SE401:33:Project Aims
Aims
Find out if it is possible to create a tool capable of building generic mashups for average computer users (people with no or limited programming skills).
- If it is possible to create a tool for building a generic mashup we will try and create a prototype.
- If we find it is impossible to create a generic mashup tool we will build a tool that can create specified mashups.
- We suspect it may be near impossible to create a generic mashup tool as we would need to add API's etc. As sites create/update the API's we would need to update the tool to provide the functionality, otherwise it would not be able to do much more than combine page elements (create RSS feeds etc, but nothing like Googlemaps).
- An example tool that can create specific mashups is Dapper (It also has a video demonstration). We could make the tool similar to this, but preferably with less clicking/selecting elements (if possible), and able to mashup more sites.
We are defining a generic mashup as a mashup of any type.
A generic mashup would take a number of inputs (e.g. data sources, API's), combined with a set of parameters, and produce a mashup.
Example - Mapping Mashup
- Data Sources: Craigslist and Google Maps
- Mashup: HousingMaps
Generic Mashup Mechanics as described by Dion Hinchcliffe
We want to create a tool as shown by the green boxes in the diagram above.
Either the "PC-Based Mashup Tool" or the "Online Mashup Tool".
An online tool would be preferable (in some ways) to an offline tool as this means more people could use it (less constraints on the users PC, hardware OS etc.), the disadvantage would be higher bandwidth*, and the servers would need to be more powerful to create the mashups.
We will need to do some analysis and some more research before deciding how we will approach the project.
There are a few disadvantages with an online tool, such as server going down, needing to find advertising that doesn't get in users way (if the site were to go live) that an offline tool does not have.
- * depending how the tool is made, an offline version might require downloading plugins or add ons (which may use less bandwidth) to create some content rather than downloading everything to install.
Assumptions
- Users should be able to use MS Frontpage type tools.
- Users will be able to host resulting mashup.
- Users have access to the net while creating the mashup (i.e. they are not using 56k and working offline).