It is actually a follow-up
from an in person presentation that some of you caught earlier in the spring at social
media week here in DC. At the time there were 50 people in the room and got pretty good
reviews. I'm excited to share it with you today. My name is Gray Brooks, with the GSA.
Supporting all the other agencies doing APIs. One of the folks helping with that at GSA
and more broadly is Jed Sundwall from -- he has been working on projects with us here
that one of the ones that are particularly revealing is the project where you are aware
of, has not come across it in the daily life and that's the social media jet -- Registry.
It started with a very simple project that wanted to be eight be able to verify accounts
and let people know yes this is an official account. One of the interesting things the
way he has done this, we have been able to start to make more and more really neat products
that are pretty advanced. Mashing up all the tweets with the government and the videos
of government. A lot of really great work. What we will touch on more as we go, -- what
it boils down to is a basic premise that has been encapsulated by the visual strategy in
something that we want to note and loopback to at the end of the call. That is you don't
necessarily have to get into the weeds in order to start using APIs at your agency.
You just have to basically buy into the philosophy and concept. What we're going to do -- -- -- -- we
are going to do in this presentation is help you start to get comfortable with that. The
goal after this, we are not asking anyone to be experts in Web services, but instead
to be comfortable enough to know to ask for the projects going on currently and the projects
coming up, how can we include APIs Indies. That is what Jed did with the social media
registry and there's a lot of amazing things that has come about as a result of that. The
wider framing of this I want to highlight is that we are coming up on the 12 month mark
funded Digital Government strategy the initiative kicked off by the White house and OMB last
May. There's going to be a good bit of new APIs being offered by agencies and the effort
kicking off to move forward from here so the things that you will see in the webinar hopefully
you will be hearing about more coming forward in government. I really want to encourage
you no matter what the situation, this office in GSA is here to support you and empower
you. To make this easier and more productive in your shop. Please take us up on that. That's
enough. Let's go ahead and take it off. I will turn it over to Jed who again has been
several -- have done several of these and hopefully you have called in in the past and
overly this will be a good one. Take it from here.
>> Good afternoon, everybody thanks for the intro, Gray and background. Michael you today,
we are going to talk about the social media registry because we are going to use the social
media registry as sort of an example case for you to make API calls. Some of you it
may be your first call. My goal is to show you what and API is and how APIs work and
to give you an understanding at the basic level about APIs because I am not a developer.
But I have been working with software for many years now. Software and social media
software and I learned a few things early on that really opened my eyes and help me
understand how the internetworks. So I want to share that with all of you. If you haven't
already encountered the link anywhere, I had some class notes that you can follow along
with and if you have extra room on your screen right now you can go to measured --.com Measured
V oice.com/aPIs' -- 101. If you can follow along no worries that can be used as a resource
later. My joke is that DC does not need another three letter acronym, but we have one these
days it is API, it's important to know what API is. It stands for application programming
interface which is pure jargon to most people it means nothing to most people Greg Allen
at the FCC has a great saying that I like -- he calls the F API as a remote control
for software. It's a good leader to think about it and to highlight what he means by
that I will explain an example of the address book on your phone. If you have a smart phone
you likely have an address book that has contact information in it. What your address books
also have this and API. What it does is allow other applications to get your contacts from
your address book. Sets the terms and rules for that how cap that happens. For instance
if you install Facebook or some other networking app, it may be valuable to you to have the
app look up all of the contacts in your address book and see if they have a Facebook account
and you can add them as friends on Facebook. What your phone does in your address book
API does is say make that available and information available to Facebook, but also set up rules
that say you have to give it explicit permission, you have to give Facebook specific information
to access address in the address book and that's done through the API. That's really
powerful because it takes the value of the address book tab and the data you have and
make that available too other apps to add value to those facts. I will talk about what
Gray introduce the Social Media Registry for USA.gov and use the API first approach we
