Mashups

Posted by Ed on 23 April 2009 | 0 Comments

Tags: mashup, software, new ideas

There is very little that is really new.

Most really amazing things were discovered or invented ages ago. Nothing left to become immortalised with. Yes, scientists are still finding new things and bashing hadron's heads together to look for bosons and still have a lot to do before it all means anything, if it ever does. I read about some astrologers who recently discovered a new planet 20 something light years away.

This is all really intersting and cool stuff, but how does it help the budding entrepreneur?

Well, we come on to mashups and disruptive technology.

What's all that then? Well, like colloids, we use them but most of us aren't really sure what they are [toothpaste is apparently a colloid].

A mashup is where one quite cool thing is added to anoher quite cool thing to make a really cool thing. A great example of a reallygood mashup is Google Maps http://maps.google.com/ which has great mapping software that somebody added overlays to so we can all add our interesting things to our own maps. Good + good = great...

A disruptive technology is a slightly different concept. This is where a commonly used or accepted thing is changed in such a way that it radically adjusts the market for that product or service or device. I guess really big examples would be free OS products like Linux and FreeBSD [we love FreeBSD] being put up in front of Microsoft Windows [we think Vista is pretty cool too].

Disruptive technology is really about marketing or presenting something differently, that changes the way it is percieved by consumers. This could be price or usage or anything that is unexpected.

So how can this make me immortal?

Well nobody is going to live forever, but it would be nice to have a statue in front of parliament. Even a Wiki about something cool I did would be great :) [we love Tim Berners-Lee most of all].

And don't think this concept or idea is a dream. I meet people all the time that mashup or disrupt, doing things with established ideas that really change the usefulness of a simple or well used idea by adapting it or changing it in some subtle, even unnoticed way.

One example of this was a chap I met recently who represented a business called Adinsight http://www.adinsight.eu/ that really amazed me. Some very simple and well established technologies, put together in such a way that they become greater than the sum of the parts and in my opinion combine to make a really useful business sales tool. I'm not going to tell you about it here, but if you do multi-channel marketing and sales, this really could help your business, marketing and sales analysis.

So how can mashups and disruptive technology be used?

I guess it is just a matter of time and necessity. That is [necessity] after all the mother of invention. I have put obscure things together in the past to do a specific job. Nothing on the grand scale of the famous mashups, but it shows they are ready and ripe for the mashing [or disrupting].

I'm not going to sit here staring at the screen, trying to force a mashup or disruptive idea to emerge. I think it happens when it needs to, so here's to the challenges and ideas that make mankind the creative being that it is.

If I do get round to creating something especially significant and useful because that's what it's all about, I will certainly share it with you.