Clazh » Mashup

Microsoft and Facebook Announce Partnership

Arpit Jacob — Sat, 26 May 2007 02:25:04 +0000

Microsoft and Facebook have announced a partnership deal. This comes right after Facebook opened up its API to third party developers. The Facebook platform is already available in the new mashup tool Popfly that Microsoft announced a week back. Microsoft has also released some walkthrough videos and a Developer Toolkit for Facebook on its site. Dan Fernandez and Sean Alexander have a rundown on what has been announced so far.

Popfly Facebook Block: Available immediately,
we’ve added the Facebook block which prodices access to Facebook data
including the User Profile, Friends, Photos, Photo Albums, and Events.
Leverage Existing Blocks:
You can build Facebook applications using Popfly blocks like Flickr,
Digg, Soapbox, Twitter, Windows Live, Xbox Live, and Virtual Earth.
Silverlight Support:
Another big win here is Facebook has native support for Easily build
next generation applications using Silverlight. With 24 million users
and 40 billion page views a month, this is a huge, huge win for getting
native Silverlight support on Facebook
Visual Studio Support: The Facebook Developer Toolkit enables developers to build applications for Windows, Web, or Microsoft Office.
Distribution of the Facebook Developer Toolkit.
The FDT was developed by Microsoft to wrap the Facebook API into a
managed component. Through this component, developers now will be able
to drag ‘n drop a Facebook component onto the component tray in Visual
C# Express , Visual Basic Express and Visual Web Developer (for both
Whidbey and Orcas). Users will be provided all the source code, sample
applications including a WPF app and detail documentation.

Co-branded Landing Page
on the Facebook developer website. At this site, visitors will be able
to see Microsoft Visual Studio Express and Microsoft Popfly links.
Additionally, a series of new pages were developed called Showcase on the Visual Studio Express site.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: General, Microsoft, Technology Tags: API, General, Mashup, Microsoft, Programming

Ultimate List of The Best Flickr Tools And Services

Arpit Jacob — Mon, 21 May 2007 16:51:32 +0000

Today my brain as was buzzing with ideas, while Exploring the Flickr API (I have a few ideas for a new Wordpress plugin), I decided to search the web too see the various ways in which people have or are using the Flickr API. I landed on the Flickr Services page that lists some of the best tools and services developed by the community members.

If you are a Flickr Fan you might want to go through this site “Flickr Services“. I didn’t have the patience to explore everything its just too vast.

Another site that you might like is flickrbits.com which looks like an up-to-date list of all Flickr tools and services.

The Yahoo Developer’s Network also lists a large number of services built on the Flickr API.

Happy Hunting hope you find something which you like. Let me know about it.

WikiMapia The User Driven Google Maps Mashup

Arpit Jacob — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 10:00:23 +0000

I have always been impressed with Google maps. The amazing use of Ajax with real-time zooming of maps and places. Though I been a bit envious of the US because they get detailed maps with names of places, roads etc marked out and shown on it. Unfortunately for people like me living in India and other countries this Information is not available we have to do with the Satellite images.

This is where WikiMapia created by Alexandre Koriakine and Evgeniy Saveliev can help, its a mashup which uses the Google maps API . In the case of wikimapia it combines both the service of a User Driven Content like a Wiki and Google maps. Though it won’t be 100% accurate it is still pretty reliable, an example of user driven content is the Wikipedia itself. This Web Service is a great hit especially in India though people have taken it to the extent of marking out their homes. If you can’t find your house or place on the map you can add the place freely, it get immediately updated on the website. I was simply wowed by how detailed the number of places were. The more I zoomed in the more places popuped up. In fact I found that my house was already marked out.

You can even Embed the Maps on your webpages if you want. Pretty useful if you want to show someone else the way to a certain place.

How to add Maps to your blog or Webpage.

1) Go anywhere on the WikiMapia.org site and find the part or area on the map that you would like to show.
2) Click WikiMapia at the top right corner and choose map on your page link.
3) Move and resize frame you see to desired view, adjust view setting if needed and copy the given html code to your page or blog.

Example Show below of Taj Mahal

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Technology Tags: Google, Internet, Maps, Mashup, Web 2.0