Cool Site Alert: Mash me up some taters....

Because I like new stuff, finding new companies and just generally wasting time on the internet -- I'm here to let everyone know about a new mashup company out there called Teqlo. Their tagline is "mashups for the masses" which I personally like (I've done some programming stuff, but generally don't have the patience for programming).

Below you will find their intro video - it's only about two minutes, so spend 120 seconds of your life and watch it. It seems pretty cool, I don't have my account yet, but will do that this weekend and see what I can do with it. I'm a pretty good acid test, just technical enough to understand, yet lazy and stupid enough to cause problems for myself (can you say "please read the fucking manual??"). Sorry for the little bit of expletive, but I also spent some time done technical support - 'nuff said.

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Happy Birthday!! Best Web Site for Mashup Info

Whenever anyone asks me "what is a mashup?" I send them to the Programmable Web website (say that 3 times). I noticed they had a blog entry today stating they are One Year Old this week. Well, congrats folks!! There were probably times during the past year that seemed overwhelming, other times overstimulating.

If you want some good info on the world of Mashups, you've got to visit this site.

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Mashup on the information super highway....

...headlines are tough, I was trying to be cleaver with this one - mashup (smashup) - and sometimes it just doesn't work. Oh Well!

First of all, let's go ahead and define a Mashup (this is from Wikipedia...)

A mashup is a website or web application that seamlessly combines content
frommore than one source into an integrated experience. Content used inmashups
are typically sourced from a third party via a public interface orAPI.

Many people are experimenting with mashups using eBay, Amazon,Google, and Yahoos APIs.OK, so a mashup is someone taking other people's content/applications and bringing them into their own website. In come cases, the mashup is better than the original content, because it provides additional context, or an interesting way to use the content/application.

There are lots of interesting Map mashsup (google, yahoo, mapquest, etc.) - some have taken a map and mashed it with a blog - allowing someone to do a "writeup" of my commute to work. Mashups are interesting - and it's cool that companies have figured out that someone else just might have a cool "alternative" use for their stuff -- something they would never have thought about. But, just like everything else, not all mashups are worth it - but you have to judge for yourself.

Mashups provide a great business opportunity, so get your juices flowing and check out some of these sites....

The Programmable Web - good directory, with description.
Mashup Camp web blogIvan Pope's API
Blog Mix'06 -- a gathering

And here are a few examples...
http://www.collaboradate.com/
http://www.celebrity-maps.com/
http://www.homepricemaps.com/index.htm
http://www.skibonk.com/ski/index.jsp
http://dailymashup.com/

And you'll find more - google mashup, then do a blog search, technorati, tag it, whatever.

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