New Technologies: November 2007 Archives

I have to admit, Amy (Reeter)'s question during our Web Dev meeting on Tuesday, of what I think are the next new technologies, caught me a little off guard. Because of that, I don't think my response was as complete as it should have been. I'd like to expand a bit on what I stated.

The next new technology that will affect our jobs, in my opinion (and this is PURELY speculation), is mash-ups. If you are unfamiliar with mash-ups, it is a new breed of interactive web application. It takes data from multiple, external/internal sources (using web services and/or online application APIs), and "mashes" that data into a brand new online service.

With the development of Mizzou Wire, Mizzou’s news and features Web site, we knew we were going to want to have multimedia with our stories — including slide shows, audio, video and other kinds of media we haven’t thought of yet. The challenge was finding a way to present all this information in a uniform way so the end user could easily view it, but also make it manageable for us to update using our content management system.

It took a bit of research and trial and error, but I think we’ve found a system that covers all the bases and doesn’t require a lot of money or programming time.