Data Unbound

Here's an update on my current professional activities that I hope will give you, my readers, a sense of where this blog will be heading:

• My book Pro Web 2.0 Mashups: Remixing Data and Web Services was published by Apress on February 25, 2008.  It's gotten some good reviews, and I've heard from some happy readers. It's time, however, for some more intense promotion of my book to make sure it fully reaches the audience it is meant to serve. (Most of my book-related activities will be discussed at my MashupGuide blog.)

• In April, I finished teaching a six-week course (“Building Next-Generation Campus Information Services” for IT staff on the Berkeley campus. “The course designed to introduce campus professionals to the concepts of Web 2.0, XML, web services, and elements of web application development through the lens of mashups. While completing a six-week long project, participants will advance their knowledge and abilities, and gain insight into potential solutions to the information management needs they face on the job.” I plan to post more details about the course, including how it was structured, what projects came out of the class, and how I think this course can be improved.

• Last week marked the culminating open house of the Mixing and Remixing Information course I teach at the School of Information at UC Berkeley. I had a blast teaching the course for the third time though I wonder whether it's time for a total (or at least substantial ) revamp of the course.

• I've started to contribute regularly to ProgrammableWeb, which I described in my book as “the most useful web site for keeping up with the world of mashups, specifically, the relationships between all the APIs and mashups out there."  That was before I started writing for it!  See the posts I've written for PW so far.

• Finally, I've recently become the Integration Advisor for the Zotero Project, working on developing developer documentation for them, thinking about how to integrate Zotero with other things (in a sense, Zotero as a client-side mashup platform) — specifically in the context of Zotero-Internet Archive alliance.  My work for Zotero will be a big part of what I'll be discussing on this blog.