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Next GIS Development harsha.m@GISdevelopment.net     The web technology is in a phase of transformation, in the generation of Web 2.0 where we are experiencing new ways of communication and collaboration through new apps, social- networking sites, wikis and more to mention, the Geo domain has also entered in to a new era. Look at this simple example, these days you no more need to visit the USGS website for the new data sets published; you just need to subscribe to their feeds to receive automated updates at your end. One way or the other the Geo-Domain is also moving in to the next version of Geoweb 2.0 through mashups, geoportals, dynamic 2D / 3D clients etc. Since 2004/2005 the whole world has experienced some amazing applications and API's from the IT-gurus like Microsoft, Google and Yahoo and along with API's from and for the Geo-world itself. With the 'Rise of API culture', the world-wide-webizens are experiencing a new world the web-2.0 is providing. The use of API’s over web is increasing and today you name a popular web service, you can find an API from them. To mention a (very) few of them: -Flickr API for photo sharing -Technorati API for blog search -del.ici.ous API for social bookmarking -Google Maps API for Mapping This article tries to bring out the awareness about Mapping APIs & Mashups that are gaining popularity, and will in the end discuss some mashup editors, that have started to surface this year, which will help you in effortless mashup creation. What are Mashups? Mashups are a new breed of applications that combine(s) data from more than one source and help in making out an integrated tool (for example combining Google Maps with Classifieds information). Thus mashups help in creating/envisaging new web services for your personal and commercial uses. Mashing the API’s Application Program Interface commonly known as API’s are codes that provide an interface between the application/program and the requests made by the user accessing the application. For example the computers we use are a collection of API’s that perform their individual functions, and the standard applications that users build upon, depending on the need the required API’s are accessed by a programme currently running. In the web for example the Google Maps API provides developers the Google Maps interface in web applications and also provides various utilities for manipulating the maps. ProgrammableWeb has a list of Mapping API’s, For a detailed list I would like you to refer to this link http://www.programmableweb.com/apis/directory/1?apicat=Mapping An interesting note to make here is that the Mashups that have the mapping component are taking the bigger piece of pie with 47% (Refer to Fig.6). The site also lists the categories of API’s of them 47 fall in the Geospatial domain (Refer to Figure 5).  Figure 5: Categories of Mapping API's listed at ProgrammableWeb  Figure 6: Mashups listed at ProgrammableWeb Mashup editors Now after reading all this stuff, you might have one question. “How can I create Mashups?” The solutions for this are the Mashup editors. The current emphasis is on editors that provide the user a Visual interface with drag and drop kind of situation, and finally allowing embedding of the mashups into a web page. So, what does this mean to you? This means using editors like Microsoft Popfly and Yahoo! Pipes “You no more have to write code to make mashups (most of the times)”... Wow!! We will quickly move on to look in to very briefly some of the interesting and popular mashup-editors that have been launched in 2007. The current article covers Google Mashup Editor, Yahoo! Pipes and Microsoft Popfly. Page 1 of 2
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