Cosmos and culture mashup
competition
‘celebrate cutting-edge astronomical
technology alongside stunning objects
from our world-class historical
collections’

Objectives
• Make best use of the limited (10K) budget
and staff time to get the highest impact
web presence for Cosmos & Culture
• Experiment with new ways of making
objects available via the web
• Experiment with new ways of attracting
user-generated content

What is a mashup?
• Combines data from one or more sources or
visualisation tools into a single integrated
interface – takes existing information and shows
it to you in a unique way
• Wikipedia: ‘easy, fast integration, frequently
done by access to open APIs and data sources
to produce results that were not the original goal
of the data owners’
• Multisource or presentation mashups

Geo-located services

Maps

What is an API?
• A set of programming instructions and standards for
accessing a Web-based software application
• API documentation from planningalerts.com:
• Single Location by postcode
– Return applications near a given postcode. The area included is
a square either 400m (s), 800m (m) or 4000m (l) with the
postcode at it's center.
– http://www.planningalerts.com/api.php?call=postcode
&postcode=[some postcode]&area_size=['s' 'm' or 'l']
• Single Location by longitude/latitude
– Return applications near a given longitude/latitude. The area
included is a square either 400m (s), 800m (m) or 4000m (l) with
the longitude/latitude at its center.
– http://www.planningalerts.com/api.php?call=point
&lat=[some latitude]&lng=[some longitude]area_size=['s' 'm' or 'l']

What are the benefits of this
method?
• Possible big impact with small budget
• Ties in with key C&C messages -
astronomy is inspirational, amateur
astronomers can still make important
contributions.
• Provide our audiences with new
visualisations and interpretative contexts
for objects

How are mashups made?
• Decide what you’re making
– Maps, timelines, images,
• Decide where your data is coming from
– Our API will provide information about C&C objects
– Google, Yahoo, Amazon, IBM, provide APIs and data
visualisation tools
– Other public domain data sources?
• Work out technical issues
– do you have the programming, user experience, design
expertise you need? What framework will you use? Where will
you host it? Do you need to find team mates?
• Start designing, programming, testing

How would the competition work?
• Judging, criteria?
• What would competitors submit?
• What will that produce for our audiences?
• What do the winners get?

Criteria - examples
• ‘Mashup Awards’ judged on: uniqueness,
creativity, utility, content and user experience
• JISC dev8D Developer Decathlon: The
evaluation criteria for the competition were:
relevance to the user problems, coolness,
usability, plausibility for adoption, functionality,
overall. “These criteria are only provided as a
guide to entrants and to judges as some may not
be relevant for all submissions. The only criteria
that is not flexible is relevance to the user
problems.”

What would people submit?
• Hosting
• Code
• Licensing issues
• Platform documentation

What will that produce for our
audiences?
• This is the big question!
• Mashups can present a synthesis of
information sources and visualisation that
provide new insights into our collections
and provide methods of exploring related
data that go far beyond the visitors’ initial
query

Scheduling impacts?
• Centenary press and marketing campaign
• ‘summer of space’ – six week marketing
campaign
• 'MoonWatch' and other International Year
of Astronomy 2009 events
• Cosmos and Culture gallery opening