The mashup phenomon is IMOPO a short-lived web 2.0 fad at best. The hidden flaw of these apps is that they rely on a secondary party to help power their content. For example, let's discuss Craiglist using information gleaned from Google Maps for real estate listings. This is a great idea but what if Google doesn't want Craig's List using up their bandwidth? The software developer's response is "Hey! We're giving you free advertising. You should be thanking us, not yanking us off!" But 9 times out of 10, it's a little tiny start-up (i.e. not Craiglist per se) going up against a 800 lb. behemoth. I'm betting on Goliath at this point. That said, Yahoo! is off to a great start because they are copying the Face Book playbook: allow third parties to look at your code via open source and then let them do all the work for you ala crowdsourcing. The amateurs get recognition for their work, your content is enhanced and some companies turn these competitions into a farm team for searching out new talent. This is actually a time honored tradition within the tech world: a substantial percentage of computer security analysts today are former hackers with past felony convictions resulting from attacks on their current employers.
The majority of Flickr mashups that Web Monkey recommended are, like most of the Internet in general, mindless time wasters that have no real use for serious librarians. I chose not to add a mashup to this blog not because I didn't know how but because I didn't see the point. Not to be rude about this prompt, but how does me being able to sort random photos by color help patrons?!?
The only real benefit I can see with these mashup's is from a graphic design standpoint: making the library look cooler. The posters we post for upcoming events, librarian trading cards, etc. But in terms of priorities, I'm putting this one at the bottom of the list. Sorry for being such a Debbie Downer today. :(
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