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Category mashing
MicroContent mashing is the combining of two and more MicroContent Items, into a larger container. Ususally such a MacroContainer is a web-page, but one can also combine Items in RSS-feeds, in applications, etc.
03 Jan 2007
Widgets predictions
Erick Schonfeld predicts that 2007 will be the year of the widget.
I agree, I will add this to my list of predictions as well. Widgets point to something new, another way to re-use data. The idea of widgets is nothing new. Yahoo had it already many years ago and could be used to create a personal start-page. But that was only limited to widgets and data offered by Yahoo. The new thing is that one can mix data from multiple services. This is not very new either. I had weather and statistics widgets on my homepage many, many years ago.
Many of the ideas in widgets have been around a long time. I find it difficult to grasp what it is now different. One thing that is different is the visibility. It is now much more common (although far from mainstream) than before. There are many more widgets around. I find the most interesting the de-coupling of widget-code and data. Thus one can define a RSS-widget separate from the data. This can be extended to the enclosures in RSS.
Widgets are still a bit gimmicky. When will they be more useful on an enterprise level? For my business site, I only use Google Maps as widgets..
[Inspiration Marc Canter]
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MicroContent •
client •
widget •
mashing
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22 Dec 2006
Genealogy Too
Dale Dougherty is discovering genealogical data. He suggests that it is very suitable for mashups of all kinds. And I agree. This data could be a mashup Web 2.0 dream. You can do a lot of visualising. I am not aware of Web 2.0 work on this, but it could be great. At least for those that have large databases. My database contains several thousand persons. Genealogy knows a standard dataformat (gedcom). So one can view this data as FOAF, MicroContent avant le lettre. Importing and exporting is no problem, so let the mashing begin.[Inspiration Dal Dougherty]
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MicroContent •
mashing
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15 Nov 2006
Opening up applications
Marc Canter defines the rules for walled gardens on the web. I realised that the same is true for applications. An application should not act as a silo or walled garden either. And what I see happening on the Mac, is that applications are opening up. It seems more like using other applications data, than adding to that data.
For instance the Web site development package Sandvox allows users to add images, movies and bookmarks to web-pages. An other non-Apple applications do similar things. This follows other Apple applications such as Pages or Keynote. Or goes back to even earlier applications such as Mail, where one can access Items (mail addresses) created in AddressBook. What we see here is a MicroContent Layer, which can be accessed by any application that needs an Item form that layer. At the moment this layer consists of address cards, images, videos, audio, bookmarks. Access to these MicroContent Types is through the Media browser or Address Panel. Note that all these MicroContent Types share the fact that they can be stored as individual files.
One can foresee that this idea of an independent layer with MicroContent will be extended in the future to encompass other Types, such as events and todo's (on the horizon). I do not see any signs to extend to other types (reviews, recipes, etc). By the way we talk here about mashing and not just viewing.
And even further on the horizon I expect integration with MicroContent on the Internet. Only addresses on LDAP servers are possible now. I'll keep my eye open for other examples.
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MicroContent •
mashing
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25 Oct 2006
outside.in service
I like this service. It is a mash-up of various things, but centred around location. Usually location based search meant finding the businesses in that area. This service adds blog-posts and news relative to an area. So in a sense you get thus the local newspaper.
Thus if you write about a location in a blog-post, add the actual location as tags, so that it can nicely mashed-up
[Inspiration Johan Battelle]
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MicroContent •
mashing
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29 Aou 2006
Flickr Geotags
I have been playing a bit with the geotagging feature of Flickr. I like this interface. Just drop the image from the image browser on the right location. I guess that's the way to do it. Unfortunately the Yahoo maps (and images) are not very good for my region. So the locations will not be very accurate. But you can always change them when new Yahoo stuff comes available.
The Flickr map for all users is interesting. Interestingly different zoom levels will show different photo set. I wonder what the logic is behind this. I found my images at last at the lowest zoom level, Anyway there are many more geotagged images than shown on the highest zoom level
I have not yet found a way to see the actual geographic locations. One can see a map under Additional Information, when one looks at an image, but no actual coordinates. But maybe it is a good idea to hide these technical details.