took when we first created it. The issue we faced was we needed a list of all the social
media accounts that were official. People were encountering social media count that
were fake, CIP use this one, H -underscore-underscore content is one and people were being duped
online and agencies were afraid that social media can undermine their authority and unable
to assert their authority. What we needed was a list huge list that we could update
regularly to keep track of what social media counts official out there. We took the API
approach and took the approach of what we called Fed sourcing which we -- -- -- -- fed
sourcing which we built a tool that would allow us anyone with a.gov or (dot) M I L
S-letter-letter S to vouch for a social media count , that says I am so-and-so say the FCC.gov
and this account is authentic. And they can and do stuff to the registry. The other problem
we had its -- -- have is we did not know how to present this list. We had a lot of interestingdata
with a -- the list of official accounts, but it is not clear who would be interested in
that list. Very few people wake up in the morning think I want to go find some government
social media count. Most people when they are doing government research or interacting
with that government via social -- -- the social media they have specific task in my
my in specific things in mind. Government as a category is-- is a category is not something
that is interesting to people. Instead of building pretty complicated interface to browse
the list we decided we are going to make the list available as an API and see what people
do with it. And see people can find value in that. I will give some examples to that
later and before we do I am going to explain the API that the registry provides as clearly
as possibly can. The first step to learning how to make an API call is to learn how to
read a URL. This might sound strange, but reading URL and learning how URL are structured
to be is totally blew my mind. I guess I'm easily impressed. When I was getting started
at a startup ancient history about seven years ago someone sat me down and showed me how
URLs work. Here's an example of a Google search URL. If you type this into your browser you
will search for and you could guess what would come up, beyonce. This URL is made out of
different parts. That I highlighted in color. He will Google I want to search. The thing
after the/in this instance is a command. After the commander said the limiter which is? In
this case. The first to limiter is always a? And you have a parameter and then the value
-- -- a value. So you're saying Google search, search for what? Search for beyonce. You can
have many parameters in the URL. After your first parameter which is always, if you want
to add other parameters, you will add an ampersand. Every delimiter after the first delimiter
which is that? It's and &-ampersand-ampersand. With the query would do is say Google, search
for beyonce and give me one result. And to give you another example how it looks, this
command will say Google, search for beyonce and give me five results and give them to
me in Spanish. I want those in the language to be in Spanish. With all these parameters
are they vary from service to service us do the commands. This is how API calls work.
What you're doing when you search Google is making an API call to Google and you don't
think of it that way because what Google percents to this HTML which is HTML is how you server
documents and the Web for humans umans to read. What you're really doing is making API
calls. Google hasn't search API n search API that allows for a variety of parameters and
this is just a few here that can be customized to make Google search API a variety of different
things. And to give to other examples, twitter.com similar thing you open up twitter, it will
show you two weeks, if you f you ever want to change language, you could add the delimiter
and say I want twitter load up twitter and load it in Spanish. That LA NG equals Spanish.
Same thing with YouTube I want to watch something and I want to watch -- he V is the command,
the parameter, and the gobbledygook is the video ID and that's how you to works. That
is how URL are structured and that's how they work. Moving on. We're going to write some
URLs. We will use the registry to write some URLs. The social media registry doesn't have just one
API. We provide a variety of APIs. I will talk about the agency API and the services
API and I can't API. If you are more than stand know about reading API documentation,
you can go to write to registry (dot) USA.gov and it will take you to the API documentation
for the social media registry. What we are going to do is first look at the agency API.
I will take the URL and go to my browser. I am going to go to registry (dot) API. So
here is I typed in the URL you saw on my PowerPoint which is registry (dot) USA.gov/agencies.
What that does is it loads up all of the agency names -- means that we have recorded in the
registry, basically all of the top and second level government agencies at the federal level.
This is a preview of the API provides. It looks some nice in my browser and I can read
it and it's the sign for -- -- same for me as a human to read. The API is set up and
provides this information in machine readable format -- -- -- a machine readable format.
