There are several distinct types of mashups – consumer and enterprise. Enterprise mashups usually occur over secure networks, and are processed on a server, while consumer mashups are more forgiving, and accomplished on the users’ desktops. Web-based mashups usually use the clients web-browser to do the combining and reformatting of data. The various data streams must be sent to the client device as individual data streams so that they can be processed. Server-based mashups will do the analysis and reformatting of the data on the server side and send the data to the client as a single data stream.

Early mashups were created manually by programmers. As with many programming break-throughs, they were first done by enthusiastic programmers just to see if it could be done. As mashups became more popular, there arose a market for tools to simplify and speed up the creation of mashups. Software companies responded by creating tools that allow designers to construct mashups in a visual environment. All the potential components of a mashup are presented in this visual environment and can be connected to create the desired mashup. While mashup editors have made the process of creating mashups much simpler, they have not done a lot to create new ways of accessing the data to be combined. Mashup Enablers address this problem by adding new types of data that can be added to a mashup. A mashup enabler is defined as “the service and tool providers that make mashups possible”.

This type of technology was impossible until recently because of the speed of the average consumer internet communication. The number of http requests needed to ‘feed’ one page of data necessitates a high speed connection to the internet. And the very nature of the requests makes pre-made dataset presentations unfeasible. Associated technologies such as XML, SOAP, JSON and evolutions in Javascript capabilities have also facilitated adoption of slick representations of this and other Web2.0 applications.

Here’s a mashup created using Yahoo pipes. Yahoo pipes is a graphic interface which allows querying, filtering, sorting manipulating and formatting output from sources across the internet. This particular one taps several RSS feeds using technology from Yahoo and Delicious. The combines them into a single feed which is sorted by dates so that the most recent articles appear at the head of the list. If left to its own devices, the pipe would return hundreds of thousands of articles! But for our purposes, we limited it to the 15 most current articles.
(add references to other Paladin articles above)

However, with the advent of readily available high speed processing on the desktop and high speed communications, this mashup technology is beginning now to come into its own. Web pages that before were static and ‘dusty’ and were outmoded before they were published are now beginning to give way to dynamic conversations between the provider and user. Mashups are one way of delivering custom tailored content to a hungry consumer with an ever shortening attention span and an ever expanding demand for information.

For the business owner, it is also a boon. Here is an excellent way to provide up to the minute content which can be tailored to the needs and desires of an interested customer – kind of like an MIRV missile (multiple independently-targeted re-entry vehicle). This is very powerful magic from a marketing and business development point of view. And even more exciting is that after the relatively small initial setup cost, the business owner can have his website updated and fresh, targeted to any individual customer or prospect by piggybacking on the technology of someone else!

Here’s a mashup using Flickr.com and Flickriver.com. Flickr is the repository of data containing the photographs, and Flickriver provides the technology that produces a randomly ordered list of up to 500 separate images from a pool of Flickr files. The list is different every day, so this blog article will show a different crop of images every day -automatically!

No, this is not plagiarism. It is perfectly legal and respectable. The providing companies expose their API (application programming interface) to the public exactly for that reason: they are anxious for other sites to share their technology because it establishes themselves as an industry standard, and makes it more likely that they will get a larger share of the business generated by the downstream customers .

If you feel that your company might benefit from such an enhancement to your web site and marketing program, please feel free to contact us. Additionally, we welcome comments on our articles in the space provided below.

A few months ago, I answered a question posed, i think, on one of the LinkedIn discussion groups (as MrPaladin) where someone wanted to know about Web2.0. My answer was roundly accepted as authoritative and descriptive. But in retrospect, it was probably provincial and pedantic. The answer I gave described the feature of Web2.0 applications that allows interaction with the user without reloading the page. I used as examples perhaps web pages with stock tickers, or news tickers which constantly update their content, or folks who put their latest tweets from Twitter on their web page to be updated the minute each gem of wisdom gets published.

That answer was correct, but one dimensional, because it focused only on the appearances and apparent technology. In a practical sense, Web2.0 is a much larger concept.

