This class will delve into the technology behind twitter and applications built using the twitter and Google Maps APIs. An "API" is an "application programming interface," which allows software developers to create new tools and applications using existing programs. These new tools are sometimes called "Mash-ups". For example, the twitter mapping projects (Egypt, Sendai, Libya) are all built on the Google Maps API and Twitter API. You don't need to read through all this information, but I wanted you to begin to understand how someone designs and programs a "social media mash-up."
We will have a special guest visitor on Wed: David Shepard, English PhD student and technical lead of the "HyperCities" digital mapping project. He is also the lead developer for the "HyperCities Now" twitter projects. He will take you through process of creating social media mash-ups.
Preparation for class:
From this list of Twitter mash-ups, examine one or two mash-ups in detail. How do they utilize twitter and extend its capacities? Do they develop a new "interface" for interacting with tweets? Do they develop new ways to visualize tweets? Do they add another social media dimension to twitter? What technologies do you think they use in order to do this?
Hi All,
ReplyDeleteHere's a list of technical terms that will be useful for talking about Twitter mashups. I think these will be helpful for answering some of the questions Professor Presner posed above about the mashup applications.
Web application: A web site that does something more than simply display text or images. Examples: Gmail, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, URSA, and almost anything on the list of Twitter mashups above.
Web browser: A desktop application for browsing the internet. Examples: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera.
UI (acronym, User Interface): The part of a program that the user interacts with directly. UI design has to do with making an application easy to use.
Front-end: The UI portion of a web application. This is the part handled by the user's browser.
Back-end: The portion of a web application that lives on the server, which handles such things as processing and storing data.
Database: A computer program for storing structured data. Popular databases include MySQL and Microsoft Access.
SQL (acronym, Structured Query Language): A programming language for accessing data in a database.
API (acronym, Application Programming Interface): A set of commands for accessing a computer program or web application from within a programming language, either to perform functions or access data.
Query: A request for information from a data source such as a database or an API.
Google Maps API: Google’s API for generating maps to display on web pages. This API allows the user to create a webpage with an interactive map.
Twitter API: Twitter’s API for searching for, creating, or modifing tweets.
Server: A computer that stores webpages and web applications and makes them available over the internet.
Script: A short computer program that performs a specific task.
Server-side script: A computer program that runs on a server.
AJAX: A technology for accessing data on a server from a web page without reloading a web page.
Javascript (or JavaScript): A programming language used for creating interactive webpages.
Object: A structured piece of data with named properties. For example, a tweet returned by the Twitter API is returned as an object with properties like “username,” “location,” and “text.”
JSON (acronym, JavaScript Object Notation): A programming language for representing data, whose syntax is based on Javascript. Frequently used to return data in AJAX.
Cron: A program on a server for running scripts on a regular schedule.
PHP: One of several programming languages used for server-side scripts.
Domain: The part of a URL that indicates what organization it belongs to. For example, the domain in http://api.twitter.com/users/search.json is api.twitter.com.
Same origin policy: A security standard observed by most browsers that allows web applications to perform AJAX requests only on urls in the same domain as the web application is loaded from. For example, a webpage at jbruin.bol.ucla.edu/index.html cannot perform an AJAX request to twitter.com.
Proxy: A server-side script for accessing data on a different domain.
JSONP: A method for getting around the Same-origin policy by requesting JSON from a server on a different domain.