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Intel Releases Mashups for the Masses

Posted by Zonk on Sun Sep 23, 2007 01:19 PM
from the applying-data-to-the-situation-for-the-win dept.
The Internet Intel Software
News_and_info writes "Intel has released an online tool called Mash Maker with the intent of allowing anyone to create mashups. They offer some training on how to use it, but the tool is fairly easy to use out of the gate. I see it more as a rudimentary semantic browser. From the article: 'Mashups have still not really penetrated the mainstream. My mother is not using mashup sites, and she is definitely not creating them. Even if there was a mashup out there that did exactly what she wanted, the chances are that she wouldn't know it existed, and would be confused by it if she tried to use it ... With Mash Maker, mashups are part of the normal browsing experience. As you browse the web, the Mash Maker toolbar displays buttons representing mashups that Mash Maker thinks you might want to apply to your current page.'"
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Submission: Intel Releases Mashups for the Masses by News_and_info (1159691)
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  • more info in the summary (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 23 2007, @01:22PM (#20720765)
    what is a mashup for those of us who dont subscribe to all this web2.0 nonsense?

  • What's REALLY needed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Colin Smith (2679) on Sunday September 23 2007, @01:22PM (#20720769)
    Is to wire the balls of whoever thought up the word "mashup" to the mains supply and to shock them until they repent and take it back.

     

  • What's a "mashup"? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by HateBreeder (656491) on Sunday September 23 2007, @01:26PM (#20720799)
    Besides, you'd expect something like this (Software Research) from Microsoft or Google... But Intel?!
  • This seems like it's ripe for abuse by people trying to drive web traffic to their sites. If the signal to noise ratio doesn't get out of hand almost instantly, I'll be surprised.

  • Joyous Day! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jane Q. Public (1010737) on Sunday September 23 2007, @01:27PM (#20720823)
    Wow! Now I can have Dictionary.com give me definitions of the names of all the streets in my town via Google Maps. Just what I need!

  • Mashups are... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dr. Stavros (808432) on Sunday September 23 2007, @01:31PM (#20720855) Homepage
    Karma-whoring Wikipedia-link explanation of mashups [wikipedia.org]. Thanks!

    • Re:Mashups are... (Score:4, Funny)

      by ystar (898731) on Sunday September 23 2007, @01:40PM (#20720919)
      You don't need wikipedia to whore karma this time. Imagine reading two or more websites at once, maybe even with some ajaxy instant messaging stuff, all kind of mixed together.

      This is useful because you don't get excess cheeto dust in your keyboard by having to type in multiple URLs.

    • Re:Mashups are... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by glwtta (532858) on Sunday September 23 2007, @02:03PM (#20721077) Homepage
      That's what I love about Wikipedia - often you don't even need to read most of the text, just the quality of writing tells you everything you need to know.

      "a Mashup is used in order to make a certain source of information exponentially more useful", translation: "complete bullshit; a nearly nonsensical term made up by some 14 year-old with a hard-on for MySpace".

      I sure hope these Mashups will be all Web 2.0, and lets not forget to crowdsource some folksonomies, too.

      • Re:Mashups are... (Score:4, Funny)

        by martinX (672498) on Sunday September 23 2007, @07:37PM (#20723325)
        You need this:
        http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20070909.html [dilbert.com]

        • I've noticed... (Score:4, Informative)

          by TerranFury (726743) on Sunday September 23 2007, @04:08PM (#20721967)

          Businesspeople have taken to using the phrases,

          • "exponentially"
          • "order of magnitude"

          The problem is, none of them seem to know what either of the above actually mean...

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by dbIII (701233)
            The more clueless business people also like "spiraling". The ironic or simple sad thing is they think in purely linear terms so think something going up exponentially is just a really steep line. As for order of magnitude - I suppose the way they use it works properly for base 2 and small numbers. The answer is to improve pre-college education (all they really get) and cut off their cocaine supply - or outsource management to a country with decent education system.

  • The "2.0" ness escapes more than newbies. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Chonine (840828) on Sunday September 23 2007, @01:36PM (#20720891)

    More power to those out there that edit wikis religiously, blog daily, use and create mashups, get their news through an RSS reader, can name their favorite 10 podcasts, share their Google calendars with their friends, have a FlickR and Delicious account, use 100 firefox plugins, and have an application-loaded Facebook among their many social networking sites - these can be some great tools with great utility to people.

    But for some reason, this newfangled web doesn't seem to appeal to me, my friends, or anyone I know. I'm a Computer Science Masters student, and my friends work in industry. Am I backwards? Antiquated? Should I be mashing it up? I do it like I have for years - an xterm, an email app, an IM app, and a tabbed-to-the-hilt browser.

