Mashups

Browsing the Mashups awards, which gives a quick overview of some popular mashyups, I am tempted by search options Triplify and search-cube. I have not used bing before, and it is interesting to use an engine other than google.

Question - which is the top metasearch engine at this time?

Search cube requires a (free download) flashplayer to work. Where most search engines provide a list onscreen and you need to scroll down, maybe only seeing 10 at a time, Searchcube gives 16 at a glance, on 6 sides of the cube, 96 results across all media including individual images and slideshows.The results are quickly browsed using a mouseover to see popup details.

Some of the older mashups sites seem to have already become dead sites, which is perhaps the way of the internet world - something either gets traffic or not.

I wanted a site to find mp3 songs by obscure artists such as Railroad Gin or Jeannie Lewis, but have not found a great mashup to do this so far, as many seem to focus on the more recent and popular artists. I wanted to find a track of "Les blouses blanc" by Jeannie Lewis to add it to a slide animation. Still searching on that project.

On the other hand, zoomii.com seems a great way to browse Amazon books, just like shelves in a real bookstore, sorted by category.I like looking at the covers of books I buy, and there is a shelf look option or a thumbnail cover picture with details of the books listed beside them , which avoids the need to click to a further screen to view title details.

I really liked suburbview.com and will use it to check realestate prices, value of our house, and rental figures by suburb.

SearchBay could save some site hopping when online shopping. I would use this combined with biblioz and alibris to search for out of print titles, but use the latter to get a more sure idea of the valuation price of such titles. Alibris now allows private sellers to sell books online. Maybe there could be a mashup which combines the two, showing you what a title is worth at online booksellers and then including the SearchBay sites.

Hmm, this is turning into a 'where would I buy books' discussion. Despite the fact the Australian dollar is catching up to the US dollar, I would still try Fishpond which guarantees to beat Amazon's price every time, or TheNile which says it is Australia's largest bookstore to find current titles.

Not sure if it is a mashup - I think so because it is an application that I created online- but I have also created a store for my zazzle products (and some other zazzle artists I like) at my facebook site, so linking the two functions and making it easier for people to find the products and so build customers using the principle of the more links, the better chance people will find you.