Mash-ups

I’ve spent a great deal of time on programmableweb.com, searching for different API’s to try to “mash-up.” The problem is I don’t know exactly how it works, at least not well enough to plan a four way mash up past a rough visualization phase. So far, I’ve been thinking that I’d like to do something with movie or videogame ratings from metacritic.com and imbd.com and map locations out with Google maps. Also I saw that there was an API for the bluebook information on used cars. I might be able to make some kind of used car finder with Google maps and eBay/craigslist/ bluebook information.

After a discussion about API’s and mash-ups with my brother, I realized that none of these ideas are very original. And that leads to my question for this blog; how original do our mash-ups have to be? I mean mash ups are a relatively new thing, but a lot of them have been done already. I don’t want to strait up copy an existing mash up. This is my first experience with the technique, I don’t think my end product is going to get me snatched up by Google, so do I have to worry about being that original?

I also have seen two mash-ups (I think) that I think are really neat one, synchtube.com, allows two or more people to watch YouTube videos together by mashing up a chat feature with YouTube. I think this would be a great feature for GTalk. The other is funny and is sort of a mash up (again, I think) involving the combination of the same API twice. With youtubedoubler.com, one can get that eerie effect playing Wizard of Oz with Dark Side of the Moon with different YouTube videos. The example I saw, and promptly posted on my Facebook, was of an Usher song accompanied by a noisy goat.