At Paladin Consultants, LLC we do web sites, and web services. Many of the technologies we use come from more sophisticated and mission critical applications. Over the past decade, developments in computer languages, processing speed, band width and transmission speed has grown, with an associated increment in demand and expectations for more sophisticated content, marketing, interaction, and entertainment in web sites. This article is an exposition of some of those methods and techniques.

Another article, which discusses the technology of XML (eXtentible Markup Language) was published a few weeks ago in our blog.    XML is another indispensable tool for creating and maintaining content in web2.0 pages.

The early web sites were billboards. They advertised their clients’ product for all who passed by. This progressed rapidly to shopping carts, so that the passers by could order and pay for products. But there were obvious limitations. In the first place, folks don’t like to read long web pages. So the amount of information offered on a page needed to be limited, or, even better, refined so that the user got served only what he was interested in.

Second, marketing grew more sophisticated. Instead of just offering products to a mass market, web sites not are able to establish a kind of a dialog, or relationship with the customer. This is accomplished through interaction over the web. You don’t want to force the customer to reload pages with every choice, so new technology now allows the user’s machine to go and request new data, choices, colors, or what have you while the customer is browsing elsewhere on the page. That new information is requested, received, and formatted behind the scenes, and inserted into the appropriate place while the customer reads on without interruption.

This Twitter widget is something I have resisted putting on our blog and web site. Not all the things I mention on Twitter are, strictly speaking, technology and business related. But in the overall context of things, perhaps that’s not all bad. People sometimes value that the folks they are dealing with are real people and have personalities just like them. And this Twitter widget is a good example of how you can be more in touch and interact with your customer. It puts a ‘human face’ on your company brand.

Web2.0 is said to be the embodiment of more exciting, interesting and topical content into today’s web by using new technology such as javascript, video, sound, and content from other sites. Interaction and content from Flickr, Twitter, Google, YouTube. The ability to embed this new technology into web sites and deliver them to users through their browser brings a welcome new dimension to web communication with the customer.

Story of my life from Paladin Consultants LLC on Vimeo.

Here’s a very short video a friend recently sent me. It suits me to a tee philosophically, and it is illustrative of the purpose and intent of this article in a very real way. See if you don’t agree that content of this sort will make a user more receptive. See if you don’t agree that it can go a long towards establishing a connection between the site’s owner and the prospective client/customer/user.

Here’s a demonstration of a web2.0 technique that combines the solution of economy of screen real estate with a clever way of ascertaining and then delivering content tailored to a user’s preferences.  Click on one of the dark subject words below.

Web2.0 is a great technology because it delivers on target to so many points:

Interest
By your choice of ‘Interest’ you have shown that this subject is a key hot button for you. You don’t need to be bothered by the other items, and clicking on the key word can be both recorded and rewarded. At the same time, screen real estate is conserved. Sometimes when a user is confronted with a huge page of text with no ‘candy’ he will move on before you get your point across.

Content
You are able to add interesting and rich content to your articles or pages in a way that didn’t exist until very recently. Sometimes you might want to add a video extolling the virtues and benefits of your products, or convey an idea in an entertaining way.

Marketing & SalesHere, as I suggested above, you are able to ferret out the user’s preferences, and deliver a targeted response. You are fmeeting his/her needs in a way that was impossible before. You are able to establish esily a relationship with the user which is non-threatening and helpful. And this technology will help you distinguish yourself from your competitors.

ROITechnology, properly implemented, is an effective and cost saving technique. You are able to use a veritable smorgasbord of other sites’ technology (such as in my Twitter example) including Google, Flickr, Yahoo, and many many others. Many sites encourage use of their content, and even provide maps, or hooks into them because they want to cooperate and establish a standard. This is good because you can use this free content to offer information and service to your clients. A prominent example of this is Google Maps, which are appearing on many retail sites today. And, although the technology is not ‘so simple a caveman can do it’, it is well proven, reliable, and effective.