I am going to type XML after the URL and you will see this this did not look as pretty
to me as a human, but this is a format that a computer can be very easily that software
can read and I will show you example of how it works. There'sanother format that is similar
to XML although it is lighter wait called Jason. This is what it looks like. It's the
same information I showed up -- I showed before before and HTML, but with a machine-readable
format so that's how this API works. You have the agency API and you can look at it in HTML
with the URL and if you want to can look at it in XML on Jason. Similar is we have the
services API and ends it's not obvious what services do, I will type it here. This is
the preview for the services API and it shows us all of the social media services that the
social media registry supports at the moment because that's important to know. Which social
media services would actually record and authenticate. And then accounts. The accounts this is where
the exciting stuff is you look at the accounts and this is where we have all of the social
media accounts that are registered and verified right now. It's pretty big. This is where
things get more fun. In fact what I'm going to show you right now is how to use this account
to API to look up some accounts. So this is the first URL we are going to look at. Based
on what I described earlier about how APIs work and how URL we, I'm hoping some of you
could guess what this URL would bring up. Since this is an interactive webinar I will
go ahead and tell you. What we are doing is we are calling the registry that USA.gov social
media registry API and looking at the account API. And here's the delimiter so we will give
it parameters we want accounts. We want accounts that have the service ID of twitter and agency
ID of NASA. What that will do is I will let you guess if you haven't guessed already I
am going to put this in here, service ID equals twitter agency ID equals NASA.
>> I have a guess. This is going to give all the twitter accounts from NASA.
>> Will look at this bunch of twitter comes from NASA. You are right, Gray. I will buy
you a call next time I see you. The next time -- so we got all the twitter comes from NASA.
Say if I have a nap or something like that and I wanted to incorporate the twitter content
from NASA, I could type accounts that Jason and it will give me the same list in the machine
readable format. This is useful to anybody doing research on NASA and its presence on
Twitter they could use the preview to see what's out there and if they are developers
they can use this. To get a machine-readable format of the same thing. Based on that here
are some the other calls of what I've just shown you. The H a -- the preview and the
accountant very similar URL and the (dot) XML after count and that Jason after account
and it will give you different machine-readable format. To see that. Here's how the URL works
and how you make API calls. >> Just interject, when I first started seeing
these things from judge another's, it took me a while. This is a new experience and the
reason this is worthwhile is what you are looking at right now ow is actually what the
the most HBI are at the heart. It doesn't necessarily get more complicated ed than this.
Looking at the smaller model in particular because with this literally we pretty much
understand APIs after that. However, I do know that as we start to get into the technical
and implementation, if people are having questions please definitely start typing them in and
we are going to have a Q and Q&A -- Q&A session that when this is wrapped up. No matter how
big or small please go ahead and be giving us the questions.
>> I think your point is important. It is -- it takes a bit to wrap your head around,
but it is once you get it it's pretty straightforward. Working with the API. I do think a really
valuable way to think about it is to understand like the example of Google search, when you're
searching Google you are making an API call, but it's delivering a result that's optimized
for you to read with your eyes is a person. And the distinction is when you are building
an API, you are doing the same thing as voting the website. Instead of providing results
in HTML you are providing results in XML Jason of formats the machines can read and there's
a lot of efficiencies to be gained to take that approach. At the top, I am not a developer,
I am okay with making static websites, but I don't know how to work with databases. I
am pretty good with spreadsheets and Google spreadsheets. What we are going to do is use
Google spreadsheets and we are going to use a command who that will that is called at
-- because there are in the Internet, you can access data that's in the Internet and
pull it into a spreadsheet really easily. On the next slide I have the call it looks
pretty gnarly. This looks like to a lot of people I speak for myself, this kind of thing
scares me when I see. That looks like code I don't know I'm seeing. This really is a
function, and Excel function. If you use Excel and use a equals average parentheses and put
some stuff in there, you are coding. Telling the computer to do something. Using like a
coding language. Let me explain what this function does. There are two parts of your
function. First of all,there's the data source. You are saying Google, spreadsheet, I want
to import XML. The first part is you put in the URL where there is XML. And then the second
part there's X path. I am not an expert, but what it does is for this part -- what we're
seeing is Google, go through the data that you are going to find and within that XML,
there are a bunch of things called agency names and I want you to print out the agency
name. I am going to head on over to go spreadsheet. I hope you can see pretty well. I am going
to type it in. This is the function. You saw how fast that was it's kind of crazy actually.
