Mash ups

Ha, I am not talking about mashed potatoes either.

I have been taking free training at work. You would be amazed at how many courses there are constantly being offered. I really like the Sirsi Dynix Institute offerings for many reasons. 1)They are free :) 2) The courses are usually just one hour. Who has time during their workday for more than that? 3) The slides can be printed in PDF format if you so desire. 4) The session is available as a podcast after the fact, and is as easy as pie to download to itunes. On the negative side the streaming audio was not great, there were long periods of silence and I missed some of the session (good thing I can catch the podcast). I ended up dialing in.

Anyway, one of the sessions was by Darlene Fichter, from the University of Saskatchewan. According to Darlene a "mashup" mixes content from independent sources to create something new. So you could combine the Google Maps API and your library branch locations and presto, you have a cool mashup that is useful for your customers. As an example, Darlene created a mashup using Frappr. Very cool, check it out, I am on map. If you have time check out this great session:Mashups : A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That

Some mashup links for you:

Programmable Web
Google Maps API tutorial

Have fun, whatever you do! And if you have some cool mashups or links to share, please let me know!