Techies converge to talk mashups

Hundreds of technologists, reporters and investors are expected Monday morning in Mountain View, Calif., for MashupCamp, the first conference devoted to discussions about the custom programs that come from merging multiple application program interfaces.

In the wake of last year's launch of Google Maps and the slew of applications like HousingMaps--a blending of the mapping service and Craigslist housing listings--that quickly followed, many people have been focusing on mashups.

Now that interest will coalesce as about 300 people arrive at Mountain View's Computer History Museum for two days of meetings, panel discussions and hard-core networking among those who seek to develop mashups and those providing the APIs behind them.

Among the companies that are supporting MashupCamp--a nonprofit event in which anyone who signed up had the opportunity to organize a talk--are Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Adobe Systems, Amazon.com and Salesforce.com.

MashupCamp co-organizer David Berlind is executive editor of business technology for ZDNet.com, which is owned by CNET News.com parent company CNET Networks.

In any case, the idea behind the event is that as an increasing number of companies make their APIs publicly available, more and more developers will come along to create mashups. Those in attendance--and dozens more who were unable to sign up in time to get in--will have the unique chance to network among each other and hopefully, Berlind said, figure out the next stage of the mashup ecosystem.

It's important to have an event like MashupCamp "because all the other events so far under the rubric of Web 2.0 have been executive-level events," Berlind said. "But we've never really before had an event where the actual developers of the mashups get together with the API architects to talk through what's going on."

At the end of the event, attendees will vote for the best mashup. The winner will receive a Sun Niagra server.

And while those in attendance will surely be working on creating all kinds of free and publicly available mashups, Berlind said the companies and developers alike will also be thinking beyond shareware, software that can be tried without cost.

"The real elephant in the room is what's the business model," he said.

RentalHouses.com and Customized Google Maps

RentalHouses.com was one of the very first home rental websites of its kind to customize Google Maps for its searchers. Taking it one step further, property managers with houses for rent can also find mapping tools for rent comps, flyers, and more. Take a look at this site as well. Find houses for rent and home rentals using Google maps quickly.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

These are better

http://www.housingmaps.com/
http://www.foundcity.net/

RentalHouses.com and Google Maps

Rentalhouses.com was one of the very first to use Google maps and customize them for their searchers looking for houses for rent nationally. They also have created customized mapping tools for the property managers who have numerous home rentals. Check out this site as well.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Thess are much better...

http://www.housingmaps.com/
http://www.foundcity.net/

[ahoppin]

Business Models

Re: "The real elephant in the room is what's the business model" -- the business model is clear in cases where a transaction results from the mashup, as it does in our on-demand merchandise business at GoodStorm: if the transaction is facilitated or improved in some way through the mashup, there is a measurable value that can be compensated. There's no reason at the end of the day that HousingMaps type mashups couldn't follow a similar compensation model. The biggest real estate brokers in New York, for example, are currently looking hard at opening "Labs" units that will pursue innovative ways to make their data and services more open and to allow third-party services and communities to add value to them. And smaller brokers in New York are looking at creating a network amongst themselves in order to realize the benefits of scale in aggregate while remaining independent.

[bigmacster]

Mashup business models reponse

Interesting re. smaller RE brokers wishing to use mashups to aggregate with others while maintaining independence - How do you see this working please? We service a small group in Australia (G'day :)