Maaashups!

Ok, I'm going to state first up I've never been into mashups, though I have heard in my time some interesting musical mashups many would refer to as hip hop, something I am ludicrously into at the moment. I also have contracted a rabid penchant for vinyl, the staple in any good DJs diet. Coincidence? Fate? Kismet!?

As for the technological age of the mashup, the amazing perforation of the boundaries of ownership brought and wrought over online sharing has enabled a plethora of visual and aural bending creative endeavours. So anyway, I decided to take a quick flick across the boards to see what the latest flavours were.

Twitter was mainly on about music mashups, and when I happened to click on this unfortunate video, I'm pretty sure its in my repressed memory bin, sheesh! Flickr was thankfully a bit more tasteful in its artistic expressions, more heart; something I should develop more of an interest in once I find some time.

This lack of involvement has meant that I've had very little experience with actually using any APIs to generate my own mashups. The simple fact that we now have so many tools at hand to craft with is great to get people interested and started. But not me, not this time; time to browse what they have done for mankind.

bkkeepr has one of those fine grating titles I love, but its actual use would not be so bad to see what library users were reading, provided they wanted to share what it is they were in fact reading. Good as a tool to see what is popular.

Booktour is fabulously blocked at my library, so no dice there.

Libworm looks innaresting, but it is primarily US centric, so not so much for me here. Still it is an intriguing idea that they are running with; the possibility of a one stop feed shop with both searching and browsing capabilities. It's like having food and drinks! Sate AND Slake! Reminds me of my idea of the one global library system to rule them all that I have feverish dreams about that leaves me in a delirious stupor.

Visual Headlines is innovative in its presentation, as well as its stress on the computer I was on. Like giving me too much music to listen to with no real time to absorb it. So I can understand the duress such quality products being thrust upon once capacity; to be incapacitated by overloaded capacitors and other overloaded circuit/synapse themed sentences. Anyway, seems it doesn't like the whole visual interaction thing.

Intrestingness I like, not for the word (I'm going to have to get used to mashed words soon) but for the inspiration I feel to go out and take arty photography. Reminds me of my trip to the Newcastle Museum to take some snaps but to find they were all out of focus by a long way. Which I still used for a Uni assignment. Which of course left my lecturer wondering what they were looking at. So in effect I achieved the art of interpretation in its worst form.

Flickr Memari is deemed to much fun to be allowed at work, so twice no dice.

Let me google that for you is not a sentence you will hear me utter anytime soon, nor a sight to see me visit. I mean really? is google that hard to use?

Crime Reports seems interesting...I wonder how Boltwood street would fare in my fair state's north. Dubbed 'boltdown street' for the dual reason of A) if it wasn't bolted down it was likely to be stolen and B) unless you bolted down the street in swift fashion you were likely to be set upon by vagrants. Classy.

Walkscore - now there's a website for any budding fan of self propelled transport! Whilst it states that is States centric, a quick flash over the keys produced my location, with a behemoth score of 51%! So it seems this is the reason for my lack of visitors, they have seen my paltry figures and have wilted and balked at the though of said walk!

Interesting that the site primarily focuses on amenity data from Google maps, rather than how pleasant 6 lanes of never ceasing traffic is to my walkability. Not to mention all those great gradients on show in the area to test those tender tendons on! Still, its better than my Mums House, I mean you gotta go to Woolgoolga if you want a decent drink, take THAT Toormina pub (which if fair, even I wouldn't even go there). Still, I like the site, may even use it when I think of moving closer to the city.

A quick perusal of the web yielded Mashup Awards, though sadly it only serves as an archive now. Still, a good source to see what went down 2007-2009.