Mashups for a Small Nation

"Mashup, or bootleg, is a musical genre which, in its purest form, consists of the combination (usually by digital means) of the music from one song with the a cappella from another." — Wikipedia article 'Mashup (music)'

Mashups on the Internet mix up websites.

Introductions

Who we all are, what we already know, why we're here.

Example mashups

• What mashups have you heard of?
• MyApartmentMap - mixes craigslist with Google Maps
• BBC News Maps - news stories
• WriteToThem - electoral boundaries, postcodes, councillor data
• What ones do you want for your own projects?

Technologies

• Serverside vs. client side
• Javascript Tutorial
• PHP
• What is RSS?
• Can add geographical info etc. to RSS, e.g. PlanningAlerts in Denbighshire,
  UK pledges on PledgeBank. Copy RSS URLs into Google Maps
• APIs, e.g. TheyWorkForYou API
• Screen scraping (real world HTML)

Workshops

A. Bed and Breakfast map

• On basic B&B site show people where it is
• Google Maps API signup, copy and paste the code it gives you to make an HTML page.
• Change the latitude and longitude - find new one using search on Google Maps, then use "Link to this page" and look in the URL.
• Add pin by copy and pasting code from this example B&B map

B. Member of Parliament's speeches

• Get last thing your MP said in Parliament
• e.g. Elfyn Llwyd of Meirionnydd Nant Conwy, person id 10368
• TheyWorkForYou API
• XAMPP, install PHP easily on Windows

C. Your suggestions :)

Resources

mySociety sites

• TheyWorkForYou. Postcode lookup of Welsh Constituencies. Find informatoin about Welsh MPs. You can add the Welsh Assembly.
• Planning Alerts. Made by Richard Pope, as a volunteer. Denbighshire County Council only. You can add more councils in Wales to it.
• Neighbourhood FixIt. Report broken things to Welsh councils.
• PledgeBank. Make pledges, can be specific to an area. Postcode / town lookup of active pledges. You can finish off the Welsh translation.

Mashups in General

• programmableweb is a database of example mashups
• Yahoo pipes lets you make mashups with a graphical interface wiring things together