It's pretty fast. He said go to registry (dot) USA.gov and give me the list of all agencies.
This is very valuable for anyone who has to do research about anything about the government.
When thing you hear all the time that's happening in DC and universities and high schools across
the country, people doing research on the government and the needs of the civil other
agencies and there's no easy place to get a list. You have the list -- you can look
at it or if you want to put it in the spreadsheet you can do it here. We put it in here and
suppose you're doing research and you want to say whatever, you want to track number
of employees. 2013 budget. You can go down here and do the research and fill it in that
this part of knowing what all agencies are is taken care of and easy for you and you
don't have to do that yourself. Because we have done it for you. I will show you a couple
of API calls that we can make. What are the differences? Tell me if this works, can you
see my pen? Yep. >> I'm drawing on the PowerPoint.
>> Yep. >> What we're doing is making the same call
in saying import XML and me want to look at the agency XML the first one is agency name.
The next one is agency ID. The other one is service ID. That's see what those look like.
I'm going to go back to the spreadsheet and double clicks I can look at the code and copy
it. And pace that in here. . Agency ID. Let me explain what'sgoing on. If you remember,
when we made our API call to see which Twitter accounts were on NASA, we had to use the agency
ID. Instead of saying in the URL typing in national Aeronautics and space.
>> Something like that [ LAUGHTER ]. >> National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
We have a small ID. You can see I looked up NASA and the agency ID and in column B. The
agency ID is important to have it you ever have to make an API call. You have to have
that if you want to look up and agency. The other call that we are going to make is service
ID. This is going to -- I type something wrong. Sorry. Services XML. Service ID. We need the
service ID also so that we know when we are constructing URL how we should call on a specific
social media platform when looking it up. All of these three things can come together
in an interesting way. There's a link to this in the class notes, but there is a spreadsheet
that I will open up in the new tab and here the agency names and agency IDs the services
and then over here and you can select the drop-down and get depopulated by -- I am zoomed
into far. I will zoom out a zoom out a little bit. Anyhow, this is embarrassing. [ LAUGHTER
] they're supposed to be a drop-down menu here. This is a bug. It would allow me to
select from the list of services and then select from the list of agencies. I know what's
happening. I am logged in this to count. Okay. Here's to drop-down. I can click here and
say I want to see -- see Facebook and right now we have health and human services. I will
look up state department. I will look out EPA you and there is. These are API calls
within Google spreadsheet. An example on how you can use spreadsheets to make API calls
and produce something that resembles development. I'm going to show you one more example of
a call you can do. This is the call that is happening right here in this column. We are
creating -- we are actually creating in this cell a fancy API call that does this specific
thing which is showing show me everything from an agency on certain social media account.
The difference is between this function and in Excel and the one I showed you before is
simply that we are calling on the accounts API. I am going to go ahead and do -- Dawn
the pen again and here's the URL you're saying Google, go look at the data source and instead
of telling go to go -- -- -- going to go look at all the accounts, you are saying Google,
look at all the he accounts on Twitter with the agency ID of NASA. Just importthose in
down here you're saying give me the URL of each of those. So service URL is the same
within the XML we would like to see. That's what's being printed out. Again, the question
is what is this good for? For a variety of things. One thing that we use quite a bit
is used this Flickr, that I put together. I will show you what that looks like. What
this does is we have a server that looks at the social media registry and it says give
me all the government Flickr accounts and bring in the last 20 pictures from each of
them. So we do and it creates this page dynamically and we can see that we have photos from Samsung,
department is state, cicadas, awesome. Crazy cicada picturesfrom the USDA. Really interesting
stuff. As you scroll down, it keeps loading of more pictures. Tons of pictures of Arnie
Duncan pictures of people. This is really valuable to us. We contribute sometimes to
the USA.gov content on their blog and Facebook and twitter. They're always looking for really
compelling and excellent photos being taken across the government and this is a great
way to login and browse every morning and take a glance out what's -- at what's going
on across the government, what are all agencies doing and if we find anything remarkable and
we share it on Facebook and show off what those agencies are doing. If you are not already,
you should follow the blog on tumbler and subscribe to the feed and they are always