The purpose of this article is to suggest various ways that one can improve his content and delivery to targeted and happy potential customers. The fast moving technologies embedded in web2.0 web pages is growing more powerful and pervasive every day. If I were to talk about all of the technology, the article would too long and uninteresting. So I have confined my remarks to suggesting business uses of this technology. If you would like to see more examples shown in a non-technical and non-threatening environment, the folks at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan have put together an excellent primer on the subject. Another, more technical source is the W3Schools Online Web Tutorials.

Please feel free to comment on this article below.

Facebook and Twitter were innovative at the time, and helped businesses form a relationship with clients with a more personal approach, allowing a subtle transition from a purely passive approach to their prospective clients to a more pro-active and personal one.  A lot of folks missed the point of Twitter and Twitter and came late to the party.  The same can be said for the late adopters of Facebook, who didn’t understand their kids’ fascination with the social aspects of Facebook.  College kids live on facebook.  Andif you had any doubt about the centrality of Facebook to the zeitgheist of our society, one need look no further than Michaele and Tarek Salahi’s crashing the Whitehouse state dinner late last month.  Pictures of them and Obama and them and Biden were on their Facebook page before dawn.

I wish I had a nickle for everyone who commented on my embracing the Twitter idiom with a snide comment like, ‘What do I care what people had for breakfast.’  A lot of folks are missing the point of both of these social sites:  they provide a way to form quasi social relationships, and so called weak friendships.  Their point is that people are more apt to do business with people with whom they have some sort of connection.  If you’re looking for someone to re-do your kitchen, you’re much more likely to choose someone from your church, or even someone who is friendly with the butcher whom you lilke.  I am not a big Facebook user because it is too time intensive, but I have met quite a few friends, professional colleagues, and business partners on Twitter.

But Twitter is still a quasi passive platform, though the lines are blurry.  I do know that the easiest way to turn someone off on Twitter is to come onto him with a hard sell:  ‘I’ve made $15,000 this month on Twitter, and I can show you how to do it, too!!!!!’

But thee are now on the horizon two very important developments which promise to significantly enhance the power of using Twitter.

But first a small diversion.  Earlier this year, an enterprising your Australian named Chris Duell developed a site called Twitterhawk.  Now the idea of Twitterhawk is that the site sifts through the Twitterstream looking for key words that you set that occur near a geographic location that you specify.  So if you were a carpenter in Peoria, you might set up a search that looks for kitchen remodeling in Peoria.  Twitterhawk would return to you a list of those tweets,  And, for a few cents a tweet, Twitterhawk would send a series of rotating tweets to those whose tweets you designated as appropriate targets.

Back to those new Twitter innovations.  The first was the implemenjtation of lists on Twitter.  Now you can create lists of folks on Twitter that you follow.  And you can categorize them with common traits, for example software architects (like Paladin Consultants, LLC ), or economists, or photographers.  It helps you keep track of people, especially when you have lots of followers.  You can see the Twitterstreams of these lists, and even get an RSS feed of them.  Better still, in most cases everyone has access to virtually all of everybody else’s lists!

And where can you find and mine these lists?  Listorius is one of the first resources dedicated to managing the new feature.  Mashable also has a growing arsenal of Twitter Lists.  Unless I miss my guess, new sites dedicated to this new tool will be popping up like mushrooms after a spring rain!

The second innovation comes from a site called Listimonkey, a site designed by a very clever young Belgian expatriate named Xavier Damman, now living in the Bay Area.  He has also managed to secure a domain name in his own name!  Anyway, his wrinkle on Twitter is that if you send Listimonkey the name of a twitter list, a key word or phrase, and your email, Listimonkey will email you with a set periodicity the tweets from members of that list contain your key word or phrase!  Now, although there is some SEO juice and pride in having a large list, this is not necessary to work with Listimonkey.  In fact, you can use anybody’s public list!  (Most lists are public.)

Now think about that.  If you are a real estate agent in Chicago, you might watch somebody’s Chicago list for the key word ‘moving’.  If you were a photographer in Atlanta, you’d watch somebody’s Atlanta list for the keyword ‘wedding’ or ‘getting married’.  And, Listimonkey allows you to create as many of these list/keyword combinations as you like!  Very powerful, and a dimensional abstract improvment on Twitterhawk’s idea!

