#6

Here I go being all sour again but the above describes how I feel about mashups and the like (at least the ones regarding photo sharing / Flickr).

I really don't find any genuine utility in almost all of these things. Being able to spell out stuff from Flickr photos is fun, it's cute, fine. But is it really useful? I don't know, maybe for someone else but not for me. And all of those applications on the Big Huge Labs site? It says it right there: they're toys. The application that turns an image into a blog header might be a time saver, I'll admit. And it is not as though this Big Huge Labs list is the end-all be-all home of mashups, but in general I think mashups are good for a bit of time killin' but not much more than that.

I couldn't properly say how a library could use some of these mashups. I do suppose it might be fun for younger kids in a school media center to play around with some of these, but I don't think a public library or certainly an academic library could get much mileage out of, you know, LOLcat generator. If someone has some great ideas and I am just not thinking hard enough about this, please, share!

Again, sorry if I sound like a jerk. Just not a fan of this stuff.