Making Mashups With Ubiquity and iterasi

What a cool combo iterasi and Ubiquity make for creating simple mashups.

Ubiquity is a new add-on from Mozilla Labs that gives the ability to write on web sites, translate pages and a whole number of uses. It is in its experimental form but already shows a lot of promise. Watch the video on the blog. It gives an excellent overview of what Ubiquity offers.

I used Ubiquity and iterasi to create an invitation for the next magic bus ride on Thursday evening after the inverge reception at Weiden & Kennedy. I used Ubiquity to write on the web site for the graffiti exhibit we are going to see. I used iterasi to archive and share the invitation.

Now I see what Josh Bancroft meant when on Twitter he compared compared Ubiquity to Silverlite. And why Robert Scoble said Ubiquity means he will not have to switch to IE8.

Troy Malone uses iterasi with Ubiquity. He initially sparked my interest in using the two technologies to create new ways for making your own notes on web pages. It’s a bit like commenting but on the page itself, not in a box where comments usually appear. This is the first release so it still has some way to go. But Ubiquity holds promise in its use for adding notes to a page, much as you would write, for instance, on the margins of a flier.

I made a few more of these simple mashups to show how the two applications can be used.

I wrote notes on my Friendfeed lifestream

I captured and added notes to a Twitter lifestream from Roseburg,Or. where I spent the weekend with Judy and her parents.

I added a comment to the latest news from from Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read Write Web about Google Chrome, the new Google browser.

I commented on a photo by Kris Krug taken on the iterasi magic bus trip during Gnomedex.

Step By Step Instructions

Here are step by step instructions for adding notes, highlighting and making copy bold or in italics on a web page with iterasi and Ubiquity.

I created a short video to demonstrate: mashups with iterasi and ubiquity

To get started, download and install the Ubiquity application.

Once installed, give it a try. Do the “control+space” command on the PC or “option+space” on the Mac. You will see a small window pop up in the left corner of your browser. Try doing a search.

Now go to a web page that you want to mash up. Scroll over the text. Use the command “control +space or option + space, depending on if you are using a PC or Mac.

Now type “highlight” in the Ubiquity pop up window. Press enter and the text on the web page will be highlighted in yellow.

Type edit and then enter. You will then have cursor control over the web page. You will see how the images are framed. Click around the images and you will see where you can add text.

Scroll over the text and highlight or write “bold or “italic” in the Ubiquity window. Press enter.

If you click refresh the highlighting will go away. if you email the page, the highlighting will not appear. This is when iterasi comes into play.

If you do not have iterasi, you may download it from our web site.

After the pages is saved, it will made public unless you click private when notarizing. You will see the page with your annotations in your personal account. You may then email it, use the Short URL to post the link or embed on your web site or blog.

I am sure there are many more mashups to do with Ubiquity and iterasi. Translating pages, more map integration and a whole host of uses are yet to be explored.

Have fun!