More Social Mashable Content

A new service was announced by Mashable that will give us access to even more social data for mashing up:

Today, Yahoo is releasing a new service: Firehose, a real-time, searchable index of social content aggregated from around the web.

Accessible via YQL, Yahoo’s SQL-like query language, the Firehose will gather data from status updates, user ratings and reviews, comment threads, Google Buzz, Flickr, Delicious, Twitter, YouTube, Last.fm and a range of other sites and apps, as well. The Firehose is part of Yahoo’s family of Social APIs, a suite that includes APIs for contacts/directories as well as update/status data.

Enhanced Google Maps Mashups

Today I taught a workshop on mashups and told the attendees that a map mashup is the easiest kind of mashups to create. This is true – but with a bit more work you can create a fancy map mashup for you site. This tutorial by Peter Steen Høgenhaug helps you do more with your Google Maps Mashup. Peter helps you put your company logo and areas of interest to your map, making it look just that little more more unique.

A Google Maps Mashup with PHP/MySQL

Today I found this awesome tutorial that I think will help some of you create more detailed Google Map Mashups.

This tutorial is intended for developers who are familiar with PHP/MySQL, and want to learn how to use Google Maps with a MySQL database. After completing this tutorial, you will have a Google Map based off a database of places. The map will differentiate between two types of places—restaurants and bars—by giving their markers distinguishing icons. An info window with name and address information will display above a marker when clicked.

In addition to that you can find a ton of great Google Map Mashups as the Google Maps Mania blog.

As always, feel free to send me any examples that you’ve done (or that you’ve found) in libraries!

WorldCat API News

This directly from OCLC:

Now anyone and everyone can create apps and mash-ups using library data from WorldCat, the world’s largest library catalog. Because the WorldCat Basic API is here!

This new API is a simplified version of the WorldCat Search API. Send it RESTful URI queries in OpenSearch, and it retrieves results in RSS or Atom. The WorldCat Basic API can support up to 1,000/queries per day for noncommercial use. In addition, the WorldCat Basic API provides:

Learn more about the API at the OCLC website.

10 Cool Google Map Mashups

I found this awesome list of 10 Cool Google Map Mashups on NerdModo. Some are pretty useful like the mileage between two spots – others are just silly like if you started digging where would you end up?

Check out the entire list on NerdModo.

Yahoo! Pipes International

I am working on an article for a UK magazine about the book. I’m including examples of using Yahoo! Pipes and have found an issue that the International audience should know about.

I’m trying to do a map mashup and find libraries near London, UK – but the only way to do this is with Yahoo! Local for the US – and so no results are found. I have played around with Yahoo! Local UK & Ireland and it find results, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to do this through Pipes.

This makes it difficult to use Yahoo! Pipes to create simple map mashups – and is very disappointing.

Microsoft shuts down PopFly

Microsoft’s PopFly mashup tool is mentioned in chapters 1 and 2 of this book, but as it turns out this product is no longer going to be available come late August.

Unfortunately, on August 24, 2009 the Popfly service will be discontinued and all sites, references, and resources will be taken down. At that time, your access to your Popfly account, including any games and mashups that you have created, will be discontinued. However, Microsoft is still very much dedicated to helping you express your creativity and pursuing a path to software development and offers multiple products to help along the way. If you’re interested in refining your skills in Web applications, please visit Microsoft Web Platform Installer. For those interested in programming on the Xbox, then please visit Microsoft XNA or Microsoft Kodu. And for those who are interested in Windows programming, please visit Microsoft Express. If you have questions or concerns or just want to drop us a line, contact us at popfly@microsoft.com.

You can find more in this announcement from Microsoft.