martykube's blog

“Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control our appetites.” - William Ruckelshaus

In my last post, I showed how to integrate Userplane's Webchat client into a Facebook application. I used the Instant Install version of the client, which made the integration straightforward. Lately I've been turning my attention to the Integrated version of the Userplane client.

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is." - Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut

In theory, the project to place RSS news feeds on a map could be very easy. GeoRSS is standard for encoding geographic locations in RSS feeds. RSS feeds that have this encoding are the perfect data source for this project. But, in practice, the feeds I've been looking at do not have GeoRSS information. So, I'm going to start by seeing what I can get done without GeoRSS.

"If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there." - Lewis Carroll

Like many developers I often start a project by jumping in and writing code. For this project I'm going try something a little different and create a road map for my mapping project.

My project is named MapNews. In my prior post, I covered the project concept: present a map with markers/information windows which show news headlines by location.

At their core, Facebook applications are all about social interaction. Adding a chat client to your Facebook application provides the social interaction that will drive usage. With very little effort you can add Userplane’s chat service and also generate revenue. In this post, I’ll show you how to integrate Userplane’s chat client into a Facebook application. The main tasks for this project are creating a Facebook application, creating a Userplane account, and finally putting the two together with some code. My Facebook application, MartiesIM II, is available at http://apps.facebook.com/martiesimii. Here’s a screen shot of the application:

Part 1 - Concept and Prototype

"You've got your chocolate in my peanut butter! You've got your peanut butter on my chocolate!" - Reese's Peanut Butter Cups commercial.

Two guys in the Reese's commercial found out how much fun it is to combine your two favorite things. I, too, have discovered this phenomenon. For me, the combination is a mashup of maps and news. While this mixture might not be quite as good as a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, it's pretty close in my book.

"The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it." - Adam Smith

In my last post on Userplane, I categorized Userplane as an Application Service Provider (ASP) for community web-site communication software. In this post, I'm leveraging this classification to help identify the sweet spot for using Userplane. Userplane is a good choice for:

• Outsourcing communication functionally to an ASP,
• Capturing revenue from advertising,
• White-listing users to include only the site's user community.

Backing up a bit, John's blog has some background on the Userplane product offering. As usual, Wikipedia is a nice entry point for background information on ASP in general.

I've always liked maps, but I've always been disappointed with the content. Sure, knowing road names and where to find a gas station is great. But I'm an outdoors kind of guy, and what I really want to see is cool biking and hiking routes. That's why I'm so excited about Keyhole Markup Language (KML) and the MapQuest Platform; the combination of the two lets users, as opposed to mapmakers, supply map content. Overlaying a map with KML data opens up many possibilities for uploading, sharing, and finding user-generated content. Couple this ability to share data with the vast number of people carrying GPS-enabled devices and you have a perfect storm for sharing off-road routes.

I've been looking at Userplane to see how I can take advantage of the functionality offered. To me, at least two elements are needed to answer my question:

• An understanding of the Userplane offering from a functional and/or business case standpoint,
• An understanding of the situations and for whom the functionality is a good choice.

The first bullet point is the easier one to deal with, so I'm starting my look at Userplane from the taxonomy point of view.