Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Mashups, Google Gadgets and Airline Reservations

In a recent blog post, Jonathan explains how to put together an iGoogle compatible gadget for your Mashup. I like his concise explanation of what a gadget is ...
"A widget or gadget is a little program, usually with a cute and compact UI, that runs inside a widget engine. The widget engine generally has the characteristic that a number of widgets can be viewed at once, allowing a user to construct their own digital dashboard of relevant information sources. There are a number of widget technologies under various names – gadgets, widgets, portlets. Some examples of widget engine include the Google Desktop, iGoogle, Windows Vista Sidebar, Windows Live widgets, Yahoo! Widgets, Apple’s Macintosh Dashboard, and lots more."

Then, he follows the previous post with his latest (and apparently very successful) experiment on making an early, automated reservation at Soutwest Airlines using a Mashup.
"This time I successfully checked in online within 5 minutes of the opening of online checkin, even though I was actually in the air on another flight at the time! My new and still under-development southwestAutoCheckin mashup worked brilliantly and gave me one of the lowest boarding numbers I’ve seen."

The WSO2 Mashup Server, making your life that much cooler!