A new and improved version of  KQED’s QUEST Website, which we helped to develop, is now live. QUEST is an ambitious project utilizing all of KQED’s platforms to not only broadcast science and nature programming, but to also build a community supporting further exploration in the area. Ideum worked with KQED to design a website promoting community participation via an interactive mashup-driven website.

The most recent version of QUEST includes a number of improvements intended to simplify the navigation of the site’s ever-expanding content. With nearly 100 television broadcasts and around 65 online radio broadcasts, the initial sort features (time based) became difficult to use. The radio/television tab can now be filtered by topic and type and the main map features the latest five items instead of search features.

You’ll also notice that blog posts are now displayed as items on the main site’s map - a feature we were able to implement using data from the geopress plugin for WordPress. This feature means that all of KQED’s great content can now be available within the Google Map Mashup. Since the purpose of KQED QUEST is to explore “the stories behind Bay Area science, nature and environmental issues,” this addition makes perfect sense. Take a look at the KQED site or check out  KQED Quest in our portfolio to learn more.

Today I’m conducting two half-day workshops at the Museums and the Web Conference in San Francisco. This blog post contains the workshop description and the course materials for Museum Mashups, there’s another post for Real Science 2.0: Interacting with Scientific Imagery and Live Data.

The image on left is a termite “catherdral” mound, an example of the theory of emergence in nature. I decided to use this image after rading Alex Iskold’s article on Yahoo! Pipes, where he talks about emergence (part of complexity theory) and its relation to Web 2.0.

Workshop Description
Perhaps more than any other approach or Web technology, mashups exemplify “Web 2.0.” These unique web applications draw on content from more that one source to create something new. With hundreds of open APIs (Application Programming Interface) to choose from, over 1000 mashups have been created in just the past two years. Google maps, Flickr photos, and many other data sources and services are now available to designers and developers.

Unfortunately, few museums have explored the promise that mashups present. While some of the APIs are commercial in nature, many are relevant to the museum world and could be used to create compelling interactive experiences for museum visitors. Mashups have the potential to allow visitors to access archives, collections, and scientific data in innovative and exciting ways.

As museums slowly begin to explore other Web 2.0 technologies such as blogging and social networking applications, the potential for tapping into these communities with mashups increases. Our visitors are already using mashups and many of the core technologies that open APIs are making accessible.

This half-day workshop will explore the technical and design aspects of mashups. We’ll look at some of the examples that are out there and discuss the technology behind them. We’ll explore some of the more popular open APIs and talk about the possibilities they present.

Finally, we’ll explore the design issues surrounding these unique web applications. Due to the complex nature of mashups and the fact that many are produced solely by programmers, usability and visitor experience is often compromised. We’ll look at what is emerging as “best practices” in the development on mashups with a focus on design. Through a rapid design exercise we’ll take a look at the conceptual, information, and visual design aspects of mashups.

Bookmarks (for this workshop and RealScience 2.0):
http://del.icio.us/mw2007

The Presentation (The activity is not included):
museummashups-2007.pdf (800K)

KQED Quest is the Mashup of the Day on the Programmable Web site, the authoritative directory of mashups and Web 2.0 APIs (application programming interface). Two other Ideum design sites appear in the directory as well: The American Image: The Photographs of John Collier Jr. and Recycle Torrance. As the Programmable Web shows, we are not alone in experimenting with mashups, the number continues to rise and recently surpassed 1,500 mashups.

While we’re on the topic, a few thoughts to share about mashup design. What draws us to mashups is the ability rapidly and cost effectively develop complex user-experiences. A few years ago we developed a custom mapping program in Adobe Flash for the Traditions of the Sun: Chaco Culture website, developing this as a mashup would have saved hundreds of hours in programming time. (The mashup services were simply not available when we created the site.) In addition, using a well-known service such as Google Maps also means that users are more likely to be familiar with them. Visitors know how to pan and zoom, change from map to satellite view, and so on. Not having to develop an entire user-interface from scratch is a major plus. Again, reducing further development time.

With sites like Flickr, the attraction is the ability to store, manage and share content. For the American Image project, having a ready-made database with a built in content-management system, allowed us to focus on other aspects of the project. The fact that we could also connect with the Flickr community has turned out to be a factor in the success of the project. So far, more people have seen John Collier Jr.’s work on Flickr then on the American Image site itself.

