Web 2.0 - Mashup and APIs

You must have read ‘iGoogle, making life integrated!’ However, there is not only iGoogle to make your life integrated. Yahoo’s Flickr & Yahoo Maps; Microsoft’s Windows Live are similar kind of web applications who combines all third party data and make it useful at one site.

Mashup is combining data and functionality from variety of source into a single integrated tool. Now, there are many web applications based on this concept. Here are some interesting mashups
1. iGoogle
2. Google Maps, Yahoo Maps
3. Google Reader
4. Yahoo Flickr
5. Windows Live

Fetching information from other sources is generally done using Syndication, Web Services or public APIs provided by sources. News related sites provide RSS, Atoms Syndications; where as applications, services sharing sites use Web Services and APIs. Google Maps APIs, Open Social API from Google and FaceBook markup language are some popular APIs.

Developing a mashup application is creative task now a day. It needs to take APIs from different services and have to create new, innovative mashup which will be beneficial for the user on web 2.0


One of the innovative mashup I found is Yahoo Pipes . Learn more about pipes at http://blog.pipes.yahoo.com/about-pipes/

Microsoft on ‘Web Innovation’ in December this year.

Lately, Microsoft is really trying hard to make an impact in web 2.0 era. After developing a multimedia suite that is expression suite it is now applying thoughts on how web 2.0 will be from Microsoft’s prospective.

After the International web 2.0 conference in November this year, Web Innovation 2007 conference will be the stage for the designer, developers, Managers, Specialists, Entrepreneurs to know about web 2.0 and business around it. It will be on 18-19 December 2007 at Bangalore, India.

There are two tracks for the conference, Business Track and Technology Track. Get the details from their site link http://www.webinnovation.in. Off course Microsoft not included Google in the Web 2.0 conference, however Yahoo!, AOL and Adobe having a place in it!(?) You can go to the site and register yourself for the event.

For the promotion of the event Web Innovation Designer Contest 2007 is there. Contest is open to all types of Professionals as well as Students and with no participation fees being charged. But they want their participants to use their Expression suite and Silverlite as applications to make UI and animations in the contest.

Before you start with GPhone, you can use Google mobile applications on your mobile

As we know, Google is going to announce its mobile platform strategy on 5th Nov 2007. This will assure development environment, components, APIs, business tiers, user interfaces and mobile browser with instant messaging service for Google mobile. Google already have almost 30 industries including Intel, Qualcomm, Broadcom, Nvidia, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, China Mobile, Telefonica, NTT DoCoMo, LG Electronics, and HTC on board for this project.

However, Google already started integrating its core business with mobile. Its online products like Search, Gmail were already available on mobile web. And step by step other online services like Blogger, Picasa web, Reader, News, Calendar etc were made available on mobile web. Google also offers downloadable products like Gmail mobile and Maps mobile on handset. In India, Airtel provides Google search on its WAP portal 'Airtel Live!'

Till today, Google provides more than 10 online services on mobile. It includes Blogger Mobile, Calendar, Gmail, News, Google Mobilizer, iGoogle, Product Search, Google Reader, Mobile Search, Picasa Web Album. Go Google mobile to access these services on mobile. For help, how you can use these services on your mobile, you should check mobile.google.com


Hope, Google mobile platform strategy will bring new innovations in mobile life.