Tom Smith’s: theOTHERblog

According to uninnovate in The Problem with Web Services, Google has suspended it’s Web Search API, which seems a bit shocking. Shocking in the sense of the fact that there’s a feeling in the air that service-oriented architectures, mashups and the like have recently become feasible. But the problem with this feeling is that it is based on trust. Trust that whole chunks of your application won’t disappear leaving you high and dry.

If it’s true that Google have axed their API, I’d love to know why. (It seems to still work for me though) Amazon have a similar API for which you pay micro-cents for, which so far, thanks to Kelvin and hi spython snippet, I’ve been completely happy experimenting with.

To be fair, Google’s API was always a bit rubbish, but to axe it only encourages good old screen-scraping, a way of getting the data that only takes an extra line of code anyway. Maybe that’s what they want? It would increase their usage statistics. I’d like to know that too.

But then, there’s lots I’d like to know about Google. Having accused me of clickfraud, then after apologising… my web site went from number two to LAST in Google on a search for “Tom Smith” (proud to be a number two!) Last?!?! Bitter? Me? Yes please!

But all of this leads to a question that Jonathan and I have been asking each other lately, and to be frank neither of us have any really compelling answers…

What are mashups for anyway?

The act of slapping a map on your web page is nice yes, but hardly worth mentioning. In fact the point that is worth mentioning is that often, the very map data itself has been collected and compiled and paid for by our taxes and then is only available to us tax payers if we pay huge licencing fees. Maps should have been free, online and friendly 10 years ago!

There have been a few nice examples of mashups, like the one where local paedophiles are shown on a map as living next-door-but-one to you. And yes, having some random pictures pulled from Flickr to look at whilst reading online will probably improve the experience in some way, for some people. But most mashups are crap, almost arbitrary and pornographic uses of technology in the “because we can” dept.

Back in 1998 I termed the phrase “para-siting”… to mean wiring together the ever growing number of services into a semi-cohesive whole, an environment in which aspects could be extended or de-coupled, say moving from geocities to lycos forums. I had a theory that quite fluid and complex things were possible. Now of course, my phrase didn’t catch on, partly because I’ve been a D-lister for longer than anyone can remember and partly because it was a crap phrase and partly because nobody knew what the hell I was talking about anyway.

And at the time people said… “You can’t ‘para-site’ an application because someone else controls your data and can shut it down, or be bought or simple lose it by accident”… which was a fair point…. because that is exactly what Google have done now. They have taken a large part of many peoples’ mashups and crippled them.

• Most mashups aren’t mashups. They are online applications. Any mashup doing (or claiming to do) anything interesting isn’t a mashup.

• Most mashups are the new viral advert. The mashups that take other data and display them differently (your delicious tags as an ants nest or bubbles or 3D space for example) are design adverts meant to impress you. You never return to these sites or use them but you may just refer them to someone else in the “something interesting” dept.

• Most mashups are illusions. But they are selling the illusion we want to see. We want to believe that this online thing is all doable (totally) online, that it needn’t be a lot of work and that with a wing and a prayer, a dash of RSS and a little Ajax we can do something fab.

So, for a few seconds there I got quite excited about Tecqlo, Yahoo Pipes and Dapplets… and although offering the promise that anyone can make a mashup their own online application (the empowering aspects of which I am a huge fan of), at the end of the day, it’s probably not true.

There’s nothing I can do with pipes, teclo or dapper that I can’t do with python… and probably do it quicker too. And although I will have the hassle of running a server somewhere, I will have the ability to access my data, manipulate it, back it up, analyze it and make it look nice etc. Something most Blogger bloggers can’t do with their Blogger blog. If Google sets fire to the Blogger servers tomorrow… what then? How would a million poor spammers make their (huge) incomes?

So, whilst integration in itself can be seen as a “good thing” (I like the fact that the Flock browser works with Delicious)… integration isn’t everything (with the absense of substance)… which is as far as I can what mashups are for… to prove, in theory that two data sources can be joined togther. And having joined them together it normally becomes clear that, despite being cute, there isn’t really a compelling reason to join them together (but it seemed like a good idea at the time).