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Tuesday, September 2

Mashup the Internet

Imagine you're at Flickr, checking out a most fabulous picture and you're thinking 'Wow, this would look really nice on my blog!'. Well, you simply click on Blog This, select your blog that you have previously attached to your Flickr-account, Flickr sets up a description box next to the picture, you type, you post! You go to your blog and there it is! The picture you wanted, linking back to the original picture on Flickr, all nice and formatted on your own blog. A nice example of a mashup.

Mashups, in my opinion, are the next best thing on the Internet and in the world of computing. A hype? Don't think so. A trend, to say the least. But maybe my example wasn't too clear. A mashup:

As Wikipedia describes it:
In web development, a mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool; an example is the use of cartographic data from Google Maps to add location information to real-estate data, thereby creating a new and distinct web service that was not originally provided by either source.
Some of you may have read my post in which I promoted Ubiquity. The Ubiquity application is a great example of a mashup, by all means far better than the example I have given in my introduction.

Why are mashups the next best thing on the Internet and in the world of computing? Because the world today, is very fast, rushed, complicated and full of incredibly busy people. We've got so much to do, and very little time to do it in and we all want to do it together. The computer and the Internet help us to do the things we need to do, in less time. However, computers and the Internet, get bigger (metaphorically) and more complicated everyday. The possibilities grow, thus our need to use these possibilities grows exponentially on.

Mashups focus on what we need: good usability, interaction, predictability, connectivity, anticipation and quickness.

Let's ask that question again: why are mashups the next best thing on the Internet and in the world of computing? Because we want to do too many things on the same timeframe. Because we want life to be a rollercoaster and we don't have time for queues. Because we don't take pitstops. Because, if it would not change the taste, we would throw our sandwich, tea, coffee, afternoon snack and dinner in a blender and drink it all out of one cup.

2 comments:

GuiGui said...

whoah, nice metaphor, your last remark.

Unknown said...

I like metaphors, because they bring your message across much stronger than the actual, straightforward, message.