Libby Hemphill » Love Letter http://www.libbyh.com Assistant Professor of Communication and Information Studies Mon, 30 Jan 2012 03:32:10 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 A love letter to mashups http://www.libbyh.com/2007/12/04/a-love-letter-to-mashups/ http://www.libbyh.com/2007/12/04/a-love-letter-to-mashups/#comments Wed, 05 Dec 2007 01:49:14 +0000 libbyh http://www.libbyh.com/blog/?p=91 Seriously, I love mashups. I love that they’re called “mashups”. I love that people make so freakin’ many of them. I love that they have such potential to make the world more interesting and usable.

If you’re not familiar with mashups:
Mashups are web applications that combine data available from multiple sources into one view. They often rely on open APIs from the data sources (API = application programming interface – essentially a set of functions, rules, etc. that a computer program makes available so that other programs can talk to it).

If you are but haven’t seen any good ones lately:

  • MashUpComing – Upcoming! and Yahoo! Maps
  • LivePlasma – Amazon’s media products and the relationships among them, a recommender system on steroids (a descendent of musicplamsa, that rockin’ music recommender system)
  • Flickr Sudoku – Sudoku + Flickr images of numbers (my mom says it’s harder than “regular” sudoku because she got used to recognizing the patterns of her own handwriting and system font, and the Flickr photos don’t present such patterns)

To find mashups you can love:
Programmable Web Mashup Directory – 2560 of ‘em as of this writing

]]> http://www.libbyh.com/2007/12/04/a-love-letter-to-mashups/feed/ 0 Coming soon: a love letter to Anonymous Donor http://www.libbyh.com/2007/05/30/coming-soon-a-love-letter-to-anonymous-donor/ http://www.libbyh.com/2007/05/30/coming-soon-a-love-letter-to-anonymous-donor/#comments Thu, 31 May 2007 01:12:42 +0000 libbyh http://libbyh.com/blog/?p=46 I just received an email from the President of the University of Chicago announcing that an anonymous donor, an alumnus from the 1980′s, has agreed to a $100 million gift to the University in support of undergraduate scholarships for students whose family incomes are less than $75,000. I am floored. To whomever the anonymous donor is, “Thank you!” By providing such a generous and exciting gift, this donor has made a University of Chicago education available to deserving students who need his help. I’m so excited that I’m nearly speechless.

Thank you, anonymous. What a wonderful gift!

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