The other day on TechCrunch was an article about Microsoft’s Popfly Mashup builder getting a game creator interface. Previously, I looked at Popfly for building Mashups but didn’t get past the Wack-a-mole Mashup, so this time I figured I would get the only person I know who has created games.

It is a tough road getting kids who have an interest in software, started in a structured way. Game software offers many of the skills that developers will need in the long run. Products GameMaker, Popfly and even flash give kids a nice tools that keep them interested and allow them to explore software until they are capable using structured languages. Read more…

Yesterday, myself and Stefan Andreasen (Kapow Technologies CTO) did a webinar on Enterprise Mashups. Feedback was extremely positive, I completely agree, Nexaweb and Kapow offer Enterprises the abilty to build mashups – Faster – Better – Cheaper. I am a big fan of Kapow and what they offer, users of the technology can create XML feeds from any website whether or not the site publishes one. Can’t tell you everything they do in a sentence so go check them out, Click Image:

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Lately, I have been talking about performance as it relates to Ajax and Web 2.0 applications. jsLex helps with optimizing one aspect of performance: code, but there are other areas to consider in building applications. TruDat, my last Mashup, exposed another area of performance – service consumption. Every mashup needs to consume some service whether it’s Flickr, Youtube, Trulia or even your own. Service consumption is a critical part of building Mashups.

When consuming services there are many things to consider, but here are a couple I will talk about:

Service Consumption Architecture – Who will make the connection?
Service Consumption Performance – How to make it go faster?

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In the beginning of December, I finally finished project I got the idea for about two years ago. “Send Me A Pic” is an application that lets users customize images from Flickr and send a link to the image to their phone, so they can use the photo as a custom wallpaper.

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Programmableweb

www.programmableweb.com is a great web site for seeing what’s going on in the Mashup World. The site has over a thousand mashups and serveral number APIs; its the place to go to get inspiration on creating your first or next Mashup.

In October, I created the Ajax Map Comparison Mashup that allows users to see the difference between the big three Ajax Map widgets, posted programmableweb.com. The thing with Mashups if no one uses it, does it really matter? I guess that’s the same for any application, but Mashups are really more about inspirations, creativity and sharing than they are hardcore engineering.

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