With rumors of layoffs at even Microsoft, I guess the Wired Tech Layoff Tracker is the Mashup that best defines these early days of 2009.

Mozilla Ubiquity is described as "an experiment into connecting the Web with language". The aim is to use sentences to control a browser eg "Book a flight to Chicago next Monday to Thursday, no red-eyes, the cheapest. Then email my Chicago friends the itinerary, and add it to my calendar. It is not quite there yet, but does support more simpler commands such as "email it to Celine", "translate this to English" and "weather brisbane". In its simplicity to does get more useful eg retrieve everything tagged with css by user aneesha -  "get-delicious aneesha tag css" and update my facebook status -  "facebook-status is exploring Ubiquity". There is a library of commands available and a command authoring guide. Ubiquity provides a great interface for non-programmers to create mashups and accomplish tasks from a central interface.

Taking ideas for e-learning Ubiquity commands now….

Quite a few interesting papers from the MUPPLE08 conf. Particularly liked the “Adding mash-up based tailorability to VLEs for scripted Collaborative Learning” paper which has an example of using MediaWiki to render the mashups (made with a tool called Collage).

I’m pretty impressed by Glogster - I’d describe it as a multimedia mashup tool with an artistic twist. You know, if I think about it, Glogster encompasses everything an eportfolio system needs - to not portray the student as bland, boring and average. ….So I’m off to plot my glogster page so that I can totally express myself.

"Designing for Change: Mash-Up Personal Learning Environments", is the best paper I have read on Learning Design by far!

Essentially, Learning Environment Design is the missing link. I agree. Tools within the LMS are rudimentary and not generally exposed to Students as creators. The paper introduces the Mash-UP Personal Learning Environment (MUPPLE) system and a Learner Interaction Scripting Language (LISL) which works as a Domain Specific Language (DSL) behind the scenes. LISL is powerful, making it easy to combine content and activities which can then be deployed, shared and adapted (evolved). LISL just needs a GUI addon to be super intuitive and adaptable.

OK so now I think I have worked on something similar. A tool called Interactive Media Enhanced Teaching (IMET) that was available in QUT’s inhouse built OLT system. The M in IMET had a different meaning depending on who you spoke to - M for Media or Multimedia and now I’m thinking M could actually have stood for Mashup. A paper entitled “Putting the ‘me’ into media: Exploring different strategies to embed the integration of streaming media with cognitive tools, into learning activities” was presented at the OLT 2003 conference. I’m not an author of the paper, but I was the developer of IMET. I did present a Flex powered version at Ausweb 06.

Scott Leslie just posted a nifty diagram of his PLE ecosystem. Actually got me thinking about building a tool to allow users to easily express their PLE ecosystem, collate and syndicate activity.

Lily is a visual programming environment that breaks the confines of the browser to create extremely arty mashups. There are the usual search, maps and images mashups that we have learn’t to grow tired of but the arty stuff is fun and inspiring in a non-functional art exhibit kinda way. The SVG Midi Sequencer may just be my favorite.