So what’s a mashup?
A web site or application that combines the content of one or more other sites into something new. Take bashR which blends Wikipedia, Flickr, and social bookmarking del.icio.us. Result equals article from wikipedia, photo from flickr and links related to the search areas from delicous. Other example is Chicago Crime which combines a police database with Google Maps to show the location of reported crimes. Or consider Podbob helps users discover new media by linking a live events database from EVDB with free online music, i.e. search on a city and listen to the bands before going to see them. Fans even have their own events, e.g. esoterically named Mashup Camp Day in California
But the mashup concept is not new, it’s just that we didn’t call them that. See for example:
- Web page commentary as an educational tool? (Auricle 23 November 2004)
- … the view that digital resources are inherently distributed and will never be delivered by a single service provider. Source: JISC Information Environment Development Strategy 2001-2005 2nd draft
- Applications aren’t islands of functionality any more; they are bridges for information (Simon Bisson, Building Bridges, Guardian Online, 8 September 2005).[/i]
- Diana Laurillard’s 2002 Educause article Rethinking Teaching for the Knowledge Society (PDF) in which she describes (but doesn’t name) a quasi-mashup tool which integrates online discussion with a web page and so she argues supports the conversational framework and her concept of the Generic Learning Activity Model (GLAM). The tool I think she was referring to is called Digital Document Discourse Environment (D3E) and was one the tools developed by the UK Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute.
