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Mashups in minutes: no knowledge needed

Posted 12 November 2007 at 8:08AM by Simon Dickson in Website development

Mash is the latest 'big thing' on the internet. If you think we're talking about the 70s TV adverts on YouTube, let me explain: 'mashing up' is the process of taking two different online tools or data sources, and putting them together. You'll have seen this countless times, often in Google Maps applications. It's not rocket science, but it certainly requires some serious technical knowledge. Or rather, it did.

Microsoft has just opened the doors to its Popfly service, joining Yahoo Pipes which launched in the spring. Both are tools intended to make it easy for non-techies to start mashing, and do a pretty good job of it too. You get a workspace and a bunch of tools: you drag the tools you want into the workspace, connect them up, then preview the results. Sounds easy? It is, sort of.

Popfly seems to be aimed more directly at the non-techies, with a lot more of the work already done for you. Its 'blocks' tend to be pre-configured for the big-name services. So for example, there's a Facebook block (in 'social networks') which pulls in your friends' status updates, and a 'bubble updater' display module to show them. Or there's a block to run a search on Flickr for the latest images featuring your chosen keyword, with a clutch of cool display modules to choose from. In a matter of seconds, you can connect the two, and see the output. When you're happy with your creation, you can 'mash it out': there's HTML to embed it in an existing web page (via IFRAME), share it via Facebook, or export it as a Vista Sidebar gadget.

It's pretty, and it's relatively easy to get something pretty out of it. Unless you're prepared to get your hands dirty with code, you're restricted to the library of blocks it offers you: but having said that, it's a decent collection which is expanding all the time courtesy of user contributions. It's a great place to start your journey into mash, and maybe impress your mates too.

I've always wanted to use the following words. Here's one I prepared earlier: a widget showing the latest items from the BT Business blog; if you're on Vista, try adding it to your Sidebar. (You'll need to download Microsoft's new Silverlight add-on if you haven't already got it: see our item from a few weeks back.)

Yahoo Pipes looks remarkably similar, but seems aimed at a different audience. With only a few exceptions, its blocks aren't predefined: you can specify any RSS or XML input feeds you like. And its outputs aren't pretty: again, it's RSS or XML feeds. But if you're trying to work with data like this, it's a fantastic tool. You could use it, for example, to pull together all your activity on various websites, sort them into date order, and output a single 'stalker' RSS feed. (You'll then need to do something with that feed, of course.)

You want another example? OK, I've built a combined RSS feed of this blog and our new BT Business Insight blog, showing the five latest items. Pipes lets you view it as a web page, or as an RSS feed in itself. (Which of course, you could then send into Popfly... etc)

Pipes assumes a lot more technical knowledge, but then again, you wouldn't really be using it if you didn't have at least some technical knowledge. It has a few unpredictable peculiarities, and you'll often have to resort to a bit of 'trial and error' to get what you want. I'm genuinely impressed with what it can do, and I'm already thinking of ways I could use it to add some extra zing to my websites.

Tags: facebook, mash-up, microsoft, pipes, popfly, rss, yahoo

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