Thoughts on Mashups

Edd Stockwell

If you haven’t already swatted up have a peak at the Wiki on mashups. One description is that mashups take two pieces of data and/or functionality and add them together to create a result that is more useful than the sum of the parts. It may help to look at the overall picture where – if the supreme goal of software development is ‘to develop the perfect tool for each user’ - mashups allow personalisation of software functionality in almost any form. As visual platforms like Popfly and QEDwiki become more user friendly, the inevitable future is that enterprise level users can design their own bespoke software. Wow.

Hold the phone, if Jo Public can develop their own software would that put a whole load of ours and everyone else’s developers out of business? I doubt it. This field is set to balloon as far as the eye can see; I can’t imagine a situation where the pace of software development is limited. As further automation and more powerful functionality continue as trends, mashups will grow into an increasingly integral part. Developers able to incorporate these new technologies into web and desktop applications will be in high demand for a while yet. The trick here is to run with it

Mashups were originally a term from the music industry and I’m not convinced it’s entirely appropriate anymore since it implies stealing and ripping stuff before re-hashing it all your own way - it almost sounds like a ‘Best of Pop Idol remix’ – save us please. We’re into a world of free data, public functionality and open source code - that’s not theft. Finding creative ways to weave it all together to benefit users is going to be a big money spinner.

Just jumping back a bit – so if end users will be able to develop their own software, the whole market gets split into two groups

1. Big generic software solutions, developed by teams of codeheads

2. Personalised software developed and tweaked for and by end users (be them the slightly more technically minded ones – you know the guys that did work out how to build macros on Excel)

Technologies that allow these ‘bright enough end users’ to personalise their software will be winning technologies. These enabling technologies will open the door to enterprise level mashups and really let them come into their own.

Please don’t ask us about the copyright infringements just yet. Sufficed to say putITout can develop mashups for you.

Oh, and yes we are learning about a very impressive mashup enabler at the moment … more to follow…