    • Re:The "2.0" ness escapes more than newbies. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Blackknight (25168) on Sunday September 23 2007, @01:40PM (#20720927) Homepage
      Sounds like most of the people I know. I think web 2.0 appeals to a younger crowd, seems to be mostly teenagers on those sites.

    • Re:The "2.0" ness escapes more than newbies. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by sarahbau (692647) on Sunday September 23 2007, @01:48PM (#20720981)
      Same with me. I hadn't even heard of a mashup before. I had to look it up to find out what this news post was talking about. I really don't understand the point of most of this Web 2.0 stuff, but some people seem to like it.

    • Re:The "2.0" ness escapes more than newbies. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by grommit (97148) on Sunday September 23 2007, @01:52PM (#20721013)
      Just keep doing your own thing. There's always going to be people that want to be a part of the "Next Big Thing" and are more than willing to bash the rest of us over the head with how great it is. Personally I, much like you, prefer a few simple apps that get minor refinements from time to time and just get my work done while MashRails and RubyUps and so on burn brightly for a few months only to be replaced by the "Next Big Thing."

    • Re:The "2.0" ness escapes more than newbies. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Myopic (18616) on Sunday September 23 2007, @02:22PM (#20721191)
      Yeah I agree. I have my CS degree and I love my internet, but I came of web-age in 1997, 8 and 9, so I like email and web pages more than the techs that have come out to replace them.

      Social networking sites are starting to grow on me, but only a tiny bit. I do love podcasts, because ever since I was a child I thought TV with commercials, no pause/record/playback, and on someone else's schedule was folly. Some people call them podcasts, I just call them radio: now I listen to my radio/tv from a menu (the menu on my iPod) instead of from a guide (the TV Guide).

      RSS feeds are pretty sweet but frankly not sweet enough for me to go out and discover on my own, so I appreciate ones that come to me for free (specifically, Firefox's RSS news link). My calendar hangs on my wall, and I find that more convenient than any computer calendar I've ever found, but that's probably because I'm a simple guy and don't need to schedule more than a couple things on any given day, at most. I can understand the benefit of a Google Calendar to people who are very busy and need to coordinate with lots of other people. Also, for egoists.

      Same with Flickr. I love my digicam but I don't have much of a compulsion to show my pics to the rest of the world. They're on my own site, they're not hidden or anything, but I don't need to share them actively.

      I never got into chat either. I've used it as a tool and it's okay, but I much prefer email because it is non-live. I like audio chat when it works with something else I'm doing. For instance, when I play card games online (I like euchre), I can audio chat with the other participants, and that improves the experience.

      Web 2.0 stuff is pretty compelling. Google Maps is the bomb (true that, double true). I appreciate the more complex and compelling interfaces offered on the web today. There was a time in 2000, 2001 and thereabouts where companies were putting all kinds of applications on the web, but the web wasn't up to the task, so we were all doing things on the web that we should have been doing on desktop apps. Now things are a lot better. My bank's website has animated windows that fade in and out and overlap, and it's an interface just about as compelling as any desktop app I've used.

      This is trite and perhaps obvious, but one thing the internet is fantastically perfect for is... porn. My god, what if we all still had to go out and walk to a porno theatre to see stag films? That would be terrible.
    • But for some reason, this newfangled web doesn't seem to appeal to me, my friends, or anyone I know.

      I hear you. I actually had an idea the other day that I thought would be perfect for Yahoo Pipes. The thing was, the web page that was the source for the key data to be mashed-up, though a classic HTML data table, didn't offer an RSS feed. And Pipes doesn't seem to offer even the most basic page scraping utility. (If it does, I couldn't find it.)

      After playing around with Yahoo Pipes for a half-hour trying to make it work, I realized that with my knowledge of PHP, I could do this just as easily on my own. And have much more control over the process and end product.

      The conclusion I came to: anyone who is capable of imaginatively using these tools is probably more than capable of just rolling their own mashup using open-source scripting tools. I don't imagine most ordinary users are going to be able to create anything more inventive than a regurgitated RSS feed.

      Please correct me if I'm wrong. Anyone have any interesting examples of something produced with this kind of pre-packaged mashup tool?
    • Same here (well, I use RSS). I still use a pretty minimalist fvwm config to run Firefox, xterm and emacs, and that's about it. I just don't get how most of this "Web 2.0" stuff is supposed to different from, you know, hypertext like we were all doing in about 1995.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by morcego (260031)

      But for some reason, this newfangled web doesn't seem to appeal to me, my friends, or anyone I know. I'm a Computer Science Masters student, and my friends work in industry. Am I backwards? Antiquated? Should I be mashing it up? I do it like I have for years - an xterm, an email app, an IM app, and a tabbed-to-the-hilt browser.

