Mashups Made Easy

At the recent Mashup Camp in Silicon Valley Intel showcased there new "Mashup Maker", a browser extension that simplifies the process of mashing up websites, allowing users to create fairly complicated data structures without programming or any additional software.

Intel's Mashmaker beta is now available to all, and since I have not had enough time to play with it feel free to review this program in the comments below if you have experience with this application.

Although Mashmaker appears to be geared more for users and small scale developers this approach to software is important to watch in even in the enterprise development space, where mashups are an increasingly important part of a solid online development strategy. Gone are the days when developers needed to work for days to interface their websites with other data sources. Now, from Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft mapping to currency conversion to real estate pricing it is easy to create and maintain extensive and robust online environments that use data from many sources in the context of your own website or web applications.

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Mashup Wrapup

Mashup Camp is wrapping up in Mountain View and the votes are getting counted for the best mashup. I was not very impressed yesterday, but today previewed several projects that were both elegant and seemed to have some practical - perhaps even commercial - benefits.

It is not really fair to judge these based on the 5 minute ¨mini-pitches¨ in front of small laptops, but thatś how we do it here at Mashup Camp.

My favorite was Mapdango, which used about 5+ APIs from services like Flickr, Wikipedia, and Google to search city focused information and deliver an excellent collection of data from many sources. The Mapdango interface was intuitive - something that is lacking in many mashups, let along many large commercial websites. The website provided a widget as well, and generally was as nicely fleshed out application.

I was also impressed with several iPhone and mobile applications, especially the one that allowed you to track your location and your friends locations using pings or wifi triangulation and Facebook integration. Another excellent mashup combined a salesforce contact database with LinkedIn data and mapping to create an effective contact management tool.

One team had tracked Flickr images over time after tiring of so many mapping mashups. This concept would soon be applied to RSS feeds as well and could offer some very interesting trend insights.

One of the most popular was an iPhone Netflix mashup that allowed you to shop for movies at movie kiosks via your iPhone. The iPhone CNET application was also excellent, allowing extensive info browsing via the iPhone.

My apologies to some of the good mashups I have left off here.

... and the winner is ... Mapdango!

For a complete list (eventually) visit the Mashup Camp website.

Mashup Camp Speek Geeking

Here at Mashup Camp we are entering day 3 with more speed geeking - this time in much smaller groups than yesterday (pictured), and reviewing actual mashups rather than APIs. About 20 mashups are vying for the best mashup bragging rights and the reward of a Apple Computer prize.

So far the mashups have not been up to the standards from the first camp - not sure why and I have yet to see them all. Most impressive so far for me is Openkapowś mashup making routine, which is intuitive, simple, and free (and huge if you decide to download). This is a very robust piece of enterprise software that has been refashioned to the web space. More pictures from Mashup Camp 6 in Mountain View.

Mashups for the Enterprise

Here at Mashup Camp, Serena is talking about the business mashup space and promoting their tools to simplify the creation and deployment of mashups for large as well as small businesses. Their main focus seems to be the enterprise space with business mashups. Examples include everything from risk tracking to human resources management. www.Serena.com

Mashup University

Over the next few days we will be live blogging some of the action here at Mashup Camp 6 in Mountain View at the Computer Science Museum.

The first two of four days are ¨Mashup University¨ where companies will introduce their APIs and mashup enabling technologies. Then, at the ¨Mashup Camp¨ of the final two days we will review dozens of new companies that are using mashups in their projects and vote for the top mashup.

This morning Raymond Yee of UC Berkeley is introducing some of the basic concepts, with more complex stuff to follow from his recently published book ¨Mashup Guide". Yee has released the book online under creative commons license and is encouraging people to mash it up with other information - a very cool move Dr. Yee!

WebGuild goes to Camp - Mashup Camp 6

WebGuild will be covering Mashup Camp 6 in Mountain View with live blogging and company profiles for the many startups as well as established companies.

The Mashup conference is actually an "UNconference" as Mashup Camp follows an open conference format where participants determine the content and flow of the the sessions which generally cover topics related to the combination of varied data sources into one website or application.

Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo will all be in attendance as well as many other key providers of API "Application Programming Interfaces" which allow data sharing and distribution. Most internet watchers would suggest that mashups are a key part of Web 2.0.

Also attending are developers hoping to share and learn new ways to mashup information, as well as Venture Capitalists hoping to find startup gems among the "speed geeking" contestants who will vie for prizes in the most enjoyable part of the conference where startups and/or mashup providers have five minutes to showcase their project to small groups who move around the room from table to table.

Mashup Camp Six coming in March to Silicon Valley

You know mashups have hit the mainstream when they hit the NY Times, and this article is a nice introduction to Mashups and why they have become a key component of “Web 2.0″.

Mashups in music are songs that combine words and/or music from 2 or more songs, and internet mashups are similar - generally they are a combination of the information from 2 or more websites or data sources into one site. Zillow.com, for example, is an excellent mashup that takes real estate information and “mashes it” with mapping information, so you can navigate homes and prices via maps as well as in other ways. Also in typical Web 2.0 mashup fashion, Zillow offers “APIs” or “Application Program Interfaces” which are tools that allow simple integration of Zillow into your own website.

