A talk I gave at the first MXUG-style Girl Geek Dinner in Melbourne, 21/7/2009. This version comes with extra explanatory slides for the attendance-deprived. I love web apps. But they generally don't have very good tools to help their own users deal with data overload. Like filters and summaries. Luckily, we have APIs, so they're pretty easy to string together. Examples using MediaWiki.

1. the right
level of
detail
brianna@modernthings.org

2. i ♥ web apps...

8. (I use a lot of wikis)

9. ...but...

11. they're so needy!

12. some web apps help users
manage data well.
the good:

15. the bad:

17. LinkedIn groups

18. (why can't I get all group news
in one email?)

19. the ugly:

23. this was fine when I
read my wikis every day,
but no longer.

24. I need... filters!

26. and... summaries!

28. what kind of problem is this?

29. usability

30. user
communication

31. marketing

32. user
marketing communication
usability

33. luckily, we can build
our own solution...

35. ...because we have APIs!

37. an example: MediaWiki.

38. api.php
mediawiki.org/wiki/API

39. mwclient
Python library for accessing
MediaWiki API

40. (affordable web hosting)

41. mwfeeds.modernthings.org
Filter feeds for only edits that
add a new H2 heading.

42. So instead of THIS:

44. I can just have the items that
add new topics. woot!

46. (Pipes could probably
do it too. No API needed.)

47. pipes.yahoo.com

48. Summary example
on one of my favourite
“occasional” wikis:

50. so I want something like this:

51. Hi! Here's what happened in geekfeminism.wikia.com this week.
* 243 edits were made in the article space. Wow! That's 34 edits every day.
* 22 editors were working this week. The top 5 busiest people have been
Thayvian (131 edits), Skud (75 edits), Elky (9 edits), Hypatia (3 edits) and
78.105.109.196 (3 edits). Thanks everyone!
* 77 different articles were edited, including 25 completely brand new
pages. Woot!
Top 5 articles this week:
* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/EMACS_virgins_joke
* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Ubuntero_gendered_name
* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Trigger_warning
* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Richard_Stallman
* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_women_in_Open_Source
And all the new articles:
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Troll
* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Concern_troll
* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Stereotype_threat
* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Defcon_comic_strip_incident
* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Emasculation
* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Dress_a_day_blog
* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Concern_trolls
* http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Richard_Stallman

52. 30 minutes of hacking later:

56. todo:
generalise,
hook into email/RSS,
better faster stronger

57. but really...
how easy is that?!

59. credits
● Title – CC-BY – jared - http://www.flickr.com/photos/generated/2056145757/
● Mouth open – CC-BY-SA – bradleygee -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/icanchangethisright/3690065403/
● The good – CC-BY – pinksherbet - http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/2160471914/
● The bad – CC-BY-SA – yogi - http://www.flickr.com/photos/yogi/65938277/
● The ugly – CC-BY – isforinsects - http://www.flickr.com/photos/sethwoodworth/2714717353/
● Filter – CC-BY-SA – daveyll - http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveyll/332723930/
● Summary – CC-BY- Tom T - http://www.flickr.com/photos/scraplab/3195233814/
● Digging – CC-BY – woodleywonderworks -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/3377221745/
● Map mashup – CC-BY – caterina - http://www.flickr.com/photos/caterina/12204207/
● Surprise – CC-BY-SA – bensonkua - http://www.flickr.com/photos/bensonkua/2754312951/
● Web logos and screenshots – most are copyrighted with all rights reserved.
everything else is mine & licensed CC-BY-SA!

60. thanks!
brianna@
modernthings.org
identi.ca/pfctdayelise
brianna.laugher.id.au/
blog