Sg2009wc:mashups

From She's Geeky Wiki

Title: Mashups

Session: 7-I Bay Area Jan 2009

Convener: Jill

Notes Taker:

Attendees:

Notes:

Defined Mash ups for the group, lots of people here to learn and lots here to teach! From Wikipedia: "In web development, a mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(web_application_hybrid)

From Wikipedia: "A mash-up is a song created out of pieces of two or more songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the music track of another." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(music)

Audio mash ups don't have the same copyright flexibility as cover songs or parodies. Why is that?

Chrisine Bush – who attended the session – runs americanfm.com which is an example of an internet mash up of data streams using XML.

Now-a-days we see a lot of videos mashed up with copyrighted music, this is illegal, but because there is little to no enforcement people feel comfortable posting these sorts of mashups on YouTube and the like. In these cases it's important to site your sources, as with parodies.

Wouldn't it be great if there were a mash up of Google Maps and weatherunderground.com? Maybe with some audio? For instance the sound of rain with varying degrees of volume to indicate strength of rain.

A good resource for API's used for web mashups are programableweb.com. There are sites out there with both proprietary API's and standard (open) API's.

Companies can use mashups to get more relevant advertising out to individuals.

Both the New York Times and the BCC have opened up content on web servers to be used in mashups.

Referal to read Lawrence Lessig's book "Mix Ups."

Free mashup camps can be found, put on by mashup software vendors like AIM, Calais, ClearForest. ClearForest's Entity Extraction software and Presto was recommended for mashup software.

GEO spacial mashups would be pretty amazing. For instance, being able to enter a location (or have your location via GPS) and have the nearest coffee shop on your iPhone, or localized news.

Could localized advertising be too mcuh? Would be well accepted on a request basis. You could query local advertisements for what ever you need; coffee, diners, gas stations.

Would be great to have the customer decide what is marketed to them. VRM (Vendor Relationship Management) turning CRM (Customer Relationship Management).

How does one protect their family from being GEO tracked, is an unanswered issue.

Example of a mashup gone wrong: Maps of who made campaign contributions for and against Prop. 8 compromises the security of donors and their families.

It's a common problem with people putting small bits of personal information that can all be linked back to you, unwillingly compromising your personal data. For instance if you put your email on your website, but not on Twitter, and then you like your website from Twitter you may have not realized you just gave everyone on Twitter your email address.

Some security firms have been looking at what users are displaying and what they like to keep private, their findings show that user preferences vary widely about what information they are willing to share about themselves.

Social media has really played a part in how comfortable people feel with putting their personal information on the web. Suggested to set Google Alerts on your name (or your families names) so that you can monitor and be proactive about your personal information that is on the web.