Intel is releasing into public beta today a new “experimental” product from its labs called Mash Maker. It’s a browser plugin - most functional with Firefox but also available for Internet Explorer - that lets end user create their own mashups on top of existing websites.
The idea of a mashup, while very central to the movement we call Web 2.0, has always struck me as an overly techie concept. And Intel’s Mash Maker doesn’t do much to change that, even though it tries to bring mashups more mainstream.
What’s a mashup? Simply a combination of data from disparate sources into one presentation. Web 2.0 sites mash up data all the time without asking their users to do much. Problems only seem to arise when when users are required to link data together in manual, custom ways.
Intel Mash Maker sits in your browser as a toolbar that can be expanded into a sidebar as well. As you browse the web, you’ll come across sites for which it already has mashups available. For example, if you go to your friends page on Facebook, it will suggest that you activate a mashup that shows all your friends’ avatars on a Google Map. If you agree, it will plop this map right onto the webpage, and you can even decide to pin the map to the page for future visits. This is the easy part of Mash Maker, and it’s kind of nifty.
There are other places on the web where Intel likes to highlight its mashups, such as Expedia where a “leg room” mashup will show you how much estimated leg room you’d have on each search results flight. You can also pull up Yelp reviews when flipping through Craigslist.
But much of the web is like the Wild West and there are no premade mashups yet. That’s where presumably you are expected to come up with your own. And Intel has provided all the options you need to make a mashup from right within the browser extension. But honestly, the vast majority of users are going to have no clue or desire to learn how to make mashups with it. This is where the idea of an end user mashup program falls short, and it’s same the reason you’ll never hear your (normal) friends mention how they stayed up all night playing with Yahoo Pipes.
When it comes down to it, it’s probably not terribly important that Mash Maker will have limited appeal. I still can’t quite figure out why Intel even decided to produce something like this, since they seldom (never?) release pure web products that have nothing to do with hardware. But hey, why not - I’m sure at least a few people will get a kick out of it.
It will be a great service of course. Mash up have always performed better because they have the power of many thing combined in one output. Like the Yahoo RSS mash up service Pipes. It will sure become a hit when more and more websites will offer its mashup support on them. And when Intel is behind this, its have to be good and usefull.
I used it when it was in private mode and it literally kills the browser speed.
“I still can’t quite figure out why Intel even decided to produce something like this, since they seldom (never?) release pure web products that have nothing to do with hardware.”
http://coolsw.intel.com/
Intel isn’t out of touch. They’re HIP and NEW!!!
This is just one more in a series of “we’re not out of touch with the youngens” websites!!!
meanwhile AMD buys ATI and releases it’s video drivers as GPL
They want to track browsing habits of technical folk that probably provide tech advice to friends (”influencers”). Lots of spyware browser extensions nowadays. Like BogRoVR, among others. Someone should start a list.
I don’t think a standalone mashup tool is of much use, but if it were embedded as part of a larger tool (perhaps a start page for consumers, or a portal for enterprises) that promoted sharing, then that would have a chance at making it useful day-to-day.
At least that’s my thinking for my new mashup tool called Qrowd at http://www.qrowd.com
Interesting Intel…
What better place to get a web mashup then from a chip manufacturing company. If I were a shareholder I would questions WTF they were thinking. Stick to what you know.
It the same theme as 24/7 (Mike’s earlier post here: http://tinyurl.com/47y9oj) kind of a Flock competition - bringing social interaction into other browsers. Why Intel is into this is a mystery, although the spyware comments may be quite right. Either that or they were plain bored
“The idea of a mashup … has always struck me as an overly techie concept.”
Yeah, when you take the term and form from a music (or performance art, take your pick how you define djing) field it’s definitely a techie concept…
Wait… no, no, it isn’t.
It would be interesting, welcome to web2.0!
The basic concept behind “Mashups” be they implemented as Yahoo Pipes or Google Maps is the integration of large data sets to provide useful “Data Mining” techniques at low or no cost to consumers. As long as there have been data bases there has been a pent up demand for the greater meaning within that data. I think Intel “gets” this but can’t find a way to monetize it and certainly not within the context of their core business.
Some player, somewhere is going to find a way to automate this so that the end user can concentrate on the meaning of the data rather than the mining of it. Those guys will get RICH!
For many web scraping/data mining projects a local mashup (e. g. with the iMacros Firefox extension and a few lines of Javascript) is a better and faster solution.