Robin Blandford [ ByteSurgery.com - Digital Media Engineering ]

08/05/08 The Smoothness Of A Mashup

SINGAPORE - A mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a
single integrated tool, creating a new and distinct web service or visualization that was not originally intended by the sources.

This name for this method of aggregating and stitching together third-party data was borrowed from the pop music scene, where a mashup is a new song that is mixed from the vocal and instrumental tracks from two different source songs (usually belonging to different genres).

And that’s just how we should think about them on the web.

My cousin Derry (reli.sh), a guy with old-school record DJ mixing decks in his living room, writes about his understanding of the term mashup during his Mashup Delta project for a MSc in Electronic Publishing. Derry links to some inspiration in the form of a music video mashup of Prodigy and Enya, two completely different sources beautifully mixed.

Isn’t this how a web application should be? A perfect mashup that just feels smooth to use.

• You can’t tell it’s been made from different sources. Your web app shouldn’t let on either as the consumer doesn’t actually care.
• If you’d never seen the originals you can’t differentiate which bit of that video is from which source. It just works beautifully together in contrasts, speed of movement, beat - so should your app. Standardise the data sources.
• The added value is the experts ability. If I gave you those two tracks as a consumer, you could not replicate that if you tried. Equivalently your user should not be able to create the mashup with an excel macro either. As an expert you should add value.

Listening to a badly mixed song hurts my senses, so will interacting with your badly mashed-up web application. Be smooth.

-Robin.

(Image Credit: Mashup of old and new towering objects at Raffles Place, Singapore. Taken from the Asian Civilisations Museum. By Author.)

Tags: mashup, web application

1 Comment

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12/05/08 WillKnott.ie » Blog Archive » Come see about Grandstand

[...] all know that technology isn’t magic, but as Robin Blandford points out, few customers care about how it works. They just want to see things working. And if its a mash-up, [...]

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