April 3rd, 2008

Tumblr API: Manage Your Online Scrapbook

Tumblr calls itself “the easiest way to share yourself” online. With Tumblr, you create “Tumblelogs,” which are, essentially, online scrapbooks. Tumblelogs can include photos, videos, audio, messages, quotes, links, and chat dialogs. Tumblr also now provides the Tumblr API, which lets you programmatically read and write Tumblr data. The API is REST-based, with XML and JSON data format options, and supports both read and write functionality.

To retrieve Tumblr data in XML format, you append the user’s Tumblr URL (for example http://KalaFarnham.tumblr.com) with “/api/read” (for example, http://KalaFarnham.tumblr.com/api/read). To retrieve the data in JSON format, append “/api/read/json” to the Tumblr URL. Additional options let you specify a range of Tumblr posts or a type of post (regular, photo, etc.).

The Tumblr API write function creates new Tumblr posts. Each request must include authentication (the user’s login name and password). The authentication, post content, and options are encoded into a standard HTTP POST request. See the Tumblr API documentation page for details.

As an example, the Tumblr Wall Facebook mashup application lets Tumblr interact with your Facebook account (and as you can see in our profile listing, this was created by prolific mashup developer Sebastin Sanjay who has created over a dozen mashups using 13 different APIs).

Tumblr is an interesting variation in online sharing and social networking, backed by a simple but complete standards-based API.

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Posted by KevinFarnham as APIs, Media, photo at 2:41 AM | 1 Comment »

December 18th, 2007

292 Flickr Mashups

The Flickr API continues to be one of the most popular Web 2.0 APIs and with a flurry of new photo mashups here lately, we now have 292 Flickr mashups listed. Overall they run a very wide range of creative applications, here are three of the most recent entries:

• flickrbackup: A Java-based Flickr backup utility that lets you back up all your photos on Flickr.



• Feel Image: Search multiple photo sharing sites. Has technology that quantifies colors like red or blue in images, making it possible to show search results by color. Search phrases like: red flower in spring.



• Custom iGoogle Skins: This new version of the skins gadget integrates Flickr and iGoogle to being you random images from a user specified Flickr group.

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Posted by John Musser as Media, PopularAllTime, Yahoo, photo at 2:10 AM | 4 Comments »

November 30th, 2007

Radio Station Mashup

Lots of radio stations would be glad to have devoted fans able to create web mashups like the KEXPlorer. This mashup is intended to “enhance the listening experience” of the popular community supported KEXP station in Seattle: follow along as you stream KEXP, tag the songs you like, post comments, and send SMS to get current song info from your phone. As the live KEXP stream plays, the site shows album art, DJ and listener comments, and links to related music sites like iTunes. This mashup leverages multiple APIs including Amazon E-Commerce for things like album data and thumbnails, Mobivity for the SMS messaging, and the Rhapsody API.

One of the handy unique features is its SMS capabilities: “In the car and want to know (or remember) the song you’re listening to? With KEXPlorer you can find out by texting ‘kexp’ to 95495 to get the current playing song. The song will be auto-tagged as sms for later lookup/download/discovery! Note, this feature requires that you have created a profile that is setup for sms.”

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Posted by John Musser as Media, Mobile, Shopping at 3:20 AM | No Comments »

November 27th, 2007

36 Last.fm Mashups

If you want to see an interesting set of music-themed mashups, checkout our list of 36 Last.fm mashups all of which in some way utilize the Last.fm API. Many provide unique ways to search for artist data, photos and videos and connect these to Last.fm playlists. Here are three of the most popular entries (note that you can also browse the whole set of these by thumbnail and popularity here):

• TuneGlue (see our full profile here): Slick interactive visualization of the relationship between music artists using the Last.fm and Amazon.com.uk APIs.



• FoxyTunes Planet (see our FoxyTunes profile): Universal personalized music mashup integrating many music resources into one place, then making them available through the FoxyTunes browser extension, which supports more than 30 media players and music services. Uses 8 different APIs.



• MusicPortl (see our MusicPortl profile): Another music data aggregator that lets you search by artist. Integrates data using 6 APIs including the Technorati API for blog posts, the YouTube API for videos, and the Flickr API for photos.

If you want to see more music-themed mashups you can look through 120 mashups tagged music in our directory.

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Posted by John Musser as BestMashups, Media, Music at 3:45 AM | 3 Comments »

September 25th, 2006

NYC in the Movies Mashup

This fall the New York City Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting will celebrate its 40th anniversary with the publication of a book, Scenes From The City, and a series cultural events across the city. But in addition they have created an excellent web mashup: Scenes from the City Interactive Map. It’s a Yahoo! Maps mashup that makes good use of Yahoo’s Flash integration. Find the locations of hundreds of iconic films and television shows: The Godfather, The French Connection, Saturday Night Fever, The Warriors, Bonfire of the Vanities, North by Northwest, and The Lost Weekend.

