Last day of this “72 hour” meeting.
This last day I attended three sessions:
Wiring the Web ( NGW058 )
Two members of Ray Ozzie’s team presented two of Ozzies brainchildren:
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Live Clipboard ( LC specification, LC screencasts ) The intention of LC is to share data between systems. Exchange data between websites but also exchange data from websites to and from the desktop.
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Simple Sharing Extension ( SSE specification ) This is an enhancement on RSS 2.0. SSE is a simple and uniform way to share and synchronize data. For example Contacts or Calendar entries.
There is also a sample application available, the “Live Clipboard Example". Playing around with it gives me a better feeling for the concept. Dissecting the sample application will be the next phase.
Building Components and Services for the Programmable Web ( NGW002 )
This was one of those sessions where everything falls in place. Nikhil Kothari used a simple application and along the way the application used allmost all of the topics that where covered during MIX06. The musicMix Mash-up application “consumed” the following services:
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iTunes Top Selling Albums
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Similair Albums from Amazon
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Artist Links from MSN Search In the next phase the music Mash-up application was used as base for a Gadget and a Playlist REST service. Some quotes from his presentation:
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A gadget is an uber-service
- Not just raw data, but UI, Logic and Personalization as well
- A face for your data and services
- Hosted by Windows Live, SideBar, …
- Mini-mash-ups; typically consume data/services themselves
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Why build gadgets?
- Stickyness and propagation of brand
- Reach end-users with services, not just applications
- Create new linking oportunities
In the previous presentation ( NGW058 ) the Live Clipboard was presented, Nikhil implemented already in his application. In the previous presentation it was kind of new and “black box” like, in this presentation it was just pragmatic. The big picture is clear and I see the importance of this new technique but it will take some time before I have it implemented ;-) A good startingpoint is the “Live Clipboard Example” mentioned in the previous presentation.
Another great resource for Mash-up and APIs is the ProgrammableWeb site.
Update: Nikhil has posted the slides and sample code on his blog.
Building Location-Centric Services with Virtual Earth (BTB013 )
The vision of Virtual Earth: “Global access to local knowledge”. A nice vision but it’s still all about the money.
After the presentation of the global architecture and the services that can be provided by Virtual Earth a very nice demo was shown. On a PDA an MSN-Search application was presented with a “Near Me” button. For tracking the location two methods were mentioned: GPS or a trace ont the IP number.
Virtual Eart Map Control is a new control that makes it a lot easier to implement nice location based map services. See Windows Live Local for a demo of this control. The demo only functions well for locations in the USA. The site is also a good sample of an ATLAS implentation.
Also check out My Favorite Place On Earth and it’s Bird’s Eye imagery. Enter “Las Vegas” as address and click on “Go!”. Now switch between “road”, “aerial” and “bird’s eye”.
I was stunned, is this a cool application or what? I wish they had these bird’s eye maps for the rest of the world as well. But it sure gives you a nice impresion of what is possible.
A trivial fact, at the moment of the presentation the size of the Virtual Earth database was 80 TB.