sharing great photos. That is one application. Another application is within our own products
we have social media called Measured Voice and when you are using Measured Voice to write
to sleep and things like that you might want to talk about a government agency. Like here's
a great link from and you type that &-ampersand-ampersand and the at sign. I type EN and what it does is Measured Voice is able
to go to the social media registry and give me all of the government Twitter accounts
and this is really useful because a lot of customers are government agencies and like
to talk about government agencies doing interesting work and we are automatically able to suggest
to them all sorts of government accounts that they can follow. Youcan actually see -- here's
all the government accounts in the social media Joe registry that we pre- populate the
easily. That's one application. Those are two instances of how this is done and then
I will give you one other example which is if you go to twitter and go to USA.gov and
look at the list, these lists are automatically created. We have a number of lists, education,
agriculture, business, embassies, Department of Homeland Security. These are automatically
generated based on content from the social media registry. This education list, accounts
managed by the Department of Education, the way the list is created is we look at the
registry, look at all that -- the accounts registered as part of the Department of Education
and if there's a new one we don't have on the list, we added to the list. If one has
been removed, you move it. USA.gov has a number of lists here that are all completely dynamically
generated based on people using the social media registry based on federal employees
adding content and accounts to the social media registry. That's great because we are
able to provide softness which help people to -- for research very easily without us
looking -- because the registries looking -- doing that for us. There's a quote I like
from Tim O'Reilly talks about this all the time, create more value than you capture.
Light grey and I said at the top, the goal of the registry was very simple which was
find an efficient way to create a list of verified social media accounts and the way
we went about it since we -- is we did that. We create the list and made a mechanism whereby
the list could be created ted and maintained at the same time we realized that by doing
all that work, coming up the list of federal agencies in the coming up with the list of
social media accounts organized by agencies, we were craving something that could be valuable
all sorts of people. In ways that we could not imagine. Taking the API he API first approach
to say build this tool in other ways we can make data we are gathering to make -- make
available to people, we should do that. Using API the way we went about it. We have created
more value than be captured. We accomplished our goal and along the way be created a lot
of value for other people as well if you have any questions about using the social media
registry and working with it, Justin Herman is the point to person. If you have questions
about API in general I am happy to talk to you and help you out if you have any questions.
This is my contact information and I hope you are still awake. Thankyou very much for
spending your time with me today. >> I can tell they are weak because we have
a good stream of questions coming in throughout the presentation. I would love to dive into
those. Just getting started with that, one of the folks asked, when you're doing the
URL the parameters, does the order of the parameters matter? No. It does not. Generally
does not. I could be proven wrong, but I've never encountered and at -- and API with order
of parameters matter. >> That's my experience, two. Is helpful basically
you folks realize there's an endpoint that? And whatever promise they want, it can be
that simple. I will go back to those examples of parameters.
>> So people know what we're talking about. >> I'm terrible at PowerPoint. I'm getting
there. Basically one of the things -- we're seeing a lot more with API in the coming weeks
because we will be focusing on a lot of progressive -- progress the government made the digital
strategy and each time you hear about this we realize that it .-period-full stop to the
endpoint reaches Google.com/search on the left and then? And then use different series
of parameters. If an agency is using API and in all their office locations, then you know
that the parameters and telephone number can be pulled down for all offices in Massachusetts.
Pretty straightforward after that. I would just add to that a lot of people have done
those things before, if you -- if you're thinking about building an API it's valuable to look
for other examples of similar APIs because they probably have done the heavy lifting
for you. Another person asks, I was playing with that URLs in my browser looks different
do you have to have it set special software or browser? Basically yes. Different browsers
will format XML and Jason differently. And usually up-to-date browsers like Firefox and
Safari and chrome will make it pretty friendly. Even between Safari and chrome it might look
different. Honestly fear doing with IE six or seven, you should tell your IT staff. You
are directly endangering us all with out-of-date browser. It's probably going to look different.
