Creating Mashups with Google Earth
by Nerius Tradisauskas
Using Amazon Virtual Computing Web Services by Rico Wind
Center for Data-intensive Systems
Department of Computer Science
Aalborg University
Friday, April 27, 14.30
Fredrik Bajers Vej 7, E3-109
In this open seminar, two of today’s hot topics will be treated.
Mashups, utilizing other services through their open API, are gaining widespread popularity (see http://www.programmableweb.com/ for a large repository).
The first presentation will illustrate how to do mashups with Google Earth.
The presentation will show how to create the KML (Keyhole Markup Language) files that can be understood and displayed by Google Earth. The data is feed to Google Earth in a predefined XML format.
The data used for illustration are user routes collected in the "Spar paa farten" project. Several Google Earth features will be illustrated, both by using the routes directly and by extracting statistical information about user’s behaviour over time.
In addition, the presentation will show how the KML files can be used in Google Maps, which does not require the user to install a desktop application.
The second presentation will show how to use two of Amazon’s web services,
EC2 and S3, for virtual computing and storage.
S3 allows users to programmatically store and retrieve objects using Amazon’s servers. All communication is done using web services, and the user is billed according to usage. Because the user only pays for the actual storage space used and the traffic generated, this solution is suitable for a wide range of applications. Objects can be made publicly available, thus allowing other persons to retrieve the objects using HTTP (e.g., it is possible to put up images and allow other people to view some of them).
EC2 allows users to start virtual computers (each one equivalent to 1.7Ghz
x86 processor, 1.75GB of RAM, 160GB of local disk) using web services.
Amazon provides a number of images based on different Linux distributions, and several users have made images available to the public as well. In addition, it is possible to create and upload custom images. Amazon provides tools for this process (available on the Linux platform). When a virtual computer has been started, the user has root access (using SSH and public/private keys for log in) to the computer.
After the workshop, there will be refreshments.
