You hear this “mashup” expression being used by techie friends of yours. They talk about “oh, that is such an awesome mashup”. But what exactly does “mashup” mean?
“Mashup” comes from the term “mashed potatoes”, but is much more sophisticated. A “mashup” combines services from different websites into a single website. The intent is to give exceptional customer service to the reader by combining the best of two or more online software products.
Mashups are not new, by any means. The idea of combining multiple software API services (“application programming interfaces”) is decades old. In fact, your Microsoft Windows operating system is a perfect everyday example of mashup programming. But in the last few years, web site mashups have become a serious business for web programmers.
