August 20th, 2008
Ideas of the Day for Mash Ups
Updated Aug 20 ‘08
Albumaniac: Lyrics.com + Last.fm mashup: game that pulls a random lyric or verse from the lyrics database, and four album images from the Last.fm REST service. The user has to guess which album the lyric is from. If they get it wrong, the albums disappear. If they get it right, the album art is automatically added to their knowledge base and that information is stored for later. The information could, for instance, be used to allow that user to act as an expert on that band or album, or whatever. Or it could just accumulate on that player’s profile as a ‘badge’ of their knowledge/skill, and therefore be matched against other players who share their knowledge etc.
Band-aid: Tour dates map mashup with Yahoo! Maps and Upcoming.org. Visualisation exercise for traditional calendar-based information. User searches for a particular band, and the map is populated with their tour dates and locations, with a 1-2-3-4-5 dot-connection to indicate the sequence of the tour. Then the user can form a group that campaigns to get their favourite bands to play in their hometown by pledges for ticket sales. The user could use a ticketmaster purchasing client to buy tickets for the tour. This would be even better if the unsigned bands could add their gig locations and dates to the map itself.
Twitter + 43People.com mash: user tweets goal progress notes to their 43things.com goal list. This would then appear as a mini-blog that gradually builds a graphical progress report for all of their goals/travel spots/etc. They could set milestones as well (I’ve raised £300 of £1000 to do my Mt Kilamanjaro trip) or set themselves challenges with the new API call on 43things.
Caveat: I haven’t checked whether any of these actually exist..some probably do. It’s just a brain dump, so I can start thinking about something else.