GROUP ITERATION 2

Well, up to this point I think we are on the right track. I am sure we could do better but this is what we came up with so far. We have incorporated Google maps, and also two other proxy servers. One of them gives us an RSS feed with concerts all around the country called 5gig and the other gives us the rating of a particular band or song called billboard. I think our idea is pretty cool, but it seems very hard to implement due to limited knowledge in Java.

The best part about our project is that 5gig gives us already the latitude and altitude of the particular concert locations. The problem is that we do not know how to tide them together. The problem we are facing is that we are pulling the full RSS feed from both proxy servers. I did try to follow the book and the professors notes, but still could not figure out how to pull only particular information of the xml file. To be honest the book confuses me more.

So for Iteration 2 it would be nice to have the feeds segmented and have them talk to each other. Hopefully we can have more progress by tonight's presentation. By the way if someone could help us, it would be greatly appreciated. All i can say is that I am trying to follow the book but it definitely slows me down since it confuses me more. I might be the only one who feels that way though.

So here is what we have so far .....

Mashups

I decided to do a little research on mashups after Wednesday's class. I was shocked that being an IS major I have never really heard the term before even though I knew what the concept was. Mashups are really just websites that combine information or technology from other sources into one allowing less effort from a user to find information they need. Specifically, Wikipedia defines a mashup as "a web application that combines data and/or functionality from more than one source".

The example that was given in class was explaining how we can search for homes or businesses and see them on a map instead of just getting an address. Mapping mashups are just one popular type used today. Video's are used to mash up lyrics with a related song from youtube at a site called songlyricsbook and photo's from Flickr are mashed up with twitter updates. Newspapers and news stations use RSS which allow users to choose which topics they want to read from which source instead of going to each individual site.



Mashups seem to be taking the internet by storm and I'm sure as time goes by there will be more an more websites created for the sole purpose of mashing. In fact, there is one popular site called programmable web that is strictly a mashup directory for mashup websites. The website breaks them down into categories and even offers a how - to section if mashups are something that interest you. You can also find more information on the technology behind mashups at IBM.