MIT’s MashupCamp

The rise of the bastions of science education – Caltech, Stevens Institute of Technology, etc. - has brought MIT down off its industry-leading pulpit a bit, but that doesn’t mean Cambridge’s most-prized ivy (for the tech community, that is) has lost any of its swagger. It’s still a place oft cited for inventions, ideas, and general scientific musings, and will likely continue to retain its prestige for years to come, if forever. But despite wielding the royal crown amongst its peers, MIT has time to let loose and have fun too. And it showed when it hosted MashupCamp, an event organized to bring ideas and idea makers together.

The camp is pretty self-explanatory: they do mashups. They talk about existing mashups, whether those mashups can be mashed up further, or whether mashups were good ideas.

The primary idea of MashupCamp is to make things work together - well. For instance, Martin LaMonica of Webware, a CNET affiliate, made note of a competition out of which the first and second-prize winners were Hype Machine and Tourfilter. Both are related to music and the music industry: Hype Machine, along with a blog-tracking feature and the ability to stream music from a site, links to Amazon and iTunes, allowing the listener to buy digital tracks by artists discovered through the mashup; Tourfilter is all about tracking live events. Another interesting item, though not a podium piece, was dubbed Gigul8r, which “helps bands promote gigs through Eventful, a site Profy delved into during one of our earlier days. Gigul8r received 7 ‘Nickels’, according to MashupCamp wiki. Nickels are the official currency at MashupCamp. One would think MIT could spring for better. Perhaps not.

There were lots other little morsels sprouting from the informal temptank (temporary think tank). Booksearch x 3, the invention of Alan Taylor, helps individuals work the magic of MSN Live, A9, and Google Books to find the stuff they seek. Virgil Zetterlind was responsible for getting Google Earth and NOAA to work together. He received 9 nickels for his efforts. And GangstaMap, the brainchild of Paul Johnson, is a flash-based mashup combining Yahoo! Maps and Google video into a crowd pleaser. It earned Johnson 8 nickels. You can find more info on the warring attendees at MashupCamp here.

Mashups are clearly the odd couples of Web 2.0. Some succeed, many more fail, some continue to sheepishly wag their tails. To view one such tail wagger, visit Doggdot.us, a combination of Digg, Slashdot, and Del.icio.us. I’m sure the site doesn’t have a difficult time paying the rent, but whether it’s cashing in on Digg’s sizable cash infusions isn’t a probable scenario.

How do I think mashups will fare in the coming years? I don’t believe they’ll ever go away. They’re experiments at heart, but they double for progress on occasion, too. First we brought stuff together with rock and mud. Then came metals. Then the LEGO phenomenon emerged. Now we have Web 2.0 mashups. As long as minds continue to be creative, we’ll always be slapping stuff together to see if we can better something that already exists. Great inventions don’t sprout from nothing, after all.

Screenshots:

Hype Machine

Tourfilter