MIX’06 Slides and Sample Code

Last week, I presented a session on the programmable Web at MIX. I've put up the slides and demo code for folks to download. My talk focused on some basic concepts and specifically how Atlas enables you to participate in this new space, i.e. to consume services via building mash-ups, and to further enable the scenario via building services, gadgets, and adding live clipboard support.

The sample application is an online music library, called musicMix, and the demos centered around enhancing this application in various ways. I've included a screenshot of the gadget (featuring the live clipboard button) to add some zing to this post :-)

An overview of the demo flow:

• Working against RSS feeds, to display top-selling albums from iTunes.
• Working against SOAP services to retrieve links related to artists using MSN search APIs.
• Working against REST services to retrieve similar albums, and artist event information (in Las Vegas, given the MIX context) via Amazon and Eventful.
• Building and offering a REST service such as the top-rated albums play list service using .asmx combined with Atlas web service extensions.
• Building a Windows Live gadget that consumes this play list.
• Finally, adding Live Clipboard to copy/paste play lists between applications.

In addition to the specific demo scenarios, my sample code contains new Atlas components for the following scenarios:

• Login component
• MediaPlayer control
• ClipboardButton control
• Rating control (1 to 5 stars UI ala Netflix)
• Creating DHTML (directx-based IE) transitions

I'll blog some more about mashups, and these components as time goes.

One note on the running the demos: You will need to sign up with the various web services (MSN search, Amazon, Eventful) to get your own keys or IDs, and fill in the appSettings section in web.config to run the demos (this is definitely one of the downsides with publishing mashup samples). I am planning on hosting the sample live on my site at some point.