Did you know you could listen to your favorite song, watch the video, read reviews, related information and see what it costs on Amazon all in one interface? Musicmesh mashup allows you to do it all. The design and speed could be better, but the idea’s new. Do check it out over here.

Wanna know what awaits service-orienetd architecture in the rest of 2008? Here’s a great article forecasting what’s in store. In short, the author sees a rapid increase in products targetting the SOA market.

In 2008, a growing number of SOA deployments will start to adopt open source, such as messaging and service enablement SOA products, and investigate one or more of the cloud-based services available. It also seems likely that SOA deployments will start to adopt some of the newer products based on the large Web site scale out techniques to increase performance, scalability and reliability.

I just stumbled upon this article that might be quite helpful in understanding and getting into the whole mashup theme. The article chews it out for you by giving extensive examples, including architectural components and key points to consider when developing your first enterprise mashup. This is a great beginning if you’re clueless about mashups. =)

Summary: A mashup is a technique for building applications that combine data from multiple sources to create an integrated experience. Many mashups available today are hosted as sites on the Internet, providing visual representations of publicly available data. This article describes the history and architecture of mashups, and explores how you can create mashups for use in your enterprise. We also impart some wisdom gained from projects with customers and systems integrators who have implemented mashups for the enterprise.

Google and NewYork Times have created a mashup that shows you what’s happening AND where it happening. Sweet! Now you’ll be able to see the latest news for any spot in the world you want. Going on a trip to Spain? Wanna know what’s been up there? Just click on Spain and there you go!

The New York Times offers geo-coded news, and Google Earth offers the platform for reading that news in a 3D browser.

To experience this new way of getting your daily dose of news, launch the latest version of Google Earth and make sure the “Geographic Web” folder is turned on. Click on a New York Times placemark and you will see the latest news and features pertaining to that geographic region. Want to see more than just headlines? Click on the “Show this layer” button at the top of the preview bubble and you’ll get a list of news articles dating back one month.

Now, fly around Earth and catch up on news of your favorite places. Whether it’s your dream vacation destination, a country you are fascinated with, the latest U.S. presidential primary cities or your hometown, just fly and enjoy. You can also try viewing The New York Times layer along with photos from Panoramio, videos from YouTube or any number of other options from the Layers panel to experience the full range and depth of information available to you in Google Earth.

Don’t worry about staying on top of things. This layer is updated every 15 minutes to offer the latest headlines for those with a big news appetite.

Google is notorious for its mashups, that’s fine, but when you see that even first-class news papers (news papers, not software companies!) like NY Times do mashups… you can’t but notice this global mashup tendency…So, If you are still not a part of it, I’d recommend to brush up on your ability to mashup!

News from here, emphasis mine.

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–StrikeIron, Inc., the leader in providing innovative solutions for delivering data over the Internet, today announced that David Linthicum will take the helm as company CEO. Linthicum will be responsible for continuing to drive the company’s leadership position as the frontrunner in delivering critical Web services and data, on demand, for the emerging next-generation Internet. Bob Brauer remains as president and co-founder and will continue to lead the day-to-day operations of StrikeIron.

“StrikeIron’s revenue more than doubled from Q107 to Q108 and has tremendous momentum in the industry. We’re moving beyond simply delivering data as a service and into a new era of growth and development for new innovative products,” stated Brauer. “As an industry thought leader and visionary, Dave’s addition to the StrikeIron team helps us take the appropriate steps to deliver on the promise of Service Oriented Architecture via the Web and building the foundation for Web 2.0 applications with our managed Web services platform. We are confident that under Dave’s leadership, StrikeIron is well-positioned to go to the next level.”

“The emerging Web is an exciting medium that has come of age. Web services and mashups are changing how we access and deliver information and StrikeIron has established themselves as one of the driving forces in the industry,” stated Linthicum. “I look forward to building on the success StrikeIron has already achieved to date.”

A quick reminder - as a result of a recent partnership agreement with StrikeIron, Apatar has recently released two connectors to StrikeIron’s data quality services: StrikeIron US Address Verification connector and StrikeIron E-mail Verification connector. These data quality services from Apatar and StrkireIron ensure the validity of your data, increase productivity, improve sales strategies, and take customer service to a new level by providing faster transaction processing and higher accuracy.

A new Data Service World conference will launch on June 24 in New York City, Roosevelt Hotel. Looks like a n event not to miss! The Conference Chair Ken North says:

DataServices World is about the confluence of databases, data warehousing, business intelligence, enterprise computing and Internet computing. Its focus is architectures and technologies for accessing data from heterogenous data sources and providing that data to consumers such as components, services and applications.

