Programmable Web Marginalizes OS

For many of us, mashups first appeared when we saw San Francisco Bay area apartment listings or Chicago crime sites superimposed over Google maps. Now, they're multiplying like Star Trek's Tribbles. See www.programmableweb.com/mashups and www.mashupfeed.com/. If you'd like to stop, kick back, and have a beer to think about all this, start here: beermapping.com/maps/sanfranbeer.html/.

For a big-picture, industry view see: blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2484 and poke around www.programmableweb.com/

With 'mashups' all the rage these days, taking a few moments to explore and ponder the API matrix (www.programmableweb.com/matrix) makes a few things clear. In simple terms, the matrix shows mashups as exemplars of combinations of various web service APIs, such as Google, Flickr, del.icio.us, etc. Web services are being interconnected via their own APIs via the Internet. This isn't the traditional notion of 'program' APIs communicating, but services out there in the ether dwelling on servers who knows where. A Web 2.0 blogging group posts at www.web20workgroup.com and innovations are distributed, mapped at www.fourio.com/web20map/.

These nerd bits are exciting! As innovators build out more services based on web APIs, the underlying platform's operating system shrinks in importance, asymptotically approaching irrelevance. The browser is the platform for web services. Netscape was right!

Communities are forming; developers are camping: www.mashupcamp.com/

It's happening here. It's happening now.
Watch the skies. And screens.