On the NETTUTS website today there's a new tutorial about mashups - specifically showing how to create a sample one by combining three services: Google Maps, the IPloc service and the Beer Mapping Project.

This tutorial will show you how to create a mashup of three different APIs including integration with Google Maps. This idea came about when I was searching through ProgrammableWeb's API directory for a couple APIs that complimented each other enough that I could use one to provide the other with data. What I came up with will be known as the "Beer Mashup".

They include links to scripts to interface easily with the APIs and the sample code you'll need to query against them. They wrap it up with the HTML for the output page (a map showing "beer hot spots" near your area) and the download of the source and demo to give an example of how it should look.

David Goodwin has posted a new book review of a PHP book offered by Packt Publishing (released Sept 22, 2007) - "PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects" by Shu-Wai Chow.

Some time ago, Packt publishing sent me this book to review. Here it is, being somewhat overdue!

He talks about the book's contents - the different chapters detailing the different services' APIs, the protocols that are used to talk to those services and the data formats your scripts would have to be able to talk in to communicate. He recommends the book to those looking to get started with mashups specifically, but warns that in some places the book tends to "reinvent the wheel" rather than using classes/packages that already exist.

As a companion to the podcast version of his review, Matthew Turland has posted his comments in text form over on his blog today.

I received an e-mail recently from a very nice gentleman at Packt Publishing - their representative asked if I would be willing to review one of their books, namely PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects by Shu-Wai Chow. Reviewing books is not something I had done before, so I thought I would give it a good old-fashioned college try.

He mentions the size of the book (and how it's not an indication of the quality) and the basic structure of the book, including spotlights on some of the specific topics covered.

The Zend Developer Zone has posted a new episode of their PHP Abstract podcast series - Matthew Turland with a book review of Packt's "PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects".

Today's special guest is Matthew Turland (Elazar to those of you who hang out on the #phpc channel on irc.freenode.net) Matt has been building PHP applications since 2002. [...] Today, Matt is going to review PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects from Packt Publishing.

You know the drill - there's three ways to grab the PHP goodness: the mp3, the in-page player and, the most convenient, subscribing to their feed and getting the latest episodes hand-delivered.

Daniel Crook points out the next meeting of the New York PHP Group where Dan Gisolfi will be talking about some of the latest things that IBM has been up to in the mashup arena.

Centered around the concept of "situational applications," IBM's work with mashups targets a growing trend in Web site development. [...] IT specialists should embrace the model as a foothold for PHP in the enterprise.

Some of Dan's presentation is outlined as well - a demo of IBM's Mashup Starter Kit, a look at best practices, and talk on the collaboration of IBM with Zend and ProgrammableWeb. If you're wanting to attend, be sure you RSVP as soon as possible (before the 21st @ 3pm) to reserve your spot.

Many congrats to Cal Evans on getting an article posted in the latest edition of the Dr. Dobb's magazine.

Wow, I wrote this article back in May/June and it finally got published! "PHP: The Power Behind Web 2.0". This was the very first version of the FNN that I wrote. I used the concept in "Flex and PHP: Party in the Front, Business in the Back".

The article shows how to create a site using PHP on the backend along with Javascript on the front end to build a "Flickr News Network" by combining it with information from a feed.

The Zend Developer Zone has an article from Akash Mehta (reprinted from SitePoint) about creating a Yahoo! based mashup combining their search functionality and mapping.

In this article, I'll show you how to use the powerful collection of Yahoo! APIs to build a mashup with PHP 5. First we'll take a look at what APIs are, and the various offerings from Yahoo! that we can take advantage of. I'll demonstrate how to search the web using Yahoo!'s entire database with only three lines of code, then take you through the process of building an entire application to search for 'Pizza' in 'Palo Alto, CA' with only 25 lines of PHP code.

They show how to consume the RESTful data Yahoo provides via a custom class that makes calling the API simple. They also include the code (and HTML) you'll need to make the mapping for for the locations your search turned up.

Lukas Smith has posted his review of a book from Packt Publishing - "PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects: Practical PHP Mashups with Google Maps, Flickr, Amazon, YouTube, MSN Search, Yahoo!"

Duane from Pakt asked me if I would be interested in reviewing a few books for them in my blog. I picked "Mashup Projects" from the list of just released books, since I am interesting in the topic and I am actually going to give a presentation at the internal "PHP Day" we are doing at Optaros in November.

He points out the good (good writing style, well-chosen examples) and the bad (a log list of errors and oversights in the code). He also talks about the contents of the book - the different examples and the final more major project. Overall though, he sees it as a good book, one that would be a good introduction to mashups for PHP developers (if you look past the formatting issues).

Ivo Jansch has posted about a project he's started on to create his own "first mashup" of PHP, Flickr, Google Maps, the Zend Framework and ATK.

I have been inspired by Cal Evans' mashup experiment, which he did a presentation on at the Dutch PHP Conference last month. Also, I was annoyed with having to consult many different resources when I plan a business trip. So I began building frekfly, my own little mashup.

The post mentions two versions of the mashup - an initial version that pulled the services together and a second version that added in a web service for hotel information. This current version can be found at frekfly.com

Attendees at this year's PHP UK Conference were able to listen to Cal Evans' talk about mashups in PHP - now everyone can check out his slides:

Ok after procrastinating a week, I've finally gotten around to posting my slides and sample code for my presentation at PHPUK, "My First Mashup".

He has the file offered in both a zip format and in a tarball.