>> I brought up here on my screen that Jason, I use it again for Safari to make this pretty
print to make it print out in a way that looks good. If I did not have that it will look
like a bunch of garbled text. You are not doing. Another way of looking at it, anytime
you use Google for instance like to make Jason unreadable, there's a bunch of sites that
will do that for you even if you -- extensions. Also for those who don't have -- and your
per computer I found that I did not need admin permission because it is -- so well. This
this work only with oval spreadsheet or Excel? I tried it and I got an error. Now it probably
won't work in Excel. Because Excel doesn't really speak to the Internet. The way Google
spreadsheet does. Specifically use Google spreadsheet for this because they are online
and they can access data online. >> Okay one of the things we're trying to
-- a number of us are working together to try to show some real clear it easy examples
of ways to do this and just any XML page you come across. Examples here work well because
Google Docs have some power under me to help support it. Honestly all the libraries that
you hear people needing to use cheap query to do cool things you don't need your IT department
to install those on your servers in order to use this on your website because there's
other options, but Google for instance offers pretty much every code library available for
remote usage. We are working on making code Smith so you can do things like this in the
page without needing an external dependencies. It's doable and it's usually two lines of
codes. One of the questions that people have it -- in the registry they noticed it only
goes to P. I think that is how API works. >> That's correct. This is a limitation of
using the spreadsheet. The API only serves up -- patient meets paginates the responses.
Paginates the responses. >> We are happy to do deep dives into this.
Once you get started it's very easy to start the configure how you need. The point is very
straightforward proof of concept. >> There's an example. If you add the parameter
page number and equals two you can see the page of stuff. That's all. The rationale for
that is we want to keep the API calls. Late. And Google spreadsheet is a great way to do
that, but if you are writing a software program. Our easy ways to get all the can't -- current
-- content out. >> To clarify, this API, there's different
definitions of what is an agency in government, there are 246 included in this. If you did
not see your agency in there, the free to email us afterwards and it's easy to add yours
in, but we try to be comprehensive without drilling down to a small bureau within the
office within the agency. >> The question. How did you create the API
was it using Google spreadsheet? Other types of documents, will kind of programs, what
are some of the programs people can use. >> To create the APIs we used Ruby on rails.
A programming language to write program. Thinking back at what we're doing is creating an API,
all you're doing is taking content that could be presented in HTML, but we are presenting
it in XML for Jason. For a variety of reasons we use Ruby on rails and the main reason is
because the sourcing approach where we have to get that email address to that content
to the registry and verify they have a.gov so we had to do complicated things. If you
have content, and you have it available online most content management systems should allow
you to make that available in a machine-readable format. To use one example, is WordPress.
WordPress produces blog content and blog content is content that is structured in a way for
it to be presentable and readable online. It is key -- other key thing about the blog
is it provides great content not just in HTML, but RSS. A machine-readable format a variety
of XML. WordPress has plug into -- and makes that available us Jason. Places soon you used
to produce and publish content online for the most part you're probably right now using
that to produce content in HTML. Dig a little deeper and read the documentation and look
for plug-ins and ask the vendor is providing it, can we take the content we are producing
in HTML and can be presented in other formats like HMO -- XML and Jason. That is a quick
when if you already have services that are making content available online. You can make
it available in machine format. >> The reason for the API requirements the
government strategy had been because of this pretty much every department and agency should
now have a standing capacity to do more API. If you go to how to.gov/API, there's a section
that how to make API a primer. There's a half-dozen different -- that range from simple and lightweight
robust and very functional that we can work with you to build and design and launch your
API. If you're interested you want to work with you. Please reach out. The next question,
the question was whether you can narrow down the parameters to email addresses. Think -- I
think that's specific to the social media registry. I'm pretty sure we don't front face
in email address. >> That's right we don't make that available
to people. The cool with what we do is gather peoples email address and we use those to
verify that you have a government email address and you can trust you. We record that information
from you do not make that available to the API. That's a factor of because we don't want
to make people addresses public. A question of what you won't want to expose and what
you don't want to expose. One person says if you want to make data available you can
-- are there standards for the values and how do we know what those are? A couple things.