While this all is very positive, there are some drawbacks. You have to include the service site’s branding, there is a bit of learning curve in mashup development at first, and there can be technical limitations and obstacles in using an API as opposed to developing something from scratch. One major issue we ran into repeatedly with the KQED Quest mashups was Javascript implementation across various browsers: IE 6 and 7 and Apple’s Safari were all problematic at different times.

I’ll be posting more about mashups in the coming weeks, as I begin prepare for two half-day workshops for the Museums and the Web conference. I’ll be teaching: Museum Mashups and Real Science 2.0 Interacting with scientific imagery and live data at the conference which is held April in San Francisco.

We recently discovered a few map mashups, Flash Earth and Map Compare, which allow you to compare a variety of mapping APIs (Application Programming Interface). The first, Flash Earth, as its’ name implies uses Adobe Flash to pull in aerial and satellite imagery from Google Maps, Virtual Earth, Yahoo! Maps, Ask.com, OpenLayers, and NASA Terra. This zoomable mashup allows you to directly compare the different map services within their aerial or satellite mode. It was really interesting to see the different imagery that each service provided. Often times, if your zoomed in far enough you’ll find missing data from one service or imagery that varies by season, color, and quality. I’ve never experienced this type of comparision through any other mashup. Most of them tend to focus on street level mapping where the only thing that seems to change is the pixel width of the streets. An amazing feature found in Flash Earth is the ability to rotate the entire map in any direction using the navigational compass. You can also zoom using your keyboard or mouse wheel and it provides the ability to search a location with a street address or through latitude and longitude. Another little trick on Flash Earth is the ability to create a permanent link to your map location. This has typically been problematic when developing these types of applications in Flash.

To create this mashup the creator, Paul Neave, used “unofficial techniques” to pull in the imagery. In doing so he was able to gain better control over the service. The navigation is quite smooth because the zoomable interface was developed using Flash. Ajax mashups typically have to refresh when you zoom because image tiles need to be swapped out. When I asked Paul about how he worked around the API, he mentioned he pulled the “map images (tiles) directly by accessing their URL rather than using the JavaScript API.â€? He continued, “The API doesn’t allow you to do this, you must use their interface and layout to access the imagery. Once the files are downloaded, they’re stored in your browser’s cache similarly to the Ajax version.â€? In this instance the advantages over Ajax are apparent in the ability to more easily modify the imagery and enhance the interaction to make a more cohesive user experience.

On the other side, Map Compare displays three maps together using Ajax. It combines Virtual Earth, Google Maps, and Yahoo! Maps. It allows you to compare all three simultaneously. One of the more interesting observations between the three was the lack of mouse wheel support for Google Maps. Virtual Earth was the only one that attempts to smooth the zoom level transition by adding an effect (similar to Flash Earth). It didn’t seem to work properly and added even more of a distraction than the image reloading delay. However, Virtual Earth did offer an interesting “Bird’s eye� view, a nearly isometric view into major cities. You can then rotate your camera perspective into the four cardinal directions within this view.

In addition to this mashup, I was able to find a more technical comparison by James Church who looks at the Yahoo! and Google Map APIs side-by-side. If your looking for even more examples, you can visit Google Maps Mania. For more unusual sightings you might want to take the guided tour at Google Sightseeing. With nearly half of all mashups using some variety of mapping software we were happy to find some ways to compare these services.

Today is Election Day in the U.S. and we are once again reminded that voting is a right. (It is not a privilege as our highest elected official stated just this morning.) Over the last week or so we’ve come across some interesting sites worth sharing.

First, if you need to know where to vote go to Vote411.org. For an interesting experience in viewing the results, there is an election mashup that combines Google Earth and Google Maps (CNET has the story). It is available with the Google Earth pack. Unfortunately, it is a Windows only add on. For all platforms, the New York Times has an interesting Flash-based interactive Election Guide and Map as does the Washington Post.

To gain some historical insight and to see an interesting Web 2.0 application, take a look at the US Presidential Speeches Tag Cloud. Use the slider to see the top “keywords” in speeches over the last 200+ years. Finally, for a reminder about what today is all about, check out the Interactive Constitution at the National Constitution Center.