Mashing
What is a mashup?
A mashup on the web is usually the combined result of two or more online applications being used to create another application. Many websites (mostly the large ones at the moment like Google, Yahoo etc but many others are) now share API (application programming interfaces) where with limited programming experience data can be searched/mined from one application and then ran through or combined with another appliaction to provide even more value. It's a great side effect happening with the advent of the "Programmable Web" and Web 2.0 developments.
For example lets say you used Amazon to find new released books on certain topics and created a result list of the cities the Authors come from. Then used Google Maps to graphically display where the Authors resided. Scrolling over any of these highlighted cities would fire up a popup on the screen that lists each of the Authors and from there you could click on their name to take you too the new book they have released. This is just one example where two seperate applications are combined to create even richer content. In the reference section are links to some really clever and interactive sites.
In this session we are going to create a very simple mashup of the RSS feeds we have collected and combine them into another single feed that we will insert into our OPAC just using Google Reader.
Other possibilities exist for instance where you have a few people in a team and each person collects their own news feeds on topics that are of interest to them. Each person individually tags their feeds into groups and then shares that tagged group as another feed which is published on the web. You could combine each of your collegues feeds into one master feed and then have this display on your library OPAC somewhere (we're using SirsiDynix Rooms) to render the finalised list as a group of links.
Google Reader
Over the past few months Google Reader has allowed users with a free Google account to have an online News Reader which you can take anywhere there is an internet connection, even your mobile!
But another great use is the ability to combine feeds from different sources and tag them under groups and then share these with others. Ideal for creating content that can be included within your OPAC where you have the ability to include RSS feeds. Google even have code snippets that you can include in your HTML code to help display this information if your OPAC can't automatically render RSS feeds.
Combining Feeds
When you are logged in to Google Reader click on the Settings link up the top right hand corner and select the Subscription tab. this is a listing of all the news feeds you are pointing to. Using the folder tags I have grouped a couple of the feeds under a tag called "library". You can make as many tags as you like.
Now click on the "Tag" tab. Select the "library" tag and allow it to be shared. The entry will now say that the tag is public. After you make it public you have a number of ways to share it.
- View public page - just creates a page on Google with all the shared feeds. You could just link to this. Click here for the example.
- Email a link - Use this to get the RSS feed details of this newly created combined feed and insert the link in your RSS reader on your OPAC. (If available)
- Add a clip to your site - Allows you to have the results embedded in your own website. An example of how this is done is at the end of the OPAC integration page.
Yahoo Pipes
Another mashing tool on the horizon is Yahoo Pipes. This online Java graphical user interface application allows you to collect feeds and search websites and then combine the results, just like Google reader. The big difference with this is you can manipulate the data after you have collected it. For example you could re-sort, filter on keywords or delete irrelevant results or even combine the results with another pipe you have created. The application is graphical so little programmming knowledge is required.
It's only been recently released and is suffering from a hammering from the amount of users accessing it but expect this to improve. It will be interesting what Google comes up with in the next few months.