Mixing and Remixing Information

See

• s09-Day 03 Working with Feeds, RSS, and Atom
• s09-Day 04 Creating Mashup Projects from APIs

See also the Project Proposal Format

If you are an avid NPR listener like I am, you might be interested in tracking NPR stories. I really enjoyed the Fresh Air interview with Elizabeth Warren (the chair of the Congressional Oversight Committee on TARP)  in December: What Does $700 Billion Buy Taxpayers? : NPR.

Question to answer here :  can one keep track of any new entries about Elizabeth Warren on NPR?

One possible approach:  try creating a podcast feed from NPR Podcast Directory.

Another approach: if you want more flexibility, try API Overview : Tech Center : NPR.  Register for a key at NPR: Your Account and Profile. Then head over to the Query Generator and look at the documentation on the query  parameters.

But first, it’s useful to do a query with the UI: NPR: Search Results — which returns good results.

To learn more:  read the coverage of the NPR API at NPR: Search Results.

I will assign the task of creating a feed as an exercise.

The following are unrefined notes from a brainstorming session we held in class today on mashup ideas, and as such are somewhat incoherent!

weekend/evening escape planner:  car + budget + time:  yelp, AAA (extension: move to new city – ask people)
you have particular tastes: what’s in the neighborhood? (yelp is pretty good…)

smart tool for packing – weather conditions. something like this: upl.codeq.info; ikea-type instructions for packing efficiently (NPR)….

if a bus is near you, you can jump on….nextbus.

pandora – where are artists from? using wikipedia….generate map of where artists are from….

a tool to scan myspace to tell you where/when artists are playing…going.com – itunes api? last.fm api

cooking – list of recipes + ingredients and help make shopping lists – a bot to pull together related recipes from different sites… (Yahoo! BOSS)

economic governance indicators – how to come up with indicators – correlations to GDP, etc.  data in many websites; how to consolidate data? visualizations to support understanding of this data

meta-dating site – extract and filter from match.com, eharmony, craigslist., etc….Find me someone who likes jazz on Friday night and sends email out to possible matches.

generic matching:  e.g., iPod parts, books, possible partners – sends out alerts…

maps that stretch based on data for location + open gov’t data….

Indian trains mostly late…combine schedule + SMS of travelers for status update

server-caching and local caching (HTML 5, gears, etc.): journal entries on your mobile phone, syncing…

course scheduler….

If you are in learning about the Google Geo services, please come to thee following workshop:

Google Geo Developer Workshop
Monday, Feb 9, 2009
12:30-3:30pm
110 South Hall, UC Berkeley

The Google Geo Developer Workshop at Berkeley is a hands-on workshop devoted to Google Geo APIs. You’ll get to see demos of what you can do with Google Maps, Mapplets, and Earth, and spend most of the time working on your own cool project. Googlers Mano Marks and Roman Nurik will be there to provide advice and technical assistance, and guide you through sample projects such as making an interactive campus map, displaying your observational data in Earth, or planning optimal routes between your classrooms and favorite lunch stops.

For those people that are just getting started with APIs, we’ll have some code labs to help you learn the important stuff. For the more advanced developers, we’ll help you out with your code.

Come, bring your laptop, bring your data, and be prepared to code!

(Feel free to send this invitation to others you think will be interested.)

If you have any questions, please send contact the host for the session, Raymond Yee (yee@berkeley.edu)

We’re going to be changing rooms from 205 to 110 South Hall starting tomorrow. We should have better WiFi coverage in that room.

See notes for today: Mixing and Remixing Information » s09-Day 02 Remixable Elements in Flickr and Tagging.

Today is the first day of the Spring 2009 edition of Mixing and Remixing Information (INFO 290-5) — which I will call InfoRemix09 for short.

For a sense of the overall flow of the course, see Mixing and Remixing Information » Class Schedule.

Among the electronic tools we’ll be using in the course are this blog and bSpace (specifically, the bSpace site for InfoRemix09).

For notes for the first day, see Mixing and Remixing Information » s09-Day 01 Course Introduction

Today, we had an open house at which students showed off their projects to an active and appreciative audience. For those of you who want to take a glance into what happened today, check out the video produced by Kara Andrade (Online strategist & News Editor for the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education).

Please read instructions I’ve posted for the final presentations, projects, and the Open House:

http://blog.mixingandremixing.info/s08/presentations-reports-openhous

See the schedule for the presentations at

http://blog.mixingandremixing.info/s08/presentation-schedule/

and the current project descriptions at

http://blog.mixingandremixing.info/s08/class-projects/

http://blog.mixingandremixing.info/s08/day07/