But Listimonkey is good not only for finding new customers and clients.  It’s great for finding out about new products, techniques, people, trends- wealth of information from one site that harnesses the communal information it mines from the Twitterstream!

I’m afraid Xavier’s innovation will spell bad news for Chris Duell and Twitterhawk.  It’s a shame, but the market marches on.  One can only wish Chris Duell luck, and hope that he has another great idea.  But with talent like he’s shown, I am sure that his next idea is right around the corner.

But getting back to Listimonkey, as those emails come rolling in from Listimonkey, it would be pretty easy for a good software developer to come up with a program which would parse those emails as they came in, and then tweet appropriate messages to the originators of those tweets mentioning the keyword(s).  Xavier has such a good idea, that I predict will soon overrun his mailserver.  But that will be an happy problem for him to solve!

Please leave a comment, so we know whether or not we are on target!  It helps us find out what our readers think.

This is the second article in a series about the usefulness of Microsoft’s excellent OneNote software. In this article, we discuss using OneNote as a companion tool in our main business of developing custom software and designing websites and web services.

As software developers, we are using a variety of languages(VB.Net, C#, Java, Ruby, SQL, PHP, etc.), as appropriate with any given project. Yes, we have code libraries, but it is not always east to identify and extract the exact code in the language needed at the time. We also develop for clients lots of web services, and web sites that rely heavily on database interfaces. So we have lots of database designs and routines already developed and ready to be applied. We have found that OneNote offers the categorization, segmentation and retrieval capabilities we need to give all of our developers access to a common set of tested, well-developed and bulletproof code. In addition to the code, OneNote permits a ‘mixed’ media of code, comments, notes, and implementation narrative and suggestions and anomalies – all searchable through the various formats and categories of information types.

If you’ve been around as long as we have (20+ years) you find that many of the tasks you do for clients have a common thread. Sometimes, you develop a routine, or process for one client, and then several years later another has a similar need. Sometimes, these procedures are complicated, and you don’t want to have to re-develop a product you’ve already sweated over. And, after the first 20 clients or so, you find that it’s difficult to remember where or for whom you already developed that process. That’s where the OneNote software library comes in.

Using key works, phrases, and language searches, we find that we can easily identify legacy code that’s been debugged and proven successful – and apply it to the current project. Sometimes, we enhance or revise the code slightly to accommodate the new application. This is certainly a very efficient way to leverage our expertise and deliver excellent custom software products to our clients that are guaranteed to last for the life of the project.

To save space, we won’t reproduce pages of code here. But the concept is simple enough to visualize: each code entity is prefixed with tags, and a description of its purpose, use, and interfaces. We discuss revisions, and the application and client for which it was employed. These factors make the code easily findable in the many pages in our code notebook. The code is tagged with its language, and comments for expansion and modification, and a revision history.

Here’s another use for OneNote. We are not fanatics on the subject, but do keep a garden and a lawn. One of the things that made us unsuccessful as we could have been in the past is that we always seemed to miss the window of opportunity to do something in the planting/growing cycle. So I made this BIG Calendar, and slightly modify it each year. On Jan1, I make Outlook tasks for appropriate dates (takes 1/2 hour) for the year. You’ll notice that the list has grown somewhat from its original intent, but the functionality lends itself to be helpful for other seasonal things in addition to planting, weeding, etc.

My gardening center has this quirky gimmick: when you buy something, you get a 10% coupon that can be only used two months in the future. That degree of organization of my personal life made me seethe. The I developed this calendar to exploit those coupons. I figure that this OneNote system saves me about $100 a year, because I am able to use those coupons. When I get the coupons, they go on the fridge with a magnet. The plan for these redemptions is baked into my system.

Oh. One other thing. This entire article was written on the way to a client meeting in NY on the train. I emailed it from my Blackberry, sucked it into OneNote and corrected spelling, etc. Then I pasted it to WordPress, and imported the picture.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T