mashups for the faint-hearted

Creating mashups used to be a terrifying prospect, strictly for hard-core geeks.

Now those who are only moderately geeky can create mashups using widgets and other cool Web 2.0 tools.

Example 1: blog aggregator

I edit and develop a blog aggregator, MetaPagan. Anyone can contribute to this using del.icio.us, a social bookmarking site.

• Contributors tag the content they want to contribute on del.icio.us, using a preset list of tags, such as metapagan.activism, metapagan.community, metapagan.politics and so on (where metapagan is the name of the blog aggregator).

• del.icio.us creates a collective RSS feed for each of the tags, under the URL http://del.icio.us/tag/metapagan.activism

• I then use Widgetbox to create a blidget (blog widget) of that feed, which appears on an individual page of the blog.

• Then I use Yahoo! Pipes to pull all of the feeds together (including the posts that are manually posted to the blog) into a single aggregated feed.

• This aggregated feed is then passed into another blidget (MetaPagan contributions) which people can install on the sidebar of their blogs if they wish. I have also turned this blidget into a Facebook application, using the instructions at Widgetbox.

Example 2: Multiple blogs imported into Facebook Notes

As I have about five personal blogs, each on a separate topic, I thought it would be easier for Facebook friends who were interested in all the topics if I aggregated all my blogs into one feed and imported it into Facebook Notes.

I used Yahoo! Pipes to pull all my blog feeds into a single aggregated feed, and then imported that feed into Facebook Notes.

cool tools

For people who want to bring together different services to create a unique blend (also known as a mashup), there are some really useful and easy to use tools out there.

Widgetbox allows you to develop small applications for embedding in webpages. The easiest widget to set up is the blidget, which fetches an RSS feed (from a blog, news service such as the BBC or the University's News pages, del.icio.us tags, Yahoo! Pipe or Flickr) and creates a shiny widget for embedding in a web-page, or for turning into a Facebook application or Google gadget.

Yahoo! Pipes allow you to bring together (aggregate) several different RSS feeds, filter out duplicate items, add author information, and so on.

Flickr is an online photo storage site, where you can display your photos (either publicly or so that only friends and family can see them), and you can use advanced search to obtain photos for use in presentations and on websites under the Creative Commons licence.

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site, which means it is like bookmarking a favourite page in your web browser, but the bookmarks are saved on the del.icio.us website, and tagged with labels to make them easier for you and others to find. Each page on del.icio.us (whether it's popular tags, all tags, your bookmarks, or one of your tags) has an RSS feed associated with it, which can then be imported to a blidget or an RSS reader.

Zotero is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work — in the web browser itself.

Jotform is the first web based WYSIWYG form builder. Its intuitive drag and drop user interface makes form building a breeze. Using JotForm, you can create forms, integrate them to your site and collect submissions from your visitors.

Google Scholar provides a search of scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources, including theses, books, abstracts and articles. You still need your Athens account to log in to many of the resources you can find via Google Scholar, but it searches across all of JSTOR, Ebscohost, Blackwell Synergy, the DNB, Google Books, etc.

Google Books - Google have digitised many books libraries around the world. If the book is out of copyright, you can download the entire book, and search all of its content. Books that are still in copyright only allow a limited search. » More information

These are just two of the many tools offered by Google.