The Wikipedia explanation for Mashups is:
A mashup is a website or web application that seamlessly combines content
from more than one source into an integrated experience.Content used in mashups is typically sourced from a third party via a public interface
or API. Other methods of sourcing content for mashups include Web feeds (e.g. RSS
or Atom) and JavaScript.The etymology of this term almost certainly derives from its similar use in pop music.
Many people are experimenting with mashups using eBay, Amazon, Google, and Yahoos
APIs.
I must be getting old. Did we really need to give this a name?
This ability to program the web struck me back when .Net 1.0 beta gave me the ability
to load images via URIs from across the web. I wrote a web service that would take
any image on the web and layer bullet holes onto it and return as a DIME attachment.
Aren’t mashups simply the fulfillment of the programable web? This concept has been
10 year in the making and has no single definition. Our ability to drag and drop public
APIs, add content sources, and essentially reference anything via a URI is simply
the evolution of the web itself. We can finally identify Web Services, RSS feeds,
images, pages, or anything else we find on the web as pseudo-controls, appropriate
to inclusion within our applications.
They are cool apps, after all. Frappr delivers
on the idea very well. Check out Programmable
Web for even more examples.
So, call them mashups. Whatever. Go build something cool.