CHAPTER 2 ?– UNCOVERING THE MASHUP POTENTIAL OF WEB SITES 23
2. http://programmableweb.com/faq#Q2
The more interesting mashups that exist for an application, the more likely it is that the
application is amenable to mashups. Look for mashups that contain functionality similar to
what you want to include.
Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 present an overview of how to use public web site APIs, starting
with a study of the Flickr APIs and then moving on to a survey of other APIs.
Use of Ajax
Does the web site use Ajax and allied JavaScript techniques to integrate data dynamically into
the user interface? As you will learn in Chapter 8, the presence of Ajax is an indicator that there
is likely an API at work??”either a formalized public API or a programmatic structure, though not
intended for public interfacing, that might possibly be used for mashup making. (Recall from
Chapter 1 how Housingmaps.com placed markers on the first generations of Google Maps by
tapping into the programming logic before any public API for Google Maps was released.)
Embedded Scriptability
Can people embed plug-ins, add-ons, or extensions (as opposed to writing external applications)
to extend the web site directly? Here are examples of extension frameworks for specific
web sites:
??? Google Gadgets (http://www.google.com/ig/directory) to extend iGoogle (http://
www.google.com/ig) and Google Mapplets (http://www.
Pages:
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