Ning

The base tool for the construction of the SNOUT site is Ning, a free online service for creating, customising and sharing social networks. The Ning platform provides REST API'S, PHP API'S and JavaScript API's giving access to the core Ning services and database as well as to external web services such as Flickr and RSS feeds. The Ning documentation offers snippets of code allowing for easy integration of these services. For SNOUT, it was essential to include an instance of Google Maps on the site in order to map the environmental sensor information detected by the carnival characters during the SNOUT event. As there is no option to add Google Maps to a site using Ning's site templates, the SNOUT site was built from scratch using Ning's 'developer' option. This allows complete control over the code while maintaining access to Ning services such as site back-ups, access to social networking lists etc.

Figure 5.3 shows the website.

Figure 5.3: Snoutlondon website