All mashed up...

It seems that mashups are our confused tech. topic of the week. I thought that I would try to find some information about them by seeking to answer a few key questions.

What is a mashup? What is its purpose?

'A mashup is a web application that combines data from multiple external sources' (from the web 2.0 online tutorial: Week 6A task)

'Mashups are an exciting genre of interactive Web applications that draw upon content retrieved from external data sources to create entirely new and innovative services.' (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-mashups.html)

Mashups seem to be created in order to fulfil a need (see examples), and combine data sources in new and innovative ways to make information more accessible and convenient for users. The data or content for these mashups can be in the form of RSS Feeds, which are like what we subscribe to on Google reader, and similar applications.

What are some examples of mashups?
http://www.programmableweb.com/ Search this site for mashups. It also has a mashup of the day, as well as information about the new mashups that have been put on the web.

In the YouTube video that I have embedded below, the video's creator explains in simple (Loretta-friendly) language about what a mashup is - and he gives examples! I have listed a few of the examples that are mentioned in the video (with links), in case you are interested.

• AnthemsOnMap
• Map your buddies (a mashup of Facebook, Google Maps and Amazon)
• Twittervision 3D
• Cloudme.com (searches Yahoo, Flickr and YouTube by using these three APIs at once)
• Tuneglue (very cool, creates a sort of visual web of music and similar artists)
• VDiddy (combines many APIs)
• Yahoo v Google (compares the results of both search engines, leaving you to take the best ones)
  
  
  

As he says in the video, mashups utilise the functionality of other APIs, and lots of these mashups seem to be map-based in their core concepts. Mashups ( to be legitimately considered a mashup) should have more than one API involved.

I hope this has helped everyone, it certainly clarified my understanding of mashups.