In the music industry, a “mashup” refers to a song which is created by combining elements from two or more songs into something new. I’m sure you have heard this type of music before and I have as well. When I initially saw the term mashup in a textbook about Web 2.0 tools, however, I thought “what on earth does a mashup have to do with communication and technology?” Little did I know that mashups can be a powerful enterprise application, or that many of the tools I use every day are defined as mashups.
Reshaping Your Business with Web 2.0 did an excellent job describing what a mashup is and provided some examples. Simply put, a mashup is a “web application that combines data from one or more sources into a single integrated web page.” It does not change the original components, but instead blends the data elements from a variety of sources to provide a tailored application that provides a great deal of information in one location. In my own career, I have used SharePoint 2007 in the past to unknowingly create mashups that blend data from web services on our customers, Really Simple Syndications (RSS) feeds about our competitors, and other add-ins (such as Excel) to view our financials. You have probably seen a mashup in action when you view a Google Map on the directions page of a restaurant’s website.
Unfortunately, while this textbook did provide some instructions for creating mashups, they were a bit complicated for a novice. Fortunately, there are a number of vendors that specialize in helping individuals and enterprises alike create mashups. Some of these companies include Kapow Technologies (http://www.kapowtech.com/), Serena Software (http://www.serena.com/), Oracle WebCenter (http://webcenter.oracle.com/), and ProgrammableWeb (http://www.programmableweb.com/).
If you’re interested in incorporating mashups into your profession or for personal use, I encourage you to learn more. You really might be surprised at what can be created. Whether you are looking for stock data, news feeds, mapping technologies, business data (as in my SharePoint example), or any other items to be displayed in one central location, a mashup may just be the tool you need to save time and increase productivity.
-Melissa McWilliams
References:
Casarez, V., Cripe, B., Sini, J., & Weckerle, P. (2009). Reshaping your business with Web 2.0: Using the new collaborative technologies to lead business transformation. New York: The McGraw Hill Companies.
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