Mashing ’em up: Mashups

I’m still not feeling my best this week, so I’m not too happy with how this week’s entry has turned out.

Mashups are web applications that are combinations of other different web applications.

The potential for this is endless. An already good application is used to create bigger, better applications with much more features. The people who make these applications, and whose applications are being used, allow this because it allows for better development of the technology and more resources to use.

One online program that gets implemented into many different mashups is Google Maps. There is a blog that actually tracks what mashups are being made using this application called Google Maps Mania. The latest site featured on that blog is Everyscape, where they incorporate Google Maps into an application that lets you see a street view of a location. The creators of Google Maps allow this because of the uses that can be gained from such sharing. If they were to restrict use of the application, then we wouldn’t have so many other resources out there.

This relates back to the open source movement because people are allowing the code to be improved upon. Just like Firefox lets people view their open source so that they can get greater and more useful user feedback about the equipment, API makers allow their applications to be used so more uses can come from the application.

I personally view mashups as a wonderful thing. There are so many different combinations of applications, you could almost make a mashup that will track your neighbors movements. Almost.

A website I found useful is Programmable Web. It tracks several different mashups that are out there. It’s a very useful tool if you want to find a mashup, or if you want to find an application to be included in your own mashup.