Keep IT Simple

As a web developer I know that how hard it is to develop non static websites. By non static I mean websites which do not show the pages over and over every visit.

Dynamic website (the opposite of course of static websites) may be database driven and it would take a web developer with skills on relational databases like MySQL and Oracle. Dynamic websites are also highly interactive.

Some websites are both dynamic and highly graphical. They are very difficult to achieve because as an individual developer, one may be a good at programming and not at computer graphics or the other way around. A developer who is good at both can be hard to find.

But these days, having a website which is both dynamic and graphically rich can be easily done by one web developer. Thanks to mash ups.

A mashup is actually a web application which can combine data from several sources into one integrated website. The word mashup was taken from pop music culture, particularly from the practice in hip hop music where two or more songs are mixed together.

The contents that are being used in mashups are taken from third party sources through their specially developed public interface of applications programming interface (API). Some other sources of data for mashups come from Web feeds like RSS and atom, web services like Amazon’s web service to allow other websites to sell Amazon products and screen scraping. Google Earth and Google Maps have been early providers for mashups.

I have been a regular visitor of rate it all website at www.rateitall.com and had been amazed at how the get all those interactive ratings list within various consumer categories and how they are able to maintain interactive directories of local and international directories. And then I learned that they have a lot to thank mashups for.

The website www.belizemapia.com uses Google Maps Api and Advetrising Api to come up with an interactive website the city’s tourist attactions. The webiste gives you a good navigation system based on Google Earth but the pictures and videos are supplied by Belize website. This is a good customized way of utilizing the power of Google Earth.

Another website, www.webmunism.com, is a sample mashup a Wikipedia, YouTube, flickr, Last.fm and Amazon mashup.

As an environmentalist by hear, i always go to another mashup website, www.ecoresearch.net. From this website i do media watch about the latest on climate change as this website mashes up environmental information from other news sites related to global environmental issues.

Some legal issues pertaining contract law, copyright law, trademark law , unfair competition, false advertising, obscenity, rights of privacy and publicity and many other issues have surfaced from mashing activities.

But I think the point is here is that web developers should be careful with where to get the content from. Despite these legal issues, mashing up will continue to rise in popularity as people continue to share data and information on the internet.

Tomorrow, I will blog on the simple process of mashing up.