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07 Aou 2006
Flickr Cameras
Searching by Camera Type. I have no idea whether this is useful at all, maybe if you want to check out camera picture quality. But it is a good example of MicroContent. It allows a user to search the structure of MicroContent, one can search the values in specific fields/ At least that is what I expect them to do in this mashup.
[Inspiration Programmable Web]
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04 Aou 2006
WidgetBox
Widgetbox proposed a standard for creating 'smart' blogs. As this is an implementation of the MicroWeb, I had a closer look at how this is supposed to work.
The basics is still the layout of a modularised web-page consisting of multiple modules (or widgets, parts). Each module contains its own MicroContent Item(s). And each module might contain a different MicroContent Type. Nothing new here. It is about the content that appears in each module. Usually the MicroContent Type that should appear in each module is determined by the Context Author. This Context Author is the web-page creator, but can also be an end-user, as is the case with Netvibes.
Which Items appear in each module is determined by some logic. Usually one sees the newest Items in a module, such as in a blog. There are however no relations between the Items in each modules. And that is where this standard comes. Based on a key that appears in one MicroContent Item, the MicroContent Item of an other module is determined. As an example they give the keyword 'Brad Pitt' that appears in a blog Item, This keyword would result in a image of Brad Pitt in another module (and Item). The module/widget is then called 'tag aware'.
This is a great example of creating a MicroWeb: linking individual MicroContent Items. There is not much info how this will work, but one thing is the passing of keys (keyword/tags) between main and secondary MicroContent Item. The widget needs a key in order to retrieve the right Item. I guess this is where the Widgetbox service comes into play. And also the widgets themselves need some work.
I think this is a very interesting development. It will create very dynamic web-pages. There will be less need for web-page developers and things go more into the hand of the end-user. And the need for MicroContent will only increase.
[Inspiration Marc Canter]
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25 Jui 2006
API Parity
I am rereading some of the discussion around API's and Flickr. Marc Canter seems to be totally in favour of API Parity. In the discussion I am missing the owner of the photo's What does he want? Does he want somebody else to take his photo's and host them elsewehere? And what kind of operations are allowed on the photo's? So does hosting at Flickr allow for commercial hosting on Zoomr? I do not think so?
MicroContent Hosting companies that support API's should better define what can be done with the MicroContent hosted by them for users. They should integrate Creative Commons into their system and let users decide what is allowed and what not PER photo. Any API should follow these licences. And with an increasing amount of mashing this only becomes more important.
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MicroContent •
mashing
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23 Jui 2006
(Re-?)defining mashing
For the MicroLearning conference I prepared a talk about mashing. The definition at set by WikiPedia A mashup is a website or web application that uses content from more than one source to create a completely new service.
does fit reasonably well. I however miss any reference to MicroContent in the Wikipedia article, which I find essential, also in the context of Web 2.0.
When working on the proceedings paper I realised that I would rather have a stricter definition for mashing. At the moment I describe mashing as combining individual MicroContent Items from multiple sources using set parameters
. In the definition there are three main parts: MicroContent, Sources and Parameters. Why the MicroContent is there should be clear. It is the basis of syndication, API's, re-use, etc. I am not sure whether the Sources part is necessary, it would exclude all mash-ups that I create myself from my own content. However it surely makes things more interesting. For me however the most interesting part of mashing is the Parameters part of the definition. That is about how we can combine MicroContent Items. It is about how MicroContent hangs together. And how MicroContent hangs together depends on rules, personal choices and the structure of MicroContent itself.
A consequence of the definition is that a Google Map service usually is not a mash-up. As the maps themselves are not MicroContent one can not really talk about a mash-up. Only the individual points on the map are MicroContent Items. These Items can come from multiple sources and why they appear on a map might follow some parameters, so usually a Google Map might be a mashup. But only thanks to the points on the map.
A map acts as a canvas to put MicroContent Items on, just like a web-page acts as a canvas, or a grid in Flickr, or a table of links in Del.icio.us, the table in iTunes, etc.