// Blog
Clarifying How the Pieces Fit Together
Originally published on the Clarify.io blog. View archived copy.
Videos that can’t be found are unexploitable assets.
But imagine if videos, or parts of videos, were more discoverable, based on what was said in the videos. How many more viewers could those videos or clips get if people could find the ones they care about?
Companies with lots of video assets don’t ask their developers to make them searchable because the technology didn’t exist. Until now.
One of the things you can do with Clarify’s API is make an entire video library searchable. This is possible because we’re taking audio processing technology out of research labs and making it accessible to application developers.
But how could we get business people to consider using our API when only developers could understand it?
Developers love to solve puzzles, and this is a puzzle our company needed to solve. The solution, it turns out, was surprisingly simple. We needed business solutions – i.e., software – that demonstrates our API’s potential to business users. We thought of those as solution proxies. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the resources to build them. We’re API developers, not application developers.
Another puzzle.
Recently we met Michael Pazienza, founder of Mashbox, an agency that has developed many creative ways to build solutions on APIs. Mashbox, like Clarify, is based in Austin, so we were bound to meet. We’re now thrilled to be one of their first customers.
When we first got together to talk about the project, we expected a difficult conversation. We didn’t really know what to ask for, which wasn’t a good starting point. The conversation went something like this:
“We have an API that lets developers search the contents of video files. Can you build something cool with it?”
“Got it. No problem.”
No pushback. No request for details. No warnings about poor specs.
We braced for the worst.
But a week later Mashbox delivered mockups that blew us away. They didn’t just visualize the API, they brought it to life.
Three weeks later they delivered a site that showed how easy it could be to search through the entire catalogue of TED videos if they were first processed by Clarify. With almost no direction, Mashbox nailed it.
Remember that I said we like puzzles? The code name for this project is Jigsaw. We chose it because we intend to work with Mashbox every time we release a new feature, or every time we want to show a feature in a particular context. Each one of those solution proxies will be a piece of the bigger puzzle.
While we, and hundreds of other API companies, were struggling to figure out the best way to market our products, the very clever guys at Mashbox decided to start a company whose sole mission was to do just that. Michael Pazienza and Sam Decker founded Mashbox last year to build visualizations of APIs.
Their visualizations are creating the business solutions the market needs. We now look forward to seeing what Marshbox’ work inspires.