Connected Devices, APIs and the New Web - Can You Make the Shift to a Post-Browser World? »

Two weeks ago the Wall Street Journal ran the story ‘Sam's Club to Use Wi-Fi to Push TVs,’ highlighting internet-connected TVs which run popular social media or video applications. Last week WSJ highlighted how cable companies are getting their content on the iPad in response to excellent execution by Netflix and Hulu. This week, WSJ reports how businesses like law firm Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, Bausch & Lomb, and Mercedes-Benz Financial are adopting the iPad as a business tool. APIs are all over the business press as early leaders emerge and competitive pressure to succeed in the multi-device web heats up. 

Chris Anderson sees the trend. From his excellent feature article in this month’s Wired:

Over the past few years, one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semi-closed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display. It’s driven primarily by the rise of the iPhone model of mobile computing, and it’s a world Google can’t crawl, one where HTML doesn’t rule. And it’s the world that consumers are increasingly choosing….

We’ve seen a shift like this before. In the late 90s, consumers adopted the web to search, shop, and socialize. Companies who recognized the shift capitalized (think Google, Amazon, or eBay), and those who couldn't innovate fast enough suffered. 

How can consumers reach your service or interact with you on their device (phone/set top/tablet/car/other) of choice? Can your service or data be included or embedded in applications consumers love? What would be the impact if your main competitor’s service was available everywhere and embedded in popular applications and devices?

An open API strategy allows you to engage and capitalize in the multi-device world - and just like we saw in the 90s with websites, companies need to adapt to succeed. 

Location, Location, Location: Retail APIs in the Post-Browser World »

Since the beginning of retail, store location has been a key ingredient for success. Forward-thinking retailers are now considering ‘location’ online as consumers move beyond the browser, increasingly spending time on their mobile phones, iPads, game consoles and other devices.

Last week Dana Mattioli of the Wall Street Journal wrote an article on “Retailers Ring Up New Sales on Smartphones” on highlighting the significance of a mobile strategy to the new world of retail. Hal Lawton, president of homedepot.com, expects 30-40% of their traffic to come from mobile devices by 2014. Retailers like HomeDepot are going to where their customers are by executing multi-device strategies.

But how can a retailer get onto all these devices, and to all the other places online where their customers are spending time? As depicted below, APIs are the center of a multi-device, multi-channel strategy:

And additionally, APIs are how online retailing is moving from a direct to an indirect model via new applications from partners and 3rd party developers. Here is a diagram illustrating the new retail chain: 

But it's not all easy- each of these channels poses unique technical challenges. But it's worth it: for less than the cost of a single new brick-and-mortar location, you can use APIs to be everywhere your customers are.