Has it ever happened to you while visiting any particular website and commenting that the information being provided is very useful… if only you could combine it with data from somewhere else on the Web?

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could somehow make all the different components of your digital world (I mean, your email, photos, word documents, presentation slides) work together more seamlessly? If it’s all digital, aren’t they supposed to just fit together seamlessly?

These are the sort of issues being raised in an book I’ve been reading recently about Web Mashups.

Actually, below the surface, all websites and applications you use could fit together.
This book teaches you how to establish such connections (to some extent, try to make the Web your own) by re-mixing information in order to create your own Web mashups.

A Web mashup is a website or web application that seamlessly combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience.

Learning how to draw content from the Web together into new integrated interfaces and applications, whether for yourself or for your site visitors, is the central concern of this outstanding book.

Let me give you a specific example, just to illustrate how Web entrepreneurs are currently re-mixing data and services to create something useful for enriching everyone’s life.

Housingmaps.com combines the housing and rental listings from Craigslist.com with Google Maps.
It adds tremendously to the present functionality of Craigslist, by showing you on a map not only where a specific listing is located, but also where all rentals or houses are located in a specific suburb (via Google Maps).

Here are some examples of specific techniques I have already learnt in this brand-new book:

- Taking a book you found on Amazon.com and instantly locating it in your local library
- How to post Flickr photos to my new blog with a simple click of a button
- Displaying your own photos in Google Maps and/or Google Earth
- Recognizing and manipulating data embedded in web pages
- Building web search functionality into your own web applications
- Republishing word documents that are custom-formatted for your web site

Web mashups are a very hot topic, right now, and are great fun and educational in most instances.

Web mashups are also powerful, because you can get a lot of functionality without lots of effort.

As the quality, quantity, and diversity of information grow, web users require tools for accessing and managing this bewildering array of information. Many web users will only be happy when they get an information environment that gives them seamless access to any digital content source, handles any content type, and applies any software service to such content.

Remixing Data & Web services for creating value online.