Monday, March 3, 2008

Motley Mashups

I'm still not entirely sure what a mashup is, but just knowing that they exist has already put me way ahead of my previous learning curve. As of right now, I'm getting the impression that mashups are peripherally connected to some larger site, in this case Flickr, and that they find innovative ways to search, categeorize, and use the information from that site.

The ones I liked best were the map and color search functions. The first allowed me to search Flickr photos by location on a world map, while the second made it possible to search all photos in a specific color scheme. Not only could they be incredibly useful, but to be honest, I really liked them because they're pretty dang cool!

Of course, there are a few drawbacks to each approach. For the map search, the relevant photos will only display if they have been tagged or if the features in the photo are distinctive enough to suggest a location. For the color search, while it makes it easy to find monocromatic photos with one dominant hue, multicolored photos without an overarching color scheme will fall by the wayside.

Still, these are two very impressively inventive ways to look for information on the net. I like that someone was thinking outside the box. Specifically, the "search term" box.

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