Asigment 1: Mashups

The term Mashup originates from the music video industry. In terms of the internet, a mashup is a web page or application that uses and combines data, functionality, etc. from several, sources that creates a new service, which is hopefully easy to use, fast, and open source materials. A mashup can also be seen as a child of the Web 2.0 environment, with the advent of commonly accepted web standards, the mixing and matching of various competitors API (Application Programming Interface) it became much easier to stitch together the various applications to create these new services. (Clarkin and Holmes)

Early mashups were took data from sites such as Craigslist, Amazon etc. and integrated them into mapping services or photo services to allow a visualization of the data. As with most innovations on the net, these early mashups were consumer focused.

                  Cycle for design (or redesign) of Mashups (http://searchcrm.techtarget.com)

There are many types of Mashup:

• Data mashups: combine data of similar types to create a web service, which would otherwise not exist. An example of an educational data mashup Interactive Map Tool from Johns Hopkins University, which allows students and staff to create custom mashups using digital media, text, and data.
• Business mashups: Allow businesses to combine their own resources with data from other web services, but focusing it into a seamless manner. One of the best known examples is a project from Agile Development.
• Consumer mashups as opposed to data mashups, consumer mashups tend to combine different data types, and then combine them into a single presentation, one of the earliest mashups housing maps is an example of this class of mashup, which allowed Craigslist for rent and for sale housing to appear on a map linked to google maps. 

                            Top ten Mashups of all time (Programmableweb)

I am a regular user of Amazon come (the 5^th most popular Mashup of all time). It allows you to search for books, music CDs, videotapes and DVDs, software, consumer electronics, kitchen items, tools, lawn and garden items, toys & games, baby products, apparel, sporting goods, gourmet food, jewelery, watches, health and personal-care items, beauty products, musical instruments, clothing, industrial & scientific supplies, and yes even groceries! It should be considered a Business mashup as combines’ data from its own databases, with that of publishers, Venders, selected second hand sellers, and chains such as Toys Are Us etc.  

As can be seen if you wanted to buy Torchwood: Children of Earth,  you are able to see that it is in stock, and costs $20.99 (USD) from amazon.com, that 30 other venders sell it new for as cheaply as $20.38 or 11 used copies are available a starting at $16.98. Thus allowing me to decide if I want a new copy or a used copy, and if I do want to buy it from Amazon, or one of the other venders.

References:

Clarkin, Larry and Josh Holmes. "Enterprise Mashups." n.d. MSDN Architecture Center. 20 Jan 2011 <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/bb906060.aspx>.

http://searchcrm.techtarget.com. Consumer and enterprise mashups. n.d. 20 Jan 2011 <http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/feature/Consumer-and-enterprise-mashups>.

Programmableweb. Programmable web. n.d. 20 Jan 2011 <http://www.programmableweb.com/apis>.