Mashup is one of those terms you hear and see around the web quite often, but again it is hardly ever explained.  Like so many other terms, people just assume you know what it means.  So, as always, StarterTech is here to help you learn what these things mean.

As the name would imply, a mashup involves taking a minimum of two web services and making them work together to create a third service.  The one we’ve pictured to the right is called Twittervision and combines Google Maps with Twitter to give you a graphic representation of where each twitter is coming from around the world.

All of this is accomplished via the use of application programming interfaces (API) which allow programmers to access the raw data of a service and manipulate it in different ways to create other tools.  While we have shown you a fairly frivolous example here, there are thousands upon thousands of such tools out there on the web now, with all sorts of varying degrees of usefulness.

So, next time you see the word, at least you’ll have some idea of what is being discussed.