Spinfield: Web marketing trends today, tomorrow, and beyond…

Ever go searching on the Web for something, and end up having several windows open to get the information you want? Wouldn’t it be great to get all the information you need on one page? Mashups allow you to integrate several different Web elements into a single view, customizing your web experience.

There are quite a few different Mashup editors for you to try. For example:

• Yahoo! has one called Yahoo! Pipes.
• Microsoft has Popfly.
• Google also has one, Google Mashup Editor, but it is currently in limited test release.

I have yet to work with the above editors, but I did get a chance to use the Intel® Mash Maker, a free download of the beta mashup editor released by Intel®. The program can be used with either Firefox or IE.

They also offer a short tutorial of how it works. The video quickly steps through a few examples of how to mash up sites like Facebook with a Google Maps widget, and Craigslist with a widget from Yelp, as well as how to save and publish your mashup.

They also have a Mash Maker blog, posting all the latest updates and improvements to the program.

I recently used the editor with Craigslist, to help with my apartment search. It was great to get to see the locations of the apartments right there on the page, as well as what they have nearby.

There were other widgets that I found handy too, including bar charts that I could add to comparing apartment pricing, and a Simple Image widget that opened up the available images of the apartments.

I found the Mash Maker intuitive, and helpful with my search. Once I placed all the widgets on the page that I wanted, it made apartment hunting much easier!

I have just touched the surface of what this tool is capable of and will continue to mashup my Web experience to see what else it can do. I am curious about the other mashup editors that are out there, and what experiences you have using them.

I would love to hear from others regarding their mashups, so let me know how customizing the Web is going for you!

Copyright © 2008 by IdeaStar. All rights reserved.