TomSoft

WayFinder 3D

In case you missed it (I’ve missed it!), a demo of Wayfinder 3D is available for Symbian S60. It’s a Symbian native application (1.7 meg and even, does not contains any map!). You can use it to find service…But with some strange behavior. For instance, to get weather, you have to re-enter (manually) your location! Does not work with GPS (says that I need to “update” it?)

Through mobitrends

Technorati Tags: gps , map

Add comment August 18th, 2006

Mashup vs Widget?

Following the announce about the founding of “Mashery“, an interesting start-up that will create “resources” for developers, API providers and Mashup users, I was wondering if such company was targeting Widget developer or Mashup developer?
So, came the question of what is the difference between a Mashup and a widget, after all, they seems both some technology that could be used to create a new web page/service?

The actual situation:

• a mashup, is a new web service, usually a web site, created by aggregating existing Web services. Typically,  a service tot display renting house on Google map is a mashup, taking information both from a renting site, and from Google Map, aggregate them, and displays them
• a widget, is a “micro application”, that do a small individual task and that can be put as a component in a desktop or a web page. But some widgets can be a mashup…

So what are the real differences between the two? Today, a mashup is more a programmer affair, while widget is more an end user technology. The other actual difference is that most of the time, the newly creating service imply that there is glue between all data sources (for instance, some code to put house locations on Google map) while widget does not speak each other: the clock widget does not talk with your flickr badge widget, etc…

  But the limitation starts to fade down, and I think that this will slowly disappear, and I am quite sure that there is probably tons of widget that act as “mashup”.

• It will be easier and easier to create new composites application, based on third party app for everybody, and not only technical people.
• The question will be again business model? One trend in Widget industry is to provide money to developer according to widget usage, based on revenue like advertising. But the value come also from the data itself, the initial provided one. If the mashup/widget creator get some revenue from his creation based on external data source, these external data source could ask for money too….

This latest part will be an interesting challenge in the future, and I think that the value of company like Mashery will be also to be able to manage the value chain and provide fair revenue to the entire participant….

Update: waow, what a sync, I was ready to post the article when Techcrunch pointed out this new start-up, dappit. Seems to be very close to what I describe as the ability to create Mashup for end user.  But I’ve tried to use it and was not able to extract easily simple information for an HTML table, so I do not share Techrucnh enthusiasm. But this just means that there is still a lot to do, but direction is here

Technorati Tags: mashup, widgets

7 comments August 18th, 2006