10 Things You Should Know About Mashups

10 Things You Should Know About Mashups

Its OK to think of Google as the godfather of mashups—the company gets credit for a lot these days. Perhaps the bigger story is that more and more businesses are thinking about the potential of mashups. Following are 10 things you should know about

10 Things You Should Know About Mashups – 1. Mashup Definition

The Frankenteins of software, mashups are applications that pull multiple pieces of data, or even entirely different applications, and assemble them into one piece of software to derive more value.

10 Things You Should Know About Mashups – 2. Mashups Are All About the Web, Baby

Mashups are propelled by Web APIs, client-side scripting, RSS content, wikis, AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XM) and social networking environments.

10 Things You Should Know About Mashups – 3. Situational Awareness Is a Leading Mashup Driver

Mashups are driven by the need to get something done more efficiently. By combining multiple sources of related information, users gain a more holistic view of a topic. For example, wikis, RSS feeds and blogs might be rolled into one comprehensive corpora

10 Things You Should Know About Mashups – 4. Splice Gives Developers Mashup Capabilities

The Splice Mashup Platform from startup Xignite lets programmers build mashups by taking Web services from Xignites portfolio or integrating Web services from other providers to create customized Web services.

10 Things You Should Know About Mashups – 5. QEDWiki Simplifies Mashups for End Users

While Splice is a mashup development platform for programmers, IBM’s QEDWiki enables end users to easily intergrate various pieces of software into one application—simple, and even fun, mashup creation.

10 Things You Should Know About Mashups – 6. A Software Market Isnt Complete Without Microsoft

Another mashup application for end users is Microsofts Popfly, arguably the prettiest of the mashup bunch. PopFly consists of online visual tools for building mashups and a social network where users can host, share, rate, comment on and remix creations

10 Things You Should Know About Mashups – 7. Mashups Are Not a Silver Bullet

Mashups wont solve all of your data needs, and throwing together apps from multiple sources can actually create more confusion. Know what you need before you implement a mashup.

10 Things You Should Know About Mashups – 8. Expect Some Consolidation

The next few years will see some considerable growth in the mashup world, but beware the consolidation factor as large vendors look to pick off smaller vendors to fill in application development gaps in their portfolios.

10 Things You Should Know About Mashups – 9. The Mashup Market is Still Bleeding Edge

The mashup market is so young that research firm Gartner doesnt even have a Magic Quadrant for it yet. Gartner does expect 30 percent of companies to use mashups in the next year. People interested in creating and consuming mashups need to shop around fo

10 Things You Should Know About Mashups – 10. The Mashup Market Is in Flux

In addition to consolidation, expect to see new products, partnerships and even some failures in the mashup market.

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