Mashups

Mashup Introductions

From the time since internet was introduced to the world till now, developers had created many web APIs for their application. One of such latest example is the Google map.

In today's web development, the developers are getting smart. They uses 3rd party data source and other APIs, merging them to create a unique application. So, in generic, Mashups are actually an exciting genre of interactive Web applications that draw upon content retrieved from external data sources to create entirely new and innovative services. It is a new and innovative web application.

The following link provides a video on the explanation of mashups:
http://news.zdnet.com/2422-13569_22-152729.html


Mashup Examples

• Mapping Mashups

At today's information technology sector, people are storing huge amount of information on the things and activities occurring everyday. But, these informations, often containing the location datas are not presented in the most interactive way. It was through the introduction of the Google maps APIs, that these informations can be presented in a more graphically and interactive way. Web developers started to use the Google maps APIs to present their information.

Existing websites that do mapping mashups: FrozenBear.com

• Video and photos Mashups

There are many social networking and photo hosting websites that is popular among the teenagers today. As we all know, there are mashups available that is able to mash up the photos and music to form a unique picture slide show (www.slide.com). For example, www.friendster.com, allows user to insert videos, photos, or even musics into their homepage. These videos, photos and musics are often uploaded at other hosting websites, like photobucket.com.


Conclusion

Mashups are truly an interesting and very innovative way of developing a web application. I believe that Mashups are getting popular and many developers will start doing mashups.