H9808A 2009 08 Mashups

Return to UWO History 9808A Digital History Fall 2009

A mashup is a computer program that draws information from a number of different online databases, integrates it on-the-fly, and presents it to the user in the form of a dynamic webpage. The idea behind collective intelligence is to harness the problem-solving capabilities of a networked and communicating group of collaborators. Both phenomena are quintessentially “Web 2.0″. How can / will they change the practice or products of historical research?

• Cohen, "Do APIs Have a Place in the Digital Humanities?" dancohen.org (21 Nov 2005).
  

• Cohen, "When Machines Are the Audience," dancohen.org (2 Mar 2006).
  

• Cohen, "Where Are the Noncommercial APIs?" dancohen.org (10 Mar 2006).
  

• Gralla, "Ch 23 How Web Host Servers Work (Ch 25 7th ed.)", "Ch 24 How Websites Work with Databases (Ch 26 7th ed.)", "Ch 25 How .NET and Web Services Work (Ch 27 7th ed.)", "Ch 29 How Map Sites Work (not in 7th ed.)"
  

• Jenkins, "Collective Intelligence vs. The Wisdom of Crowds," Confessions of an Aca-Fan (27 Nov 2006).
  

• McGonigal, "Why I Love Bees: A Case Study in Collective Intelligence Gaming," in Katie Salen ed. The Ecology of Games (MIT, 2007).

• Spears, "GIMPLite Quickies"

Graphics for your website. People who do a lot of work online frequently find themselves in the position of having to resize, crop, colour or otherwise adjust digital photographs. In this assignment, you are going to work with the open source GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). Download and install it, then use it to try doing the following:

• Convert a colour image to greyscale and to black and white
  

• Create a thumbnail of a large image
  

• Resize a photo without cropping it
  

• Crop an image
  

• Try saving copies of the same image with different resolutions (DPI or PPI)

You can use either your own photos, or images from Flickr that have a Creative Commons license that allows derivative works. Be sure to work with copies of your pictures, not the originals. The GIMP has quite a steep learning curve, so don't be too hard on yourself if it takes you a while to get the hang of working with it. Use the results to spruce up your Google website that you've been working on. If you do use someone elses CC-licensed images, don't forget to attribute the source and provide a link to the originals.