Pro Web 2.0 Mashups (eBook)

Raymond Yee is a data architect, consultant, and trainer. He is currently a lecturer at the School of Information�of the�University of California at�Berkeley, where he teaches the course "Mixing and Remixing Information". While earning a Ph.D. in biophysics, he taught computer science, philosophy, and personal development to K-11 students in the Academic Talent Development Program on the Berkeley campus. He is the primary architect of the Scholar's Box, software that enables users to gather digital content from multiple sources to create personal collections that can be shared with others. As a software architect and developer, he focuses on developing software to support learning, teaching, scholarship, and research. Raymond is an erstwhile tubaist, admirer of J. S. Bach, Presbyterian elder, aspiring essayist, son of industrious Chinese-Canadian restaurateurs, and devoted husband of the incomparable Laura.

Contents at a Glance 5
Contents 7
About the Author 20
About the Technical Reviewer 21
Acknowledgments 22
Introduction 23
The Web 2.0 Movement 24
Overall Flow of the Book 26
Intended Audience 29
Updates 29
Remixing Information Without Programming 30
Learning from Specific Mashups 31
Looking for Patterns in Mashups 31
Housingmaps. com 33
Google Maps in Flickr 35
LibraryLookup Bookmarklet 41
Tracking Other Mashups 46
Summary 46
Uncovering the Mashup Potential of Web Sites 48
What Makes Web Sites and Applications Mashable 49
URL Languages of Web Sites 54
Some Mashups Briefly Revisited 55
The Mashup- by- URL- Templating- and- Embedding Pattern 74
Google Maps 76
Amazon 80
del. icio. us 83
Screen- Scraping and Bots 85
Summary 87
Understanding Tagging and Folksonomies 88
Tagging in Flickr 89
Tagging in del. icio. us 94
Gathering Content Through Tags in Technorati 98
Using Tags to Mash Up Flickr and del. icio. us 99
Other Systems That Use Tagging 100
Relationship of Tags to Formal Classification Schemes 100
Summary 102
Working with Feeds, RSS, and Atom 103
What Are Feeds, and Why Are They Important? 104
RSS 2.0 104
RSS 1.0 106
Atom 1.0 108
Extensions to RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 110
Feeds from Flickr 112
Feeds from Other Web Sites 118
News Aggregators: Showing Flickr Feeds Elsewhere 122
Validating Feeds 124
Scraping Feeds Using GUI Tools 124
Remixing Feeds with Feedburner 125
Remixing Feeds with Yahoo! Pipes 126
Summary 130
Integrating with Blogs 131
Integration Scenarios for Blogs 131
Sending Flickr Pictures to Blogs 132
Desktop Blogging Tools 137
Combining Feeds and Blogging to Generate Feedback Flows 139
Flock: Bringing Together Blogs and Flickr 140
RSD: Discoverability of Blog APIs 141
Linkbacks 142
Wiki Integration at an Early Stage 142
Summary 143
Remixing a Single Web Application Using Its API 145
Learning Web Services APIs Through Flickr 146
An Introduction to the Flickr API 147
API Documentation, Community, and Policy 153
Using the Flickr API Explorer and Documentation 154
Calling a Basic Flickr API Method from PHP 157
The Flickr API in General 170
Request and Response Formats 179
Flickr Authorization 181
Using Flickr API Kits 190
Limitations of the Flickr API 194
Summary 195
Exploring Other Web APIs 196
XML- RPC 197
SOAP 206
Learning About Specific Web APIs 220
Summary 229
Learning Ajax/JavaScript Widgets and Their APIs 230
What You Need to Know 231
What Difference Does Ajax Make? 232
Learning Firebug, DOM Inspector, and JavaScript Shell 233
Working with JavaScript Libraries 235
YUI Widgets 236
Learning Google Maps 238
Accessing Flickr via JavaScript 242
Using Greasemonkey to Access New York Times Permalinks 245
Learning More About JavaScript and Ajax 248
Summary 248
Making Mashups 249
Moving from APIs and Remixable Elements to Mashups 250
Getting Oriented to ProgrammableWeb 251
Looking at a Specific Mashup Profile 256
Going from a Specific API to Mashups 257
Sample Problems to Solve Using Mashups 258
Summary 265
Creating Mashups of Several Services 266
The Design 267
Background: Geotagging in Flickr 268
Background: XMLHttpRequest and Containing Libraries 271
Building a Server- Side Proxy 276
Building a Simple Client- Side Frame 280
Hooking the Client- Side Framework to Flickr 284
Mashing Up Google Maps API with Flickr 289
Google Mapplet That Shows Flickr Photos 300
Summary 304
Using Tools to Create Mashups 305
The Problem Mashup Tools Solve 306
What You Are Making in This Chapter 306
Making the Mashup: A Step- by- Step Example 308
Analysis of Trade- Offs in Using GME and Yahoo! Pipes 331
Other Mashup Tools 332
Summary 333
Making Your Web Site Mashable 334
Why Make Your Web Site Mashable? 335
Using Techniques That Do Not Depend on APIs 335
Creating a Mashup- Friendly API 338
Easy- to- Understand Data Standards 344
Summary 345
Exploring Other Mashup Topics 346
Remixing Online Maps and 3D Digital Globes 347
The Number of Online Maps 348
Examples of Map- Based Mashups 349
Making Maps Without Programming 349
Data Exchange Formats 358
Creating Maps by API Programming 366
Geocoding 376
Google Earth and KML 384
Mapstraction and OpenLayers 396
An Integrative Example: Showing Flickr Pictures in Google Earth 396
Summary 413
Exploring Social Bookmarking and Bibliographic Systems 414
The Social Bookmarking Scene 415
del. icio. us 416
Yahoo! Bookmarks and MyWeb 426
Connotea 427
A Flickr and del. icio. us Mashup 431
Summary 435
Accessing Online Calendars and Event Aggregators 436
Google Calendar 437
30boxes. com 457
Event Aggregators 462
Programming with iCalendar 477
Exporting an Events Calendar to iCalendar and Google Calendar 480
Summary 490
Using Online Storage Services 492
Introducing Amazon S3 492
Rationale for S3 493
Conceptual Structure of Amazon S3 494
The Firefox S3 Extension Gets You Started with S3 495
Using the S3 REST Interface 496
Using the SOAP Interface to S3 500
Amazon S3 API Kits 501
Summary 505
Mashing Up Desktop and Web- Based Office Suites 506
Mashup Scenarios for Office Suites 506
The World of Document Markup 507
The OpenDocument Format 507
API Kits for Working with ODF 526
ECMA Office Open XML ( OOXML) 538
Comparing ODF and OOXML 541
Online Office Suites 542
Google Spreadsheets API 543
Zoho APIs 555
Summary 555
Using Microformats and RDFa As Embeddable Data Formats 556
Using Operator to Learn About Microformats 556
Definitions and Design Goals of Microformats 562
Microformats Design Patterns 564
Examples of Microformats 566
Microformats in Practice 571
Programming with Microformats 571
Writing an Operator Script 572
Resources ( RDFa): A Promising Complement to Microformats 576
Reference for Further Study 577
Summary 577
Integrating Search 578
Google Ajax Search 578
Yahoo! Search 580
Microsoft Live. com Search 583
OpenSearch 587
Google Desktop HTTP/ XML Gateway 589
Summary 590
Creative Commons Legal Code 591
License 591
Index 597