Before this unit I had never heard of a web mashup, so this week I looked into existing Mash ups to inspire me for my assignment.
http://portwiture.com/ was one of my favorite mashups. I think it is a really interesting concept and I like the idea of visually representing what people talk about on Twitter.
'Twitrans' was another mash up I liked that translated tweets into different languages. I like it because while it's really simple I think people would use it. Unfortunately, I didn't get to use it as the link appears to take you somewhere else now (http://www.onehourtranslation.com/)
http://lolwr.us/ LOLWALRUS was a site I had heard of before this unit. Again, I like it because of simplicity and the fact people would use it given how most people know of Lolcats.
I noticed a lot of the mash ups I liked used Twitter, although unfortunately after trying to use it in my pipes I became frustrated as I found I could really get relevant tweets.
What is a Web Mashup?
A mashup is web application that combines data and information from different sources to create new information and services on a particular topic.
Generation
I started serious brainstorming this week. A couple of ideas I am still refining are:
1. “Fuzzy” a site designed to cheer people up with a collection of youtube videos/flickr images of cute animals with the aim to cheer the user up. Similar to 'LOLcats' or 'I can has Cheezburger' (http://icanhascheezburger.com/).
My main concern with this site is it’s originality as this is a major category in the marking criteria. http://mashupawards.com/criteria/
I can however see people using it and I also think it’s ‘doable’ with my current knowledge of Pipes.
2. A site where the user can enter a grocery item e.g apples, bread, milk and information from Coles, IGA, Aldi and Woolworths shows how much the item is and where the supermarkets are on google maps.
I think this site would be very helpful. I live near a Coles, Woolworths and Aldi and I would save a lot of time if I knew in advance who had the cheapest product.
My concern is whether this can be done or not as I have had a hard time finding RSS feeds on all these sites.
3. My final idea was for a site that was similar to Lonely planet but just provided more of an overview of the country. Eg. weather, maps and photos
I think this idea is too unoriginal and doesn’t have enough ‘live data’ besides the flickr photos.
Refinement
For my Mash up I have decided to go for the 'Fuzzy' idea because of my skill base, and what I think I'm capable of. A mash up that gathers content that is 'cute' e.g puppies, kittens, babies. My inspiration for this idea came from http://cuteoverload.com/ a friend told me she could never be sad after looking at this site.
I have began to generate some possible layouts for my site.
Color Palette
I don't really like the header of this design. I only used photos and videos in this design as I'm having a bit of trouble with finding appropriate news content for the mash up.
This is probably my favorite design. I have included a news feed in this design as I would like to use and am currently working on a twitter hashtag pipe.
My Pipes
This pipe is for my news feed. I looked at Dave's example feed for the Japan Tsunami page we made in week 3 and tried to replicate it as best I could. I was having heaps of trouble getting the pipe to output what I wanted until I realized I hadn't yet changed the 'YQL' so I was still getting Japanese earthquake feeds.
This was probably the most complex pipe I did.
This is my Videos pipe. It's pretty straight forward, just a YouTube feed.
This is my images pipe. It's pretty simple again but probably one I had the most trouble with. I found it was hard to control the content but when I added a filter it blocked everything. It was hard finding the right words for what I wanted photos of.
This was the last pipe I did for my twitter pipe. I used the example pipe Dave put on his blog. I have had problems with it, mainly concerning the output. Sometimes the pipe outputs irrelevant things people have tagged and other times it stops working. I think I will still include it in my final pipe though.
My Mash Up
(Final Refinements)
After looking at this design I didn't really like it. I think it's all a bit jumbled up. I decided to have pages instead, dividing my information into visuals and non visuals so the first page will be photos and videos and the second, news and tweets. I had decided not to use tweets but changed my mind after the pipe started working again and the content was entirely relevant.
I also felt this color scheme wasn't that aesthetically pleasing, so (courtesy of http://www.twitter-backgrounds.net/) I found a more interesting one....
FINAL MASH UP:
https://student.ci.qut.edu.au/~n7567049/KIB230/Assessment1/Fuzzy1.html
Concerns/Evaluation
After completing my web mashup I am happy with both the content and the visual aspects of my submission. I had some serious doubts about my ability to complete this assignment when first given it but I think the knowledge I've gained will come in useful in the future. If I was going to do a project like this again I would probably use PHP with my pipes as my understanding of it is not as good as I want it to be.