      I'm glad I'm not alone.

      I remember the first time I saw Java one a browser. I think it was 1995 or 96. I just asked myself "why?". The only really useful thing I've seem since 1996 on

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by krbvroc1 (725200)

        You know, I could probably visit any retirement home in the world and roll up a bunch of old people who will tell you that computers are useless and stupid. Would that parallel help back up your argument?

        I don't think its really a fair comparison. The issue here is not technology versus a non-technology generation. It is an evolution of companies trying to package what used to require more thought/skill/programming/configuration into something that is a simple tool for the masses. It a layer of abstraction that seems to be more hype than anything. The problem with a lot of this stuff is that by adding extra layers of abstraction the users of the technology forget/never learn what is really going on behind

  • Firefox only (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Animats (122034) on Sunday September 23 2007, @01:47PM (#20720973) Homepage

    Note that it's Firefox-only. No Internet Explorer support.

    Intel has lately started to move into Microsoft's space. Microsoft used to object when Intel did much with software on mainstream platforms, and Intel used to back off. Intel isn't backing off any more. Interesting.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by allcar (1111567)
      This gives me wood! A massive commercial outfit like Intel producing stuff for FF only is really exciting. As an enterprise Web Developer, I know how much easier it is to develop for one browser only (especially if that browser is standards compliant (ie: not IE)) and this may well be just laziness on behalf of Intel's devs. Anyway, more power to their elbows.
      • As I've never had much of a problem watching WMV in FF and Linux I went to the site, it's caved in...
        Maybe it's hard on the servers too :)

  • WTF is a mashup? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by noidentity (188756) on Sunday September 23 2007, @01:55PM (#20721029)
    Article summary could have had a few extra words summarizing what a "mashup" is. To me it sounds like what I do with my potatoes before I eat them.

  • the truth is (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pair-a-noyd (594371) on Sunday September 23 2007, @02:09PM (#20721113)
    older folks such as myself don't use this mashup crap because it sounds STUPID.
    The name alone implies that it's some sort of hap-hazardly created frankenstein stuff that 10 year olds create.
    The name does not indicate at all, in any way what a mashup is or does.

    It just sounds stupid and totally un-professional.

    No, I'm not trolling, this isn't flamebait, I'm giving MY take on it from the perspective of someone near 50 years old.

    Why not call this stuff, what ever it is, by a name that gives people a sense of what it's about?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by crush (19364)
      Yahoo has a nicer name: Pipes [yahoo.com]. Admittedly it's just a straightforward rip-off of the UNIX concept, but it's more expressive of what's happening really. Someone pointed out that the whole Web2.0 thing is just taking whatever good CLI stuff worked nicely and slapping a webpage interface on top of it. So:
      • email --> GMail, YahooMail, Hotmail
      • chaining commands through pipes --> mashups
      • usenet --> webforums

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by zullnero (833754)
      It does have its uses.

      For example, when I was looking for my current apartment, I wanted to see all available apartments on craigslist that were within sane walking distance from where I worked. By mashing up google maps and craigslist, you get a pushpins on the map type of view, without having to grab 30 or so and search them individually. Saved me a lot of time and a heck of a lot of web searches.

      One could apply the same thing to trying to find the closest veterinarian, closest hospital, bike repair sho
  • "my mother" "mashup" "tools" "mashup bars" "intel release" "mashup here, mashup there" "mash the mashing mash up" .....

    your mother's mashup with what tools ? and intel ? what kind of slashdot pos is this ?

    dont play games with /.ers' minds in the dead of the night.

  • They did the mash... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chris Mattern (191822) on Sunday September 23 2007, @02:54PM (#20721447)
    ...they did the website mash
    The website mash
    It was a network smash!

    Chris Mattern

  • We did it! (Score:5, Funny)

    by redcaboodle (622288) on Sunday September 23 2007, @03:03PM (#20721529)
    We actually slashdotted Intel.

  • Not necessarily stupid (Score:3, Informative)

    by lee1 (219161) <lee&lee-phillips,org> on Monday September 24 2007, @09:02AM (#20728275) Homepage
    After reading Intel's description of their product I have no interest, but the mashup idea, despite the stupid name, had its early expression in some really brilliant and useful work. Check out http://www.chicagocrime.org/ [chicagocrime.org] for a superb example. Of course, this was created by programming (using the nifty django framework, which uses python, by one of its creators) rather than by clicking on a toolbar.

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