mashup

Mash up audio and video with MXPlay

There are a number of great digital-music players already on CNET Download.com--iTunes rules the roost because of its compatibility with iPods; MediaMonkey is fantastic for free music management and playlist creation; JetAudio Basic is packed with features for burning and broadcasting via JetCast; the classic free player Winamp now provides Internet TV and music videos; and Quintessential Player, my personal favorite player, is the perfect size for those who prefer a light system footprint.

A new digital-music player called MXPlay focuses primarily on one facet that most of the current software doesn't even mention: sound quality. Designed mostly for streaming audio, MXPlay augments even the lowest-quality 96kbps music streams to provide a more full-bodied sound for your favorite tunes. Also, a unique graphical interface lets you position your virtual speakers and audience to tweak the sound of your songs to your heart's content, and a built-in browser lets you both surf the Web and add photos and videos to create your own music mashups.… Read more

Video mashup publicity campaigns take an angsty turn on Eyespot

I'd always considered Broadway musicals to be a pleasantly low-tech form of entertainment. When something's live on stage, there's only so much you can do to make people look and sound better (not to mention the special effects).

But what happens when you're trying to market a musical to the tech-addicted MySpace generation--and to those willing to admit they once fell into that age group? Clearly, you start a video remix competition. It is, after all, the trendy marketing tool du jour, now that faster broadband connections and improved Web technologies have made it possible for … Read more

SplashCast launches MyPodcastNetwork

This morning, SplashCast, the media syndication service, is launching MyPodcastNetwork, a new feature that lets users create a single player to aggregate and play audio and video content via RSS feeds. If you're a podcast listener, you might already be using an aggregation service such as iTunes or Odeo to pull in your favorite shows. What's neat about doing this on SplashCast is that you can mix it in with other audio, video, and pictures in one big mashup, then share your creation with others by embedding it on blogs or social networking profiles.

To find podcast or … Read more

MapLight.org shines light on intersection of donations and votes

It's not exactly news that interest group lobbying affects lawmaking, but MapLight.org is showing us how by doing the math down to dollar figures. The non-profit MapLight.org had one of the least ostentatious booths in the Web 2.0 Expo hall, but brought an incredibly informative, practical service regarding the influence of money on California politics.

It's a mashup of voting records pulled from the Official California Legislative Information Web site (up to the 2003-2004 session right now, with 2005-2006 on the way), and campaign contributions kept by the Institute on Money in State Politics.

The … Read more

Yahoo opens Yahoo Mail APIs, invites mash-ups

Yahoo on Wednesday plans to open up the APIs to Yahoo Mail, inviting outside Web developers to build mash-up applications with its mail service.

One application that Yahoo will make available creates a link between Flickr and Yahoo Mail. The service looks at the subject line of an e-mail and searches Flickr for photos related to that word, such as "party."

The company envisions a whole list of applications that can be built using mail.

For example, people can find ways to access e-mail from different mobile clients or to combine social networking features and multimedia with mail, … Read more

Office 2.0 mashup tools: Longjump, Proto Software, Teqlo

Under the Radar's start-up group kicked off this morning with presentations from Longjump, Proto Software and Teqlo. The general theme of this group was building business solutions with easy-to-use mash-up tools. For small businesses, it's a little bit like buying lumber verses chopping down a tree.

Longjump is a subscription-based marketplace of customizable Web-based apps. Each app can be built-up and edited with drag and drop creation, and custom tailored for small groups. Longjump also provides tools and utilities to upload and integrate the data you already have. Longjump breaks down applications by category, and users can comment … Read more

Weekend Webware: Find Wi-fi hotspots with Hotspotr

I discovered Hotspotr at SF Beta this past week. It's a neat little service that mashes up Google maps with a local Wi-Fi hotspot finder. The real pull of the service is you can rate and comment on hotspots as you would with restaurant reviews on a review site like Yelp. It's the perfect service for the casual Wi-Fi traveler to benefit from road warriors who are willing to take the time to review a wireless access point.

The ratings aren't just things such as the overall quality of the wireless signal either; you also can rate … Read more

Google Maps adds subway stops, building outlines to cities

Google Maps has made things a little spicier for users who are looking up information on cities like New York, London, and San Francisco: outlines to show the footprints of buildings, and subway stops. Public transportation map mashups have been around for a while--take subway stop site Hopstop, which uses Yahoo Maps, for example--but this is the first time that Google has incorporated that data into its standard map search.

It doesn't look like this has spread to mobile platforms yet: I have Google Maps on my Helio Drift phone (oops, I called it a phone), and it does … Read more

Piping in with Yahoo Pipes mashup builder

Ever think that we're just scratching the surface when it comes to mashing up Web data feeds? Yahoo apparently thinks so, too.

On Wednesday, the Web giant released a beta of Yahoo Pipes, a hosted development tool meant to make it easier to build mashup applications that combine different Web feeds. (See this CNET News.com story on Yahoo Pipes for more information.)

The idea is that people use a visual layout form to wire together a series of structured data feeds. Mashups, obviously, can be developed, but Pipes is supposed to make the process of developing them easier, … Read more