Everyone may not know but the concept of Mushups has actually been around for many years now. But it was only recently that they grabbed and fostered interest and imagination of various users and audience. Facebook and Myspace among others are excellent illustrations of Mashups’ capabilities once integrated into social network systems online. Mushups’ potentials however prove to go beyond, thus constantly evolving from the basics.
Mushups are defined as web applications that are capable to integrate data from multiple and/or various sources through a single, unifying tool. Although mushups may have been initially designed particularly for data visualization, eventually they have been proven useful in enhancing different kinds of creative products. The term “mashup” was derived from the music industry—different pieces of music and film clips assembled into distinguished satire productions. Specifically, data mashups function as powerful tools in visualizing and navigating different datasets—of which the entire process involve understanding connections between and among interrelated factors, such as distance, time, and location; contrasting multiple sourced data to uncover new relationships; and other functionalities.
In addition, mashups have been useful in creating tools and/or applications that are capable to grab, organize, and display online data similar to the author’s preferences (e,g., Google’s Mashup Editor). Also, Yahoo! Pipes is another mashup authoring tool that enables users to combine RSS content, filter and display them over the Internet. Eventually, finished “pipes” can be readily published, shared, and used for other purposes and placed in different web pages.
Lastly, Mashups have also established relevance in learning, teaching, and creative expression. They have enabled access and use of different web-based applications—such as videos, interactive graphs and charts—that innovate educational and learning systems.