Archive for April, 2010
Trulia Adds Apartment Search
In my mashups workshops I teach attendees about Trulia. It only makes sense that I update you all (those who have attended my workshops) on the fact that Trulia is now adding apartment listings and other rental listings. This from the press release:
Trulia.com (www.trulia.com), smart real estate search to help consumers make better decisions, today announced the launch of its advanced search for rental listings. Trulia users can now take advantage of Trulia’s smart search engine to find the perfect home to rent or buy. In addition to more than 4 million homes for sale, consumers will now have access to millions of rentals across the United States.
Thanks to Lifehacker for pointing this upgrade out to me.
Library Mashups at SLA2010
I’ll be giving a hand on mashups workshop at this year’s SLA annual conference.
Sunday, 06/13/2010 8:00AM -12:00PM
Learn what mashups are and how they can be used, plus share examples from libraries around the world. Attendees will learn what tools to use to mash up library data with content from the web to reach more patrons. This hands-on workshop includes examples such as using maps to enhance library data, using Flickr for digital collections, and creating library websites with data from several information sources.
This workshop is for CE credit and if there aren’t enough registrants by the 27th of April it will be canceled. If you’re interested register soon!! The registration link can be found via the Conference Planner on the SLA site.
Mashups 5 Years Old
Programmable Web had a post a couple weeks about announcing the 5th birthday of the first web mashup:
Five years ago Paul Rademacher reverse engineered Google Maps to put Craigslist homes and rentals on a map on his site. The site essentially pre-launched the map mashup category, because there was no Google Maps API at the time. Even now, Paul’s HousingMaps.com is the prototypical example mashup and still used by many to find their new homes (and our HousingMaps profile is of course one of the first mashups added to our directory back in 2005). Since then, as we’ve seen, the Google Maps API has gone on to be the most popular API to use.
I have to admit that in all of my research, I didn’t realize that HousingMaps.com was the first ever web mashup. Learn more on ProgrammableWeb.
Book Signing A Success
Thank you to all who came to the book signing at Computers in Libraries. I got to talk to a bunch of awesome librarians – all excited to improve services at their libraries using what they learned in the book!
If you missed it but want a copy of the book, just visit the InfoToday site and make your purchase.
Technorati Tags: cil2010
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.
Don’t miss the book signing
Tonight at Computers in Libraries 2010 at the opening reception in the Exhibit Hall at 5pm. I’ll be at the InfoToday booth signing copies of Library Mashups.
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.
