Mash–up Idea

1. Mash–up Idea Charlotte Jenkins 21122635 Designing the social web

2. Initial thoughts • I’ve recently started uploading my pictures to my Flickr account so could incorporate a Flickr element that maybe shows all my different holiday pictures around the world using Google Maps. I really like this idea but Google Maps seem to be a very commonly used API and a lot of the group are also talking about using this so I think actually I’d like to try something different and avoid this if I can. • The idea of including music or video into the mash-up interests me a lot and I know using the YouTube API is an option so I could look into that. I know you can also have some access to the iTunes API although I’m sure you won’t be able to extract song URL’s from this so I will need to look into another resource to pull my music from.

3. Research • I started looking at some YouTube mash ups to get some ideas from what other people have made. Here are a few simple and complex ones that caught my eye: • You Flow- uses the Image Flow and Highslide JS features to display YouTube videos in a modern and elegant way.http://youflow.finnrudolph.de/This is very cool and current. Its a good way to show mash ups don’t have to be crowded, complicated designs but sticking to a simple, solid idea can be very rewarding. • Seek It - A library and search engine about music. Search song titles, singers, song description or lyrics. Browse artists, music genre or albums. http://music.seekit.grThis is very similar to something I had in mind but looks very complicated and pulls data from several different API’S.

4. Research contd... • I then moved on to Last.fm mash ups which was easy to find as there are plenty out there which gives me confidence that the API is fairly simple and I’ll be able to work with it to create my own. Although it seems with most you need to enter your Last.fm account details rather than just access the current playing song. • Tune Glue - A cool visualization of music artists, using Last.fm data mashed up with Amazon data for things like album details. You can also control the "friction" and "elasticity" settings, to change up the results.http://audiomap.tuneglue.net/This is really impressive and different, although its not something I’m planning on looking into its a really clever idea with interesting results that I’m glad I came across. • Jiffy Lyrics – A Google like instant lyrics search website using musiXmatch'sAPI, Last.fm and YouTube to listen to songshttp://www.jiffylyrics.com/This is very useful and similar to something I would like to create and will definitely refer back to when creating my own mash up.

5. Video Juke Box After some research I’ve come up with the idea of a ‘video juke box’ that will display the lyrics and video to the current song playing on the radio station your listening to. I’m not sure how I would go about putting this together but initially I think I would need the YouTube API and the API of a digital radio station, such as Last.fm. The idea came to me because sometimes when I’m listening to my the radio in the car or while I’m working I want to know the lyrics or the name and artist of the track if I missed the presenter saying it and wonder what the video for its like. A nice way to incorporate the social aspect of the module would be if the user was able to select their favourite radio station to run  this application on, however I think this task would be too big for this project so I’ll have to stick to one digital radio station to begin with and maybe build on top of it in the future.