Mashups are not new but along with other Web 2.0 sensibilities they are becoming the backbone of the new internet, and represent a new direction in online life and computing.

Although the internet started out as a fairly open environment, the advent of big money led many websites and services to force users to pay for content and services. “Paywalls” at sites like the New York Times, Salon, and others meant that you could not get at the stories unless you subscribed. These paywalls are coming down now in favor of advertising supported revenue models and more open environments where websites tend to share data and even advanced software and services simply in exchange for the benefit of appearing as a link or an information box within other sites, or for participating in that websites social experiences.

Still confused about mashups? I don’t think anybody can even hope to digest the tidal waves of innovation and information that flood over the internet on a daily basis. But if you want to understand more about mashups there is no better conference than Mashup Camp 6 coming up in in Silicon Valley in March. David Berlind and Doug Gold started these camps a few years ago and they are a superb way to get up to speed very quickly on how mashups are …. changing everything. Mashup Camps are "unconferences" where the participants dictate the flow and content of the sessions. In my experience this leads to more participation and more interesting sessions. But highlight of Mashup Camps are the "speed geeking" sessions where mashup developers share their ideas and mashups in mini-presentations to small groups. These last just five minutes and then the group moves to a new mashup. It's a fantastic way to absorb a *lot* of information in a short time, and a lot of fun as well. The "Mashup University" is held the day before the camp as an introduction to some of the Mashups and Mashups APIs and how to use them in websites. Hope to See you at Mashup Camp!

Top Trends in Corporate 2.0 Sites

I've been scouring around quite a bit online to identify some of the top trends in corporate websites. These sites have traditionally been nothing more than brochure-ware displaying static content like mission statements, and product and contact info. In reality, not a whole lot has changed. While the Web has evolved at internet speed from the early days of Web 1.0 to 2.0, corporate sites have remained relatively the same and many are in danger of becoming relics of the past. We were going to have an event on "The New Corporate Website" which we decided to slate for another time in light of the OpenSocial phenom that came about.

So, what's the deal. Today's corporate website is still a sales and communication channel but not of the same manifestation as yesteryear's; the DNA of these sites have changed. There are a lot of Social Media and Web 2.0 components making their way to the corporate arena. Today's new corporate website is less static, stagnant, and one-dimensional.

Here are some of the trends I found:

• Widgetization of the web
  No suprise here. The corporate marketing-ites have jumped on this bandwagon and proven the Newsweek declaration that this is the "Year of the Widget" to be true. Although, I think this year was more about the hype and next year we will see more commercialization of widgets as more and more companies get caught up and the others push the marketing efforts on their initial adoption.


• Social networking cum customer networking
  It is built for customers, with customers. Live chatting has been around for a while for customer support but full-blown social networking sites have been created to serve customers better and to build and grow the network and community and utlimately, customer loyalty and goodwill. A good example is eBay's Neighborhoods.


• Blogs
  Blogs are being harnessed carefully and selectively. Not a lot of corporate blogs except for notable ones like Sun's CEO Jonathan Schwartz's Weblog which provides insight into the company and its products. The rarity of these blogs is mostly for fear of legal and market backlash, but a lot of companies have externally facing blogs by employees. The problem is that unless its the CEO or some high-profile employee or a sexy company, or if the blogs are not fully endorsed by the company and marketed and supported, they will flail.


• Rich Media Content
  Live or on-demand rich streaming media content with a real person demo'ing or talking about a new product or service offering. This is much preferred and more effective than just straight textual content. But keep it real. Too many companies still can't let go of the canned, highly produced videos. Customers don't want to see that either but the context is important. Use by product managers and for customer testimonials are great but how-to's are more valuable to customers. Some companies even have video on their homepage. Audio-only podcasts are also common but offer a different dimension to video.


• RSS
  RSS feeds that people can subscribe to to get the latest information delivered to them as it is available versus going to a site to find it. This is very uselful for alerts, breaking news, etc. for customers, partners, and financial community.

I didn't see the use of a lot of other Web 2.0-esque elements like wikis (probably better suited for extranets and intranets) and mashups on corporate sites. The web is a powerful tool and many companies are realizing that if they don't utilize their websites effectively, they won't be able to effectively go the distance. Clearly, there is still a ways to go.

The Future of Online Platforms

It was another jam packed event at the Googleplex, with tonnes of great food, great companies and fantastic panel on "The Future of Online Platforms". Before the speakers talked about the future, Ismail Ghalini, focused on the definition of the platform. Twenty years ago, we all understood what a platform is. It's essentially an OS, and you had three options: MS-DOS if you want the large market, Mac OS if you're edgy, and UNIX if you're really technical. They all did pretty much the same thing, had fairly similar business models, and people built applications that could be ported from one to the other (somehow). What is a platform today? What is it made of? How do you use to build not only applications but real businesses on top of it? What are thebusiness models? Can I build for multiple of them at the same time? What do the ecosystems look like? Who do I talk to in order to getstarted? That kind of thing. Does it make sense? It was a controversial and fun event and we will have to video soon for all to view.