It does a lot of things well including providing multiple ways to browse and search as well as map markers that pop-up to show small and large images as well as film details. You can search by director (including Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Alfred Hitchcock, Terry Gilliam and others), time period the film was made, neighborhood, or scene type (chases, rooftops, subway, landmarks, etc). It even integrates with IMDB, a nice touch.

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Posted by John Musser as BestMashups, Examples, Mapping, Media, Yahoo at 12:11 AM | 1 Comment »

March 9th, 2006

Celebrity Mashups

Earlier this week CNET News.com published Boob tube meets online maps as TV fans get creative. The story looks into the recent proliferation of media and celebrity-based maps mashups including The Geography of Seinfeld, the HBO Sopranos Map, and Jacktracker for 24.

There are a few interviews including one with Mike Pegg of Google Maps Mania and Virender Ajmani who’s created a few good mashups, including one added here this week, The Oscars Birthplaces Map, as well as the earlier NBC’s Apprentice Map. The interview with Virender hits on one of the recurring themes (clouds?) over mashups: IP, copyright and trademarks:

For his Apprentice Contestants mashup, Virender Ajmani spent a weekend matching contestants on the show with their hometowns on a Google map. When the map pins are clicked, a balloon window opens up and displays more information, including an explanation for the reason a given contestant was fired.

However, NBC may not turn out to be such a fan of the site.

“We are flattered and happy to see that fans are involved in the show,” an NBC representative told CNET News.com. “However, we are looking into the use of our logos and copyrights.”

Will be interesting to see how this sort of ‘flattered and happy’ plays-out.

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Posted by John Musser as Examples, Mapping, Media, News at 2:00 AM | No Comments »

February 28th, 2006

Map Mashups as PR

Traditional media’s use of APIs for promotional purposes is picking-up lately. Mike Pegg has been highlighting a few new Google Maps examples over at Google Maps Mania. The two most notable ones, now added to the mashup listings here are the Sopranos Google Maps mashup from HBO and the NBC’s Apprentice Cast Map from Virender Ajmani.

The Apprentice mashup is an example of how you don’t have to be associated with a show or its PR to make a good mashup. Other recent examples include the Geography of Seinfeld and the Jacktracker for the show “24″. (As a side note: the Jacktracker map was built at Wayfaring.com, a good community mapping site that helps simplify and enhance the process of creating a Google Maps mashup.)

The Sopranos map is quite slick with a Flash-based navigation and movie clips integrated into the map itself (again via Flash).

HBO has clearly put some time and money into the Sopranos mashup. How long until ‘Google Maps Mashup’ becomes just another PR campaign line-item in television and film circles?

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Posted by John Musser as Examples, Mapping, Media at 5:49 AM | 2 Comments »

February 27th, 2006

CBS News Covers Mashups

Veteran technology reporter Larry Magid just published this good introductory story on mashups and Mashup Camp over CBS News. Nice to see some more mainstream media coverage. And, as a bonus, you can also listen to Larry’s podcast interviews with myself, Taylor McKnight (creator of Podbop which won the best mashup award at last week’s Mashup Camp), and Adrian Holovaty, creator of mashup ChicagoCrime.org (which won the second-place award last week and earlier won the 2005 Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism).

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Posted by John Musser as Media, News, Press at 12:42 AM | 3 Comments »

January 27th, 2006

MashupCamp Podcast

There’s a good podcast interview by Chris Law with MashupCamp co-organizer David Berlind. They cover a lot of ground including the inspiration and history behind MashupCamp, how the nascent eco-system behind APIs and mashups are setting the stage for growth and innovation of online applications, and some thoughts on where this all is headed.

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Posted by John Musser as Events, Media at 6:49 AM | 2 Comments »

January 13th, 2006

Google Maps Mania on NPR

A very nice interview on NPR yesterday with Mike Pegg, creator of the Google Maps Mania blog. You can listen to the audio on “All Things Considered” with Robert Siegel here on the NPR site.

A couple of notable Google Maps mashups were highlighted:

• Dig to the Other Side: Great mashup that asks the question: If I dig a very deep hole, where I go to stop? Pick a spot on the map and it shows you the opposite location on the globe. Very fun.
• Dartmaps, Dublin Trains in Realtime: Shows the real-time locations of the Dublin Ireland suburban commuter trains and plots them in realtime onto a Google Map. Watch them go.

Always good, interesting Google Maps mashups on Mike’s blog.

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Posted by John Musser as Examples, Google, Media at 12:02 AM | No Comments »