Event: Mashup Camp 6

Tim Breidigan and I will be attending Mashup Camp 6 in Silicon Valley next week. If you have any interest in mashups, public APIs, social networking applications, widgets, or the future of the Web, this is one event you can't possibly miss. These have consistently been the best (un)conferences I've attended, and this new round of iPhone, Facebook, and OpenSocial apps should make things even more interesting.

Best of all, Mashup Camp 6 is absolutely free! So there's no reason not to sign up. Right now. Go on!

Using Popularity To Find Better Events

It's one of our most common questions: How do I get the most interesting events from a list of thousands? Now the answer is as simple as setting a sort order: 'popularity' has arrived.

How does it work? The API search documentation has the specifics, but the change is a simple one: instead of sorting by 'date' or 'relevance', sort your event or venue search results by 'popularity' to get the most interesting events first.

This works particularly well when combined with a category and a location, as seen on our revamped events tab page. You can preview the effect on any event or venue search on Eventful.com by changing the "Sort by" option in the sidebar.

So what does "popularity" really mean? It's our own formula based on all the interactions people have events, venues, performers, and demands on Eventful.com, combined with our proprietary recommendation engine.

The idea has been in the works for a while (you may have heard of 'mojo'), but now we've refined it to the point where it's ready for prime time. Please give it a try, and let us know if you have any questions.

Ruby API Updated to Version 2.2.0

The Eventful Ruby API library has been updated. Version 2.2.0 is spiffier than ever, and I'm starting to think I'm going to have to add darksunglasses.gem as a dependency for safety.

First, you can use Symbols or Strings for the parameter hashes.

event = eventful.call 'events/get',
                      :id => 'E0-001-003684357-3'

We cleaned up the paramter names ("server_port" renamed to :port, for example) and included a new example. But don't worry, version 2.2.0 is compatible with any code written against the eventfulapi library.

Pop open a terminal and run gem update eventfulapi, or if you're just starting out for the first time, gem install eventfulapi --remote. Check the library documentation and API documentation for more.

Join the developer mailing list and get in touch if you make something cool or have any problems or ideas. Now go and code!

Mashup Camp 3 report

Another Mashup Camp is past, and good time was had by all. Nate and I met some fascinating people who are working on some impressive projects. Notable among them:

• Long-time Eventful friends Taylor McKnight and Daniel Westermann-Clark of Podbop fame, returning to Mashup Camp after an absence. As promised, we followed Taylor around until we (and by "we" I mean "I") got too tired to continue.
• Anthony Volodkin of The Hype Machine and Chris Marstall of tourfilter, which won first and second place in the Best Mashup contest respectively. We got a chance to have a few drinks with them along with other music folks.
• John Herren, geek extraordinaire and hardware masher, who was joined by Liz Herren this time. She had her Web 2.0 "Aha" moment at Mashup Camp, so now she's going to start her own blog.
• Jon Aizen from Dapper, a fun new way to generate an API for Web sites that don't have them. I didn't see the demonstration myself, but Nate put together a scraper for popular music promotion service in about 4 minutes.
• Kevin Lawver from AOL, who had good things to say about microformats and the future of Web widgets (and wore some awesome t-shirts, too).

...and a whole host of others, of course. There were so many good conversations everywhere, it would be difficult to list everyone.

We also got a chance to show off our pet side-project Gigul8r, of which I'll say more in a later post. Suffice it to say that it won 4th place in the Best Mashup Contest and was named Mashup of the Day at ProgrammableWeb:

Mashup Camp 4 will be in Mountain View this summer, and they're already accepting registrations. We're definitely looking forward to being there.

Event: Mashup Camp 3

Nate Ritter and I will be attending Mashup Camp 3 in January. If you have any interest in mashups, public APIs, or the future of the Web, this is one event you can't possibly miss. The first two were the best (un)conferences I attended this year, and this time we get to feel the MIT vibe on top of it all.

We will also be presenting the Eventful API at Mashup University, the day before Camp starts. If you'll be around that day (even if you can't make it to the Camp itself), sign up for Mashup U and see our talk. I promise it will contain at least one robot, one pirate, and a whole bunch of monkeys!

Spotted in the Wild: Tagbulb

Tag search isn't anything new in the Web 2.0 space, but there's something to be said for making a good idea faster and more comprehensive. (*cough Google cough*) Comprehensive is definitely where Tagbulb is headed, if their existing list of search targets is any sign. Photos, videos, books, blogs, jobs, podcasts, social bookmarks, goals... and now events.

The interface seems to be entirely AJAX, which when combined with really simple design actually manages to be snappy. (I've tried portal-style sites recently that load like a herd of elephants, but I digress.) I can think of a thousand directions they might go, so it'll be interesting to see how they develop.

Spotted again: Rrove

Eiffel Tower page at Rrove

I think we forgot to blog our first encounter with Rrove, but it turns out the wait was worth it. They've spiffed up the site a great deal, so a good idea has gotten even better.

Rrove is all about sharing places. Take any point on the Earth, be it an address or a geolocation, and give it all the Web 2.0 goodness we've grown to expect: tags, reviews, comments, Flickr photos, and (of course) events nearby.

My personal favorite new feature is Sets, groups of places that are listed together but commented separately. For instance, take the set of Paris destinations, a kind of "must see" list. Don't agree that the Eiffel Tower is worth visiting? Vote it down. Have a great photo of the Moulin Rouge? Add it yourself. Know a hot gig happening around the corner from the Louvre? Well, you get the picture. And so do they.

Spotted in the Wild: Nextcat

NextCat event list

Nextcat says that "It's all about who you know." They could be talking about the entertainment industry or Web 2.0 social networking, but in their case they mean both. Picking up where Myspace left off, they provide promotional pages for artists and entertainers looking to expand their reach and potentially land a new gig.

Rather than roll their own event listings, Nextcat decided to use the Eventful API, both for searching for events and adding new events for your artist. The interface for both is nice and clean, integrated well into the Nextcat look while retaining the as much Eventful functionality as possible.

I'm glad to see events making their way into social networking sites like Nextcat. Someone was just requesting events support in LinkedIn yesterday, so it sounds like the time has come.

Spotted in the Wild: The Hype Machine

The Hype Machine is a different kind of blog aggregator, one which "tracks songs and discussion posted on the best music blogs." It combs music blog feeds for any mention of a particular performer's songs and displays them in a most-recent list along with other relevant links.

For instance, a search for Scissor Sisters gets you a pop-up player to listen to each song, links to each song on iTunes and Amazon, YouTube videos, and the performer's Eventful and Upcoming events.

Spotted in the Wild: Geowalk

(Well, not so much spotted as pointed out by Harald Kotte of Visicam. Thanks, Harald!)

Geowalk is a Google Maps mashup that takes a different approach from the ones we've seen so far. Rather than fill in the entire map view with a spray of events (or photos, news items, hotels, travel tips...), Geowalk displays a relevant list based on where you click. That way you can use the map as an overview and get detailed information by clicking around.