Web Mashups
In the music world, mashups refer to the mixing of musical styles. DJ’s in England originated the idea by taking the vocals of one song and mixing it with another song’s melody. Although the DJ’s were not trying to take any credit from the original masters of the songs, they were trying to produce a BETTER song with the mashup. Take two songs and bring them together to make a GREAT song.
In the web world the term mashup uses the idea of musical mashups and applies it to applicable web concepts. Web mashups combine the capabilities of two or more online applications to create a hybrid that provides more customer value than the original sources alone.
One of the most innovative hybrids created thus far includes the mashup of mapping and satellite image software. Using local content in conjunction with the hybrid model has allowed cities to offer detailed web platforms explaining in precise detail what exists on a local landscape.
For example: a city like Chicago has a website that integrates Google Earth (1st application) with stats from the city database (2nd application). The city database contains information on streets, incomes, crime rates, zoning, etc. This allows local townships and large cities to have their streets and city map featured online and available for all to see on search engines and websites.
Once the information is update in one application, they are immediately updated within the other application. For instance, there are websites that allow a user to bring up a map and locate all of the gas stations and their gas prices in a certain area. Even some real estate agencies are allowing their clients to click on a property (via their website) and view the Google Earth images associated with the neighborhood.
There are even e-commerce focused websites that utilize an entire e-commerce application from an external site. There are websites that use the Amazon retail engine to sell products. Of course for all of the transactions Amazon is main seller, but the site utilizing their engine does receive a referral fee from Amazon for every purchase made on-site.
Mashups don’t have to be limited to only two web applications. Google Gears actually allows web owners to integrate more than 8 applications on their site, working as one sound machine. Search, advertising, chat, calendars…are all examples of applications.
Mashups are like a game of Jenga. Building blocks pieced together to form one tall tower that over-masses the single blocks. Also, if you take out enough of the blocks (applications) you will most definitely cause the mashup to crumble and function incorrectly to the point that the mashup is practically useless.
The Process of
Building a Web Mashup
Constructing web mashups has become very easy overtime as it can be as simple of inserting a few lines of JavaScript at the end of a code. Application programming interfaces API’s allow web programmers to take applications from multiple websites and combine them (mashup) to work as one on one website. The World Wide Web is no longer only a place of web pages with sole functions, but rather a world of different web pages with multiple capabilities.
For a step by step guide on how to build a web mashup Digital Fewsure recommends ProgrammableWeb as a resource.
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