Check out this great Google maps mashup I found: Zip code mashup. I found it because a packaged arrived yesterday and the delivery confirmation claimed it was sent to my address in zip code 02143, which I thought wrong. So I wanted to check and make sure that I’m actually in 02144 and not 02143, because I could easily have memorized the wrong zip code. Turns out 02144 is correct, like I thought, but I was surprised to learn that Somerville has 3 whole zip codes to itself. That seems like a lot to me, but then, it is the northeast. Oh, apparently, we’re calling these things special google maps overlays “mashups” now. A “mashup” really is just the result of open access to information; people put together information from different sources. Thats just an awful name for something so common. Its also kind of misleading like the term Podcast.
A podcast, is just an audio file (often in MP3 format). It is nothing else. Podcasts are often delivered via RSS, which is nothing more than an attempt to turn the “user pulls the content” nature of the world wide web on its head. That would be, into a “users have content pushed to them” medium, such as television. RSS does this by wasting a ton of resources polling for updates. Any well seasoned programmer will tell you the polling is an awful idea unless you have no other way, and if you have to do it, maybe you should rethink why you need to do it in the first place. I tend to think that making the internet more like TV is also an awful idea, so that even this friggen blog automatically offers an RSS feed irks me. Right, so a podcast is an audio file that is pushed to the user, its simple, the only software you need is an audio playing program and a web browser. The web browser will display the XML that implements the RSS feed, and you can easily find the link to the audio file, download it and play it. But the name podcast makes people think that there is something special about this audio file, and that they need to have special software like iTunes which combines and audio player and an RSS reader, when in fact, neither are needed. I know it sounds cool, but nomenclature should make things as simple as they are, not more complex.
On the subject of names for things I don’t like: “lolcats” for pictures of cats with words on them. Well I don’t like pictures of cats with words on them much in general because most of them aren’t very creative and the shorthand English doesn’t make them funnier. Now, really creative ones I’ve got nothing against, but I would prefer to call them Cat Macros, which is an accepted alternative term. The worst part about lolcats is that I’ve heard (not heard of) people use the term when talking about images in the same style but without actual cats in them. If you add a humorous caption to an image of a turtle it should be a Turtle Macro, not an lolcat.