Planning and building a mashup: Toolbox Activity 10

Written by: Jonathan Briggs

December 10, 2008 [4016 views]

This was previously published as an EXTRA activity but now it takes its rightful place as Number 10

This activity is about Mashups; web based software systems that build on data and services from other software systems.

This activity counts in exactly the same way as the others; 5% for each part. The deadline is January 13th 2009 at midnight.

During this activity you will

Explore existing mashups to see the range of applications that are being produced
Select 2 that you think are particularly clever or useful
Find data sources from which a mashup can be created
Devise a mashup of your own that could be constructed using this data
Explore and evaluate some of the tools for creating mashups
Construct a mashup of your own (part 2)

Part 1

Using the links below explore some the mashups that have been published so far. Make sure that you look at a range of different types including news, mapping, music, sport, shopping, mobile etc.
Try and work out how much effort has been involved in manipulating and presenting the data
Think of a mashup of your own. This is hard but if you think about things that you might use (in your local area perhaps) or about topics in which you are particularly interested then I think you may find this possible. Perhaps consider a very specialized news service or plotting some cool information onto a map very local to where you live.
Now have a look at some of the tools (at least 2) for creating mashups and see which might be suitable for your particular idea. Try and find some new ones. Make notes about them as you examine them so that you can select one if you do part 2.

Here are the questions you have to answer to pass part 1 of this activity

How would you describe mashups to someone who has never heard of them?
Provide the correct URL links to two mashups that impressed you
Describe why each of them was interesting
Which tools did you try (at least 2)?
Describe what each of these tools does
Describe the mashup you would like to try and create

Here is the survey link for feeding back your answers to Part 1

Part 2

Ok, go ahead and try and make your mashup! To complete this activity you don’t have to get it completely working but you need to be able to explain how far you got.

Describe the user experience you are trying to create?
Describe the data sources that you will use?
List the URLs for these data sources
List the tools that you use to experiment with manipulating these data sources
How far did you get?
If you succeeded in producing something then take a snapshot of your screen, post it on your site (or somewhere) and include the full URL
What problems did you face and how did you solve them?
Why do you think mashups will be important to your future IT career?

Here is the survey link for feeding back your answers to Part 2

Deadline for feedback and inclusion in results: Tuesday 13th January 2009 Midnight