What are the essential tools that every IT person should have in the modern IT world? That is the idea behind a new Kingston University module called IT Toolbox. Over a 12 week semester, first year students will be guided through a series of activities such as blogging, running a server, client and server side scripting, search, social networking and problem solving. Each of those activities will be published here and anyone is welcome to join in.

hide alert

Mobile social mashups and the future (lecture 10 - the last one)

Written by: Jonathan Briggs

December 5, 2009 [2178 views]

Video from Jonathan Briggs on Vimeo.

This is the last session of the module and I want to look back over the last 10 weeks and forward to the future. This is a highly experimental module; a journey that most of you have followed all the way.

Most of you are now able (or close to being able) to:

  1. Build a website using powerful content management software (Wordpress)
  2. Buy and operate your own hosting server and domain names
  3. Move files around inside your server and from outside
  4. Manipulate links, images and links to video
  5. Describe the interactions of your server and search engines
  6. Use analytics software to explore who is visiting your site
  7. Describe the importance of reputation and social networks
  8. Think about ways in which web businesses make money
  9. Experiment with mobile
  10. Experiment with modern coding and design techniques including xHTML and CSS
  11. Create mashups that combine data from different sources
  12. Solve problems with others or on your own

I hope that what you have gained most is an idea about how tackle difficult topics and how to find out about things yourself. You’ll need to do that from now on.

Web services and SOA

The last activity has helped some of you begin to explore mashups. But they are not just ways of enhancing your blog. They fit into a much bigger trend called Service Orientation.

Many big sites now allow access without using the normal web browser interface via programmable web services

http://www.strikeiron.com/

  • Look for Application Programmatic Interfaces and Web Services
  • XML used to communicate between systems (like RSS but more general and more complex)
  • A variety of different programming models: SOAP, XML-RPC and REST
  • Allows interoperability between different systems
  • Allows one system to build on the data provided by another
  • Allows one company to focus on providing a service particularly well
  • Can be accessed and programmed in any language (Java, Ruby, C#, PHP, Python)
Here are some examples
  1. Set up your own store using Amazon or Google checkout facilities
  2. Write your own auction management tools for eBay
  3. Integrate mapping into your site or application
  4. Integrate mobile messaging into your application
  5. Manage scalable storage and streaming programmatically
  6. Create new interfaces or search mechanisms to browse existing content
  7. Build price comparison engines
  8. Allow members of one network to share messaging with members of another

http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=3435361
http://developer.yahoo.com/
http://code.google.com/
http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/
http://developer.ebay.com/common/api/
http://www.kayak.com/labs/api/search/

Experiment in the future
  1. Use other people’s code
  2. Use other people’s data
  3. Create prototypes
  4. Create new interfaces
  5. Create businesses
  6. Integrate your applications into social networks
  7. Integrate your ideas into software you imagine, design and build
Some very recent interesting things
  1. Google moving to real time search http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10410599-265.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0
  2. Time Magazine imagines what it will look like on a Tablet http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5CzQyjw1Gw
  3. Microsoft demos Pivot http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/04/meet-pivot-microsofts-newest-data-visualization-tool/
  4. News International will remove content from Google http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/digital-media/6559694/Rupert-Murdoch-to-remove-News-Corps-content-from-Google-in-months.html
Some big challenges for those of us in IT
  1. Keeping up to date
  2. Charging properly for what we do
  3. Running projects on time and on budget
  4. Developing the next big thing
Tips for the next few years
  1. Keep blogging as a record of your growing knowledge and confidence
  2. Use your blog to keep a portfolio of the work you do
  3. Build small sites for familiy, friends and small businesses
  4. Don’t work for free (unless you have to)
  5. Keep throwing away what you have done and build better versions
  6. Learn to programme/prototype even if you are not going to be a programmer
  7. Learn enough xHTML & CSS & AJAX to be able to build mockups
  8. Keep an eye on what is happening at the bleeding edge of the technology
  9. Don’t just learn the theory, try out the practice
  10. Recognise that you’ll learn more on your own than sitting in some lectures
  11. Find people to learn with
  12. Keep asking awkward questions until you get interesting answers
  13. Set yourself unrealistically high goals
  14. Make sure you are enjoying what you are doing

Recent comments:

On December 8, 2009 at 8:40 PM, james wrote:

just a link to my website

http://www.sharewired.com/

On December 9, 2009 at 9:09 AM, Jagmit wrote:

I am getting a lot of hits, i advertised on forums, affiliates. I made £8 on google ads :D. I get backlinks from a lot of websites who randomly add me to their blogs. I also coded some parts of my skin myself to fit the purpose.

Btw, this is the sea dragon application for iphone/ipod touch. Its made by Microsoft...
http://tinyurl.com/seadragonapp

http://www.jagmit.com

Jonathan replies: Thanks - glad you are getting traffic.

On December 9, 2009 at 10:00 AM, Ricardo Smith wrote:

Just a quick question. I was reading the Google article about the search engine becoming real-time, but at the end it says "Not all users may see the new section immediately" - Why is that? Is it just due to us using different web browsers?

http://ricardosmith1990.connecttojigsaw.com/ricardo20

Jonathan replies: Nope - Google has hundreds of data centres and tends to take a few days to roll out changes across all its properties.

What do you think?







Add your comments