Mashup – Smashup

This week, I thought I'd start covering some standard technologies that are floated around all the time in Web 2.0 conversations. Today, let's review Mashups.

Official Definition
The official definition of the term Mashup is (taken from our favorite web 2.0 encyclopedia, Wikipedia.org):
"In web development, a mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool. The term Mashup implies easy, fast integration, frequently done by access to open APIs* and data sources to produce results that were not the original goal of the data owners. An example is the use of cartographic data from Google Maps to add location information to real-estate data, thereby creating a new and distinct web service that was not originally provided by either source."

Shorter Explanation:
"A mashup is a combination of data sources to create a unified interface and experience."

Laymen's Explanation:
You can think of a mashup like a Reese Peanut Butter Cup: peanut butter + chocolate: individually two pretty good items and some would argue that chocolate is beyond pretty good. And when you combine those two pretty good items together, you get something greater than the sum of its parts. That's what a mashup is - two technology-based products that are combined to make something new.

Mashup's can be web-based (two different web programs slammed together), or digital art, or video, or music.

Best Examples of an e-Health Mashup
It's always hard to stick your neck out and say "this is the best" of anything on the web, but let's say that this is the best examples of an e-Health mashup that I've found.

Fight4Rx

Fight4rx.org is a brand new web site, having only been live for about 24 hours. It is an excellent example of how a mashup can be used to provide relevant information to a health care consumer. "Fight4Rx is a non-partisan grassroots effort of the National Community Pharmacists Association aimed at educating patients about the value of their local community pharmacy." (from the Fight4Rx.org web site) Although there are more tools on the site than the mashup, their mapping component that allows a user to type in their zip code and find the closet community pharmacy.


"Who is Sick".

"Who Is Sick was started in 2006 with a mission to provide current and local sickness information to the public - without the hassle of dealing with hospitals or doctors. With a strong belief in the power of people and a faith that user generated content can be extremely valuable, our team set out to create an entirely new system for tracking and monitoring sickness in your area and obtain sickness information. Information retrieved by tracking sickness in my area can also be used to map sickness trends in my region." Taken from the Who Is Sick web site.

People go to the site and enter their zip code, age, gender, symptoms, length of illness (anomalously) and any additional details about their illness, and results are plotted on an easy to read Google map, so visitors can see the types of illness any state, city or neighborhood.

Pretty neat eh?

*API
Explanation coming soon.