There’s more to Web 2.0 than RSS, blogs and the 1,150,000,000 people connected to the internet. Web 2.0 is allowing us to bridge the gap between innovative (and social) technologies and business needs, in a simple (and code-less) way. I can take a map from Google, picture from flickr and a blog rss, incorporate them all into a single view – thus creating a new and unique service. It’s called a mashup:
In web development, a mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool; an example is the use of cartographic data from Google Maps to add location information to real-estate data, thereby creating a new and distinct web service that was not originally provided by either source. [wikipedia]
IBM has been working for some time on develpoing a tool that would allow easy creation of mashups – IBM Mashup Center, that is now available free via IBM Lotus Greenhouse.
CRN reviewed three mashup solutions: Google Mashup Editor Beta, IBM Mashup Center and Adobe LiveCycle. Here’s what they had to say about IBM Mashup Center:
IBM Mashup Center provides an easy-to-use, GUI-based method to combining maps, RSS feeds, and corporate data like customer lists into browser-based widgets. Creating a mashup here is as simple as dragging and dropping RSS feeds, mapping information, CSV files or other data sets onto a work board… IBM is targeting non-technologists—this is both less code-intensive and more business-friendly than Google Mashup Editor.
and closing with
The IBM Mashup Center provides a slightly more attractive alternative because of the platform’s flexibility and easy-to-deploy approach.
Mashups are definitely something that need to be in every CIO/CTO scope – the possibilities are endless, and those require little technical skills. Mixing up has never been so easy.
Stay tuned for my first mashup… coming soon.
Links:
IBM Mushup Center
Is Web 2.0 Ready for Business – CRN
IBM Mushup Center – demo (IBM)
The Business Case for Enterprise Mashups (IBM, pdf, 800KB)
Mashups – The new breed of web apps (IBM developerWorks)
IBM brings mashups closer to mainstream (Gartner, pdf, 160KB)
