Datasheet

interest on Google Maps, add tags to photos on Flickr, and write book reviews on Amazon.com. Users
help identify connections between pieces of data — they place their photos on maps of the world, they
tag related links in del.icio.us and they create lists of related items on Amazon.com. Each connection
made is stored away— an extra data point is created.
By encouraging both the sharing and the enhancement of data, the overall value of those data is increased.
The idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts is central to Web 2.0, and at the very heart of it is
the key element, the user community itself — the very people who enrich the data and give them value.
Remixes and Mashups
The words remix and mashup are regularly bandied about, but the two are often confused and used inter-
changeably. Both refer to the presentation of third-party content in a form that is different from the origi-
nal, but each refers to a slightly different approach.
A
remix is a piece of content taken from somewhere and presented in a different form. There’s typically no
significant modification to the content itself — only to the mode of presentation. A very simple example of
creating a remix might be applying a user-defined style sheet to change the background color of a web site
you are viewing, and perhaps hiding the banner advertisements at the same time. A more complex example
might be building a custom web site to display photographs stored on Flickr in your own online gallery.
In each case, the content is being derived from a single source, but a custom mode of presentation used.
A
mashup, on the other hand, involves content from a variety of sources mashed together to produce a
brand new dataset — one that is richer than any of the original sources on their own. For example, taking
your photographs from Flickr and displaying them as an overlay onto Google Maps would be creating a
mashup of Flickr content (the photos and the location information held against them) and Google’s map-
ping data.
Remixes and mashups aren’t necessarily distinct— all mashups, for example, could well be considered
to be remixes, but remixes may or may not also be mashups, depending on the number of data sources
they use. In practice, the distinction between the two terms is minor. In this book, when I’m discussing
the projects, I’ll use the term that seems most appropriate based on the number of data sources. In more
general passages, it quickly becomes tedious to keep having to use the phrase “remix or mashup,” so for
ease of reading I’ll interchangeably use one or the other of the terms. If ever the distinction is important,
it will be made explicitly clear.
What Makes a Mashable System?
So, is any source of content out on the Internet mashable? Well, in theory, yes — if you can see it, you can
mash it. There are, however, a number of things to consider.
Are You Allowed to Mash the Content?
If the content is owned by somebody else — and this is true in many cases — then you most likely need
permission from the copyright owner before you can reuse the content. The content owner may explic-
itly make content available, although usually there will be restrictions on how you can use it.
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Part I: Building a New Internet
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