One is I really recommend taking away from all this and the conversation that the private
sector and Internet itself has done a great job and -- working on best practices in this.
Pretty much googling will help you do use industry -- -- use industry standards that
you need because that is what other developers out there in the world are doing. They are
googling and -- in writing about what they're doing and sharing. That the innovation center
which is the program that this is part support you with this. It boils down to logic. In
a minute I will fill you in on a webinar that's scheduled for tomorrow afternoon that I recommend
to your for your consideration if you want to have a deeper dive. It is the White house
API standards which digs right into the great conversation. We will get back to that in
the second. For the rest of the questions -- .
>> We have one that came in by twitter. The federal API template page on get have you
know what that is? Sounds familiar that is from Glenn here in San Diego.
>> There's two possibilities. If you go to the White house get have a, get have accounts/white
house, this madness -- magnificent -- API standards. Those guys are doing a webinar
tomorrow right ? >> that's correct. I would check that out.
Also as far as -- we are working on prototyping templates that are were designed than that,
but it's hard without knowing what the date is. More to come. To go back to the previous
question there are a lot of standards out there. The White house -- thesis they are
standard and they are pretty good. The White house team is excellent. You could feel very
comfortable buying from them and looking at what they do and taking information from them.
Schema (dot) board is another place. These are the parameters and properties of organizations. It does depend on what kind
of data you are working with. Your data might be completely unique to you. There's no easy
answer. There are plenty of places to borrow inspiration from. A couple of people wrote
in to point out that there is functionality within Excel these days for pulling these
things in using the data tab. I definitely wish people who want to do this in Excel all
the best. The advantage of Google docs is it's already been online. If your goal is
going to be great something that you can readily share is a webpage it good to stand up roster
when you can. At the end of the day there's a good exposure, geek to live and don't live
to geek. What we're -- we are trying to boost to get things done what it covers the screws
best for you. Did you answer what kind of database this is stored in ?
>> I didn't. It's a SQL database. We don't do anything fancy. Pretty straightforward
data we don't have to use super modern databases. >> Another question was can you set the parameters
to view the statistics for each service I know you have experimented with a mashup that
shows for each agencies with USDA number of usable content et cetera. I know that we have
talked about -- if you go to registry that USA.gov and you go to -- -- go to the bottom
with the mash ups, those are focused on providing access to the contents just like Jed was presenting
on them like I showed in the beginning. If you want to browse the videos and images that
works. If you want statistics than the question -- -- then the question is taking this API
and layering it would the twitter API or YouTube API. It's definitely possible. If you click
on the first get have mash up, it's like the social network for developers. It's a bit
-- what we did was we took the registry -- layered it with -- and if you look at the right column,
there's the stack from each of the repositories which give how many requests, how popular,
that can be done with other social networks. With the registry does it it tells you what
accounts there are. It doesn't bring in any content from those accounts. What Gray ensuring
it is -- which government agencies are on get have and get have can tell us what they
are doing. Similarly you can create a mashup that says show me the last tweet from every
NASA, twitter account. >> Basically as we wrap up, want to plug a
couple things. This will be posted on how to.gov/training after the fact. Also there
is to sign up for tomorrow version. API standards webinar. Even if this made 50% sense to you
by recommend watching it because it's good. We have one more? Came in. Asking if the social
media registry was voluntary. We asked all the Feds an agency to register? We would love
every agency to register and be involved. We've got participation from the vast majority.
If you're not in their pleas we would really like to have you join in. My email is Gray
(dot) Brooks. It is Gray (dot) the RO oks. >> I don't have anything else do you question.
>> Here's my contact info again for people. I feel like I wanted this to be a very basic
introduction to understanding how APIs work. I hope I accomplish that. If I did not end
if anybody has questions I would be very happy to talk to people. Thank you very much for
your time. >> Thanks, folks glad to have you on . [ Event
Concluded ]