The Saiko

( TheSaiko.com )

There are 3 Free mashup tools we think you need in your stress-filled life.  We feel that your life would be improved by learning more about and using these mashup tools:

1. Yahoo Pipes
2. IBM Mashup Center
3. iGoogle

Yahoo Pipes

Yahoo Pipes is a web-based tool that gives developers the ability to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from all reaches of the Internet.  The good news is that it is quite intuitive and not too difficult to use if you are not a developer.  All you need to understand is RSS and how to get RSS feeds.  Also, it’s free.  Free is always good.

IBM Mashup Center

Just like Yahoo Pipes, the folks at IBM created Mashup Center to be accessible by non-developers.  It goes without saying that this sort of approach to anything (read:  making it easy for the layman to utilize and understand) usually is part of the recipe for success.  The other side of that coin means that the functionality or the ability to customize is limited.  Overall, the Mashup Center requires that you create a group of enterprise widgets.

iGoogle

Finally there is iGoogle.  This is the first one we used.  This simply enables the user to create a front-end screen filled with any number of widgets.  You can stream your Gmail, get weather, pull RSS from you favorite sites and anything else under the sun.  Be careful with iGoogle, however.  You can quickly overwhelm yourself with all of the zillions of widgets they have available.  At the end of the day, it’s an easy RSS feed reader to use.

For anybody that is new to mashups and are unsure what it all means, below we’ll distill the key points.  Defined, mashups are simply a tool that gives developers the ability to “mashup”/combine data and then create a visual interface via a web application.  Here are the 3 types of mashups and their key differences:

• Front-end: Great entry point for non-developers.  Help create a web front-end that most closely resembles a “dahshboard” of sorts.  The dashboard is filled with widgets and it requires very little programming.  (ie:  iGoogle)
• Back-end: This requires a bit more knowledge, but still doesn’t require too much development.  Something like this can help you pull 5 of your favorite blog RSS feeds and have them stream automatically into your Facebook profile.  (ie:  Yahoo Pipes
• Integrated mashup tools: These are more for “techie” people that need to construct more end-to-end web solutions/applications that will ultimately link widgets to services and data.  (ie: IBM Mashup Center)