At DataServices World, we’ll uncover architecture and technology solutions for accessing, integrating and processing data from multiple sources while guaranteeing security and scalability. These solutions include robust, high-performance data access middleware, optimized databases, efficient protocol handling, tuned queries and state of the art data services. We’ll be looking at technology of interest to CTOs, enterprise architects, system architects, information architects, developers, database gurus, consultants and analysts.

And another thing to note: the conference will be co-located with another event you shouldn’t miss - SOA World 2008 East =)

Regardless of what I was saying inone of my recent posts about BI in the traditional understanding of it becoming outdated, the spendings on BI keep rising.

Spending on business intelligence software, designed to help executives make better decisions, is seen rising 11 percent to $5.8 billion this year despite a U.S. economic slowdown, research firm Gartner said.

Gartner says BI hold too high of a position with CIOs and will not be affected by the economic downturn as much as other technologies.

The research firm said business intelligence had beaten all other technologies in a survey it had carried out of priorities of 1,500 chief information officers worldwide.

Gartner said it expected business intelligence software sales in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and the Asia-Pacific region to outgrow those in North America this year, as they did last year.

BY 2012, the global business intelligence market should be worth $7.7 billion, Gartner said.

BI taking over the world, huh? That’s encouraging news for BI companies!

Neil Raden quite reasonably criticizes a recent article here titled “Gartner: Emerging Technologies Will Help Drive Mainstream BI Adoption.”

After all, it’s true that BI software was initially designed for marketing and finance departments to gather data, analyze it, sometimes report it and build up new development strategies based on it. But all of this is already in place and happening… As for the prospect though, there’s still room to expand:

“I believe there is a huge opportunity for the BI vendors to expand the reach and value of their software, but not through visualization interfaces and more powerful analyst tools. That train left the station. It’s time for BI to take its place on the porch with the big dogs and tackle the real operational processes of organizations. Classic BI is not going away, it provides a valuable function, but not everyone needs it.”

Jeff Kaplan in his recent post examines what it really means to be SaaSy. He quite reasonably draws a distinct line between the market leaders and SaaS wannabes by signling out seven things that SaaS companies should really look into adopting if they want a chance to succeed :

Networked applications – One of the primary drivers of the SaaS movement is the need for increasingly mobile workers and geographically dispersed customers/partners to share information and collaborate with one another more effectively. Web-native applications which leverage wide-area networks (WAN) are better suited to fulfill this need than the highly centralized, on-premise applications of the past.

Enhanced user experience – Another key driver of SaaS is user frustration with the cumbersome, inflexible nature of legacy applications. These on-premise apps were generally designed to accommodate the technical demands of data center systems and corporate databases rather than appeal to the real-world workflows of businesses and intuitive senses of end-users.

Variable pricing – Corporate decision-makers are also fed up with the capital investments and significant risks associated with legacy apps. They no longer want to be locked into perpetual licenses and escalating maintenance agreements. Having the opportunity to try software solutions before they buy them, and then being able to use their operating budget to acquire the software functionality they need as they need it is especially appealing in today’s recessionary environment.

Real-time analytics – Given the economic climate and intensifying competitive landscape, companies of all sizes need to generate greater intelligence from their applications. It is for this reason that analytics is becoming an increasingly important feature in nearly every type of enterprise SaaS application, rather than just an assortment of standalone business intelligence SaaS solutions.

Continuous enhancements – We are also living in a time in which the rate of change is accelerating and customers expect their vendors to respond to their constantly changing needs. Therefore, leading SaaS solutions are those which rely on agile development techniques to incrementally improve their solutions on a continuous basis rather than depending on long development cycles to roll out disruptive ‘upgrades’ to their legacy applications.

Self-provisioned, dynamic toolkits – Corporate end-users are also becoming more tech savvy and more willing to take advantage of a rapidly expanding reservoir of gadgets, widgets and other mash-up devices to solve business problems or achieve their corporate objectives without the help of internal developers or outside consultants.

Aggregated data & benchmark studies – Smart SaaS companies are beginning to recognize that the SaaS model gives them unprecedented insight into their customers’ operations based on their SaaS usage patterns. These SaaS companies are accumulating activity data which can be converted into valuable benchmark statistics and best-practice studies. This puts the SaaS company in an advantageous position to provide a new level of value to their customers that gives them an opportunity to transform their user base into a powerful ‘club’ where users get insight in addition to software functionality.