Mobilizing Youth

NetSquared Mashup Challenge Debrief

I'm just back from the Net2 Mashup Challenge conference. Our Volunteer Now project didn't place in the top 3 - but it sure was a great experience to attend and I feel lucky to have been selected to do so. One of the best things about the conference is that it brought together new people and projects. For example, the team that we brought to Net2 consisted of myself, Imran Sobh, and Lynne Hensler. We all met via the Net2 blog and for the first time in person at the event. Imran turns out to have been studying mobile phone volunteerism for his senior masters thesis project at CMU (how serendipitous). The project itself went into high gear as a result of the conference- and it comes out stronger. I heard many such stories at the conference... props to the Net2 staff for putting in so much work to make the event happen. And great to have met so many dynamic passionate people.

Check out some of the coverage at Beth Kanter's blog.

NetSquared Mashup Maker @ Maker Faire

I'm so psyked about this:

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Volunteer Mashup Makers Needed at Maker Faire Bay Area

Want to show people how to make mashups at the Maker Faire Bay Area May 3 & 4th? NetSquared will have a booth at the Faire and is looking for volunteers to demonstrate how to make a quick, simple mashup on their laptop. Nothing fancy. You could use something like Sprout or Intel's Mash Maker or geoXtract.
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The Maker Faire is the best  event I've ever been to - and this idea rocks. I wonder if you could hook a mashup up to a robot though.

added 4.26.08:
just came across this mashup editor page on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_editor

Introduction to Mashups and Mashup Genres

When: 08/06

Link: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-mashups.html?ca=dgr-lnxw16MashupChallenges#genres

Reading Notes:
Mashups are described according the following categories:

1)Mapping – the Google Maps API allows the power of mapping to be conveniently added to presentations, activities, and fundraising. Yahoo Maps, Microsoft Virtual Earth, and AOL’s Mapquest also offer APIs.

2)Video – social networking sites like Flikr allow images to be organized and/or retrieved based on metadata associated with the images.

3)Search – search and shopping mashups have existed for some time with sites like MySimon and Froogle. Now, eBay and Amazon have released APIs for programmatically accessing their content.

4)News – syndication technologies like RSS and Atom allow for news feed mashups. Sites like Digg.com, and Del.icio.us are examples of aggregated newsfeeds which can create personalized (in this case, technology oriented) webpages.

NCY Coalition Against Hunger uses Google Maps API for awareness mashup

Link: http://www.nyccah.org/maps/index.php

Reading Notes:

Reacting to a lack of healthy, nutritious food alternatives to the fast food dominating urban environments, New York City Coalition Against Hunger started the “Mapping an End to Hunger” program. It allows both the food insecure and donors to find food pantries and kitchens in New York City boroughs by combining Google mapping with food resource locations. 

How Non-Profits Can Use Mashups

When: 03/01/07

Link: http://www.wildapricot.com/blogs/newsblog/archive/2007/03/01/how-non-profits-can-use-web2.0-mashups.aspx

Reading Notes:

What exactly is a mashup? A mashup is a website or web-based application that combines content from two or more different sources into one integrated experience. Widgets are mashups consisting of imbeddable links. All that is required is copying and pasting. Since non-profits are financially lean, mashups and widgets allow for inexpensive web enhancements.

 

Examples of mashups:

ChipIn.com lets you set up a fund-raising and tracking mini-application on your website. A donor can use ChipIn to add funds via PayPal or credit card.

PollDaddy.com offers a widget with real-time polling. AIMS, an internet marketing and sales networking association, uses it on their website.

Flickr allows for free uploading and displaying of images from digital cameras. A non-profit can coordinate a presentation based on remote, separate uploads and then create a link with the resulting selection which can be placed on a web page.