According to the Webopedia, “mash-up” involves using web applications from two or more sources on the Internet to create a compound information display, with one item overlaying another. Their “mash-up” article and one in the Wikipedia give Google Maps as an example. Using Google maps, one might overlay a satellite image of an area with traffic data from a different program running on a server in a different web location hundreds or thousands of miles away.
The Webopedia article goes on to state:
“This capability to mix and match data and applications from multiple sources into one dynamic entity is considered by many to be the promise of the Web service standard (also referred to as on-demand computing).”
Reprinted by permission
This has interesting and dynamic implications. On an elementary note, it reminds me of the information overlays of air traffic controllers who watch radar screens for identified (and sometimes unidentified) aircraft to pass over a display.
An appropriate example of mash-up is a service provided by Flickr that overlays a Yahoo map with information about the image-making users of the Flickr service. You can find out how many people in your area are using Flickr, and who’s who around where you live. Mash-up, in essence, is becoming a major tool in the global community.
Evidently the term “mash-up” comes from hip-hop music mixes, tooled by the modern day “disc jocky” who performs in clubs and other venues with his or her audio equipment, turntables, amps etc. There seems to be two forms of the word, with some using the hyphenated term and others just using “mashup.” As this term becomes more worn, the hyphen will get lost, just as “e-mail” has become email, and e-commerce, ecommerce.
We are using a form of mash-up on this website to overlay the images from one set of servers onto the web template background from another place entirely. Both sites use database technology to deliver their data to your screen. Woe be unto us if one set of servers go down, because our site would be without any images at all.
A true mash-up makes use of APIs (Application Program Interfaces) but I don’t know enough about those to have a clue as to which APIs are used in this website or in your computer operating system and web browser. Since APIs are supposedly abstract, –well hey, we are all about abstract over here. We can imagine that we are on the leading edge, since that makes us feel better and more important without increasing the cost of anything. Let’s hope your mash-ups are of the information-overlay variety, not the automobile-overlay variety.
