Google Mashup Editor

Google is sending out private invites for their Google Mashup Editor. I already signed up for it. Google Mashup Editor (GME) is a webbased tool for creating mashups using GME syntax along with HTML, CSS and Javascript. Hopefully I'm selected for an invite so that I can tell more about it. Read/write Web has already received their invite and wrote about it. Take the GME tour to learn the basics.

GME resides into the same class as Yahoo Pipes. Those editors are important because they attempt to make it as easy to write as to read the web ("The original slogan was always to have a web that was easy to write as it was to read", said Robert Cailliau of the World Wide Web Consortium.) Mashup editors can be used to make widgets or gadgets as Google likes to call them. Widgets are the latest buzz and receive a lot of attention. Silicon Valley sees them as a Web revolution in the making.

GME is based on the Google Web Toolkit. More and more AJAX libraries are popping up. I think about things like BackBase. What would you do, using GWT or Backbase ? Or dou you prefer vertical integration and thus opt for Adobe Flex ? It makes me wonder if GME makes using Google Gears really easy. In that case, GME might be a strong contender for Adobe Flex.

Twitter tweets on Goople maps mashup

I figured out a simple way to make a mashup that displays tweets from twitter on a Google Map. Click on the pin and a window pops up containing the last tweet that was updated. It is easy to change the location of the pin or the twitter feed that is addressed to obtain the latest tweet. For your reference, here's a pretty print of the code using Google Code Javascript code prettifier:

Here is how it works:
Twitter API rocks with a JSON feed for every user. Adding a callback function makes it very convient to read the data. Just call a JSON object http://www.twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/user.json and add a callbackfunction. In our case, the function is called "twitterCallback". The full URL becomes:

http://www.twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/user.json?callback=twitterCallback&count=1

Replace user with your Twitter nickname. In my case, it's cast42.
The count parameter is set to 1 such that only the most recent tweet is obtained. In the callback function it's easy to obtain the text from the latest tweet:

   var tweet = new Object;
 function twitterCallback(obj) {
    tweet.text = obj[0].text;
 }

The full source code can be downloaded from the example. Don't forget to fill in your own Google Maps key and replace cast42 with your own twitter name.