Mashup University 4: Intro To Mashups

Cross Entropy Reduction for Image Analysis Using Simulated Annealing and Fast Artificial Neural Networks Mashup Camp IV, Mountain View CA

Introduction to Mashup Development John Herren Developer, Consultant, Masher-upper Mashup Camp IV, Mountain View CA

My Current Gig

Wikipedia Says
Mashup (music), a musical genre of songs that consist entirely of parts of other songs
Mashup (video), a video that is edited from more than one source to appear as one
Mashup (web application hybrid), a website or web application that combines content from more than one source

Do you have the mashup gene?
Did you repurpose your toys as a kid?
Do you still?
LEGO maniac?
Do you embrace the web as the ultimate maker's platform?
Are you frustrated until you figure out how things work from the inside?

Do you have the mashup gene?
Did you mourn the loss of Don Herbert?

Mashup Characteristics
Combination
Visualization
Aggregation

Combination
Use multiple data sources
Join across dimensions
Subject + Time/Place + ...

Combination Example
Input: Bands I like + Where I live
Data Sources: Eventful.com + Yahoo! music search
Output: nifty mashup

Visualization Example ChicagoCrime.org

Aggregation
Group your data and take a measure
Sum, Avg, Min, Max
Create information from the data
Which becomes new data itself
Use algorithms as a substitute for creativity!
Classification, prediction, clustering, NLP
Uncover hidden aspects of your data

Aggregation Example

Why Mashup?
Perfect prototyping platform
Hobby
Business
Embrace recursion
Embrace recursion
Profit! - Fulfill the underpants gnome prophecy

Step One
Collect data sources. Use APIs to find
Restaurant reviews
Crime statistics
Books about alpaca farming
What's an API?
Hotlinking 2.0?

Step Two
Make a mashup (duh)‏
Bootstrap a niche
Exploit the long tail

Step Three
Profit!
15 minutes of blogosphere fame
Monetize traffic with ppc/cpm ads
Affiliate programs
Sell advanced features or memberships
Sell it as software
Early acquisition
Your dream interview
Win a Sun Microsystems 8-core 32GB RAM Sun Fire T2000
(insert liquidity event here)‏

Case Study
Yahoo! News Tag Soup
Yahoo! interviews
Tagcloud.com
Crazy press - Wired, TechCrunch
Mashup Camp I
Under the Radar
Crazy Growth, VC’s
Deadpool
?

The Mashup Pyramid GUI Tools Code Libraries APIs Data Feeds Platforms

Data Feeds
RSS
ATOM
Demo

APIs
Dynamic data feed
Specific to the data service

Feeds How-to
Two turntables and a microphone
APIs and a scripting language
Easy to prototype
Easy to deploy
Scripting language is rarely the bottleneck
Two simple steps
Request-Response*
Iterate over response (result set)‏

Response Handling
Usually XML
SimpleXML: $rss->channel->item[0]->title;
JSON
Serialized Data
$results = unserialize(file_get_contents($url));
YAML

SOAP
Not really simple
Not really object access
Not really a protocol
But there is hope

SOAP in PHP
$client = new SoapClient("AmazonWebServices.wsdl");
$params = array(
'keyword' => 'alpacas',
'page' => 1,
'mode' => 'books',
'tag' => 'jhherren',
'devtag' => 'YOURAPIKEY');
$result = $client->KeywordSearchRequest($params);

XML-RPC
Easier than SOAP
Supports typing
Uses system.methodSignature instead of WSDL
Popular with blogging apps

REST
Representational State Transfer
Don't need extra layers
URI as resource
CRUD operations: GET, POST, PUT, DELETE
Stateless, cacheable, layered
(easier)‏

RSS Example
In Python:
import feedparser #by Mark Pilgrim
rss_url = "http://feeds.feedburner.com/Techcrunch"
feed = feedparser.parse(rss_url)‏
for entry in feed.entries:
print entry.title

AJAX & Browser-Side
Asynchronous Javascript and XML
a.k.a. XmlHttpRequest
Client side
XML, JSON, ...

Third-party Libraries & Frameworks
Check the API providers first!
Web Frameworks: Django, Ruby on Rails, Zend Framework
Yahoo! code libraries
Google AJAX Search API

Zend Framework Example <?php require_once 'Zend/Service/Flickr.php'; $flickr = new Zend_Service_Flickr('MY_API_KEY'); $results = $flickr->tagSearch("llama"); foreach ($results as $result) { echo $result->title . '<br />'; } ?>

GUI Mashup Tools
Graphical widgets
Boxely
Adobe AIR
SnapLogic

Mashups Platforms
No server needed
Graphical building tools
Think MS Access for mashups
Google Mashup Editor
Yahoo! Pipes
Boxely
Popfly
Dappr
Kapow
Facebook
(you really have no excuse now)‏

Mashup Tools

Browser Based Authentication
Login to the service, not the mashup
Provides anonymity, but not safety
Yahoo! BBAuth
Google AuthSub

The Mashup Pyramid GUI Tools Code Libraries APIs Data Feeds Rich, Easy Flexible, Low-level Platforms

Pain Points
Latency & Scalability
API limits, abuse & metering
API versioning
IP, copyright, licensing
Reliability & SLA
Monetization
Privacy, security, identity

My Predictions
More mobile mashups
More AI & datamining to supplement “user generated content”
Microformats catch on and get aggregated
OpenID catches on
“ Attention Capital”, “Attention Management”

The Reality
Twitter
Facebook platform

New Predictions
Increased competition among mashup platforms
iPhone, iPhone, iPhone
Microformat spam
The big players will implement OpenID

Resources
Programmable Web
http://programmableweb.com/
Yahoo Developer Network
http://developer.yahoo.com
Google Code
http://code.google.com

http://aaronlong.wordpress.com	24
http://creator-textcube.blogspot.com	19
http://www.slideshare.net	15
http://jhherren.wordpress.com	13
http://www.techgig.com	13
http://trunk.ly	2
https://oak.vanderbilt.edu	2
http://makeruna-iko.blogspot.com	2
http://www.gogohaku.com	1
http://creator.textcube.com	1
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com	1
http://www.digitalistic.com	1
http://myclassroom.cput.ac.za	1
http://10.150.200.57	1

Mashup University 4: Intro To Mashups

by jhherren on Jul 16, 2007

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