Mashup services: More potato than meets the eye

The idea of service “mashups” really resonates with me. We’ve all seen some pretty wild and incredible examples of what happens when creative people meld different services together.

Something about Upcomingscrobbler (where Audioscrobbler meets Upcoming) made me sit up again and pause — i think because the site serves as a really good example of a seemingly simple yet incredibly useful tool for anyone that enjoys something (music, in this case, originating from one data pool) and has an interest in keeping tabs on a related but yet obviously unrelated information sector (this being the live music scene, originating from an entirely different data pot) .

The intersection of the two points is so important because we’re now seeing so much of the connecting of what was earlier, just two disparate and single-track roadways.

Looking through Casey Bisson’s “Designing an Opac for Web 2.0” slides from ALA’s Midwinter, you know that he’s right when he says libraries aren’t in competition with the Internet — we’re because we’re part of it. We’re a mashup waiting to happen.

But back to Upcomingscrobbler, here’s an example from my last.fm preferences showing US concert dates for matching artists.

Sadly, I would demo Canadian listings but they’re a bit lackluster, displaying only one upcoming Neil Young concert (not that Neil is ever lackluster, far from — but rather, it’s just sad that more bands aren’t touring the Great White North. But I digress.).

A quick scan and I can also see that I won’t be watching and listening to any potential favorites in Washington D.C. when I’m there in March, although a side trip to NYC might be worth it).

What I’m attempting to get across is that Upcomingscrobbler is just another example of an opt-in technology (last.fm and audioscrobbler profiling is only for the willing and not a violation of your private listening habits) that can leverage user preferences and activity history in order to offer the end user a really cool service that is totally separate, but yet a logical tie-in, to the potential needs of someone that enjoys music.

And at the very least, it’s just another geek bookmark which can be hauled out to wow family and friends at your next social gathering. Speaking of bookmarks, I’m glad del.icio.us scales decently since I see my bookmark count is now just shy of 1000 entries (and I’m still tagging and counting…).

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