More API ... Build Your Own Interaction

An updated API is now available that starts letting anyone bring the pieces together to create mobile interactions. As before, the web service API is on the test server at https://peridot.goskip.com/skip.asmx and you can get a dev key by emailing me. The secure connection which was originally optional, is now required.

The API adds three new operations. Two of them ("MemberExists" and "CreateAccount") can be used to programmatically create new Skip accounts. Why would you want to do this? Suppose you had, say, a site oriented around a conference. You could give users an option to add conference events to their Skip account... and if they don't have a Skip account, but you have their email addresses, you could automatically generate a Skip account for them and insert the new activities.

But here's where it gets really fun: suppose you want to create interactions for these users, meaning real clickable menu items on their mobile device, associated with the conference activities you've just created for them. We've implemented a system that lets you do this in the easiest possible way. Using the "PublishAction" API, you can specify a display name (what shows up on the mobile device menu) and a URL that Skip will call back when the person clicks the item.

Technically, Skip will issue a HTTP GET to the URL you specify, will append ?user=xxx or &user=xxx as appropriate, where xxx is the user's email address, and whatever text you return from the GET (probably best to keep it short!) will become the "result" document from the user's Skip action invocation. When you call PublishAction, the API returns a bind key (a GUID) that you insert into the Publisher Data field of any item you create and that you want to feature your new menu item. The syntax is [bind:xxx] where xxx is the bind key. You can include more than one action on an item as well.

So here's a quick example. You're organizing this conference, and you want to offer your users event data through Skip. In addition, for conference keynote sessions you want to offer a quick "Thumbs Up" or "Thumbs Down" rating menu item. First, create the Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down actions, with as much specificity as you like (e.g., different URLs per keynote). Let's say you publish Thumbs Up, asking for a callback at http://www.tempuri.org/rating.ashx?keynote=monday

You then create the Monday keynote event for your users, and pass the bind key expression in the publisher data. When the user views the keynote event, she will now be offered a clickable menu item "Thumbs Up" -- and if she clicks it, Skip will make a call to http://www.tempuri.org/rating.ashx?keynote=monday&user=jane@janedoe.org in real time.

Where you go from here is up to you, but the possibilities are huge -- these callbacks are versatile enough that with a little creativity you can use them for restaurant reservations, ordering food, meetings, conferences ... they are pretty much a generic mobile front end for any one-click simple transaction that you might currently make available via the web.

Two final notes...

First, these APIs will continue to expand, allowing you to update items you've published in real time, and allowing you to create more complex interactive menu items with "wizard" type workflows and graphical elements. We already use these techniques at Skip for travel industry transactions like airline check in, and we want to make them available for general use.

Second, you might have read this far and are thinking "This is news? I publish a label and a URL, a user clicks something and your system issues a HTTP GET to the URL and returns a document ... isn't this called the web, and the technique is like 15 years old?" If you're asking this questions, then the answer is "Yes, exactly."