PUBLIC MARKS from vista with tag mashup

Paul Rademacher talked about how Housing Maps, which is a mash-up of Google Maps and craigslist, came out of a real world need for him and grew from that. The lesson here is that usefulness is a key driver for success in the Web mash-ups world. He also mentioned that Housing Maps isn't necessarily a pure API mash-up, because the craigslist data is taken from their RSS feeds and then he stores the content on his own server. So mash-ups are still painful to implement, despite all the hype around using APIs to deliver them. Paul also said he that reached 900,000 visitors to Housing Maps without any marketing effort, which is an indication of how mash-ups can be low-cost to both produce and market.

Developing a mashup can be a lot of fun and it's usually low cost, because you're using (semi) open tools and data. Forget fun though for a minute - is there a business in mashups? There are obvious benefits for the data providers, for example both Google and craigslist benefit from increased traffic to their sites. In most cases that leads to increased revenue as well. But what's in it for the mashup developer, apart from publicity and prestige?

MapBuilder lets you tag locations on a map and publish it on your own site. Mapping is now easier than ever. It's free.

拜「混搭程式」（mashup，結合多種來源內容的程式）之賜，數位地圖快速崛起，功能也是五花八門，從購物、路況報導、網路交友乃至社群打造等，無一不可。所有資訊都是即時，標示的位置也是絲毫不差。 網路繪圖已發展到會寫下歷史一頁的重要階段，不但結合不同的技術與社群，也徹底改寫網路的根本用途，同時也重新定義文化對地圖的看法。地圖軟體提供了最清楚不過的商業應用層面，讓跟著互連技術一起長大的世代趨之若騖。

An experimental matrix of Web 2.0 mashups.