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Big Changes: It's a whole new infrastructure

By Robert Ennals (Intel) (25 posts) on February 21, 2008 at 11:22 pm

We just uploaded a new version of Mash Maker, and this is a big one. We've learned a lot from all the testing you guys have been doing and decided it was time to do a thorough overhaul of the Mash Maker architecture.

In particular:

• Widgets: You wanted to do more with your mashups than what was possible using just "copy/paste" and linked data. We now support a general class of "widgets" which can potentially do pretty much anything to a page. You'll be hearing a lot more about widgets in the future.
• Live Data: You wanted to be able to apply a mashup to only some of the data on a page, rather than all of it. Per-item mashups now only apply to an item if the appropriate action icon is clicked for that item.
• Decoupled Sharing: You wanted to be able to play around with a mashup before having to give it a name and publish it. These concepts are now decoupled. Clicking "paste" will just add data to a page. You don't have to name it until you like it.
• Settings: You wanted page enhancements that were more configurable than just "on or off". Every widget you add to the page can potentially have a settings panel that you can use to configure it in interesting ways.
• Widget Browsing: You wanted an easier mashup browsing interface than a cramped toolbar. Widgets can now be selected from a sidebar.
• Easier Widget Ratings: Most of you never even noticed that you could rate a widget by right clicking on it. This functionality is now presented in a much more obvious place - in the widget selector sidebar.

We'll be blogging more about all these features over the coming days.

This new version still has holes in it, and there is a lot of functionality still to be added, but we thought it was time we let you guys have a play with it to see what you thought. After all, that's what the technology preview release is for :-)

Enjoy...

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Comments (4)

March 1, 2008 1:23 PM PST Jim LoVerde

Any ETA on a Firefox 3 compatible version?

March 3, 2008 9:32 PM PST Robert Ennals (Intel)

The FireFox 3 version should be coming pretty soon. We just need to do some testing and then it's just a matter of changing the info in the config file :-)

March 17, 2008 8:39 AM PDT Paul Tiffany

Mr. Ennals, If you implement this thing in an open enough way where I can use it to power my non-profit reputation management service, I will be dancing in the streets. The whole world needs this idea. I believe you have the chance to jump at where Facebook stumbled. Go slay the cyclopean Google with a sensible, open interface to the cloud. I haven't had a chance to play with the mash maker system yet, but I was wondering if there was going to be interoperability with digital identity systems such as Open ID.

March 31, 2008 10:02 PM PDT Robert Ennals (Intel)

I think it should be open enough to for you to implement a non-profit reputation management service. Time for some dancing perhaps. Have a play with the API and let us know if you need anything extra to do what you want.

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