Mashup 101: Virtual Earth Map Control and AJAX (Part I)

Ah, we live in an industry of over used buzzwords.  The one I seem to be hearing alot is "mashup."  What the heck is this thing?  Wikipedia says "A mashup is a website or web application that seamlessly combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience."  You can find the full definition here. 

This immediately makes me ask the ask the question "What is a web application?"  I blogged about a REALLY COOL WinFX application that I would call a mashup here.  It's not a web site.  It's not hosted in a browser.  Does that mean it's not a web application?

Ok, back to the point of this post.  The majority of "mashup" applications you see are AJAX based, aggregate information from multiple data sources, mash the data together in an interesting way, and present you with a visualization of said data (typically on a map).  You don't have to have a map at all to have a mashup, but since it's what people typically associate with mashups, I just did a screencast showing you the fundamentals of this approach using the Virtual Earth map control and some plain old AJAX programming.  If you watch it, you'll notice that I took liberty with the word mashup.  I'm not really mashing data from multiple data sources, but you get the idea:). 

This is Part I of two screencasts.  In Part II, I will show you the same app built using ASP.NET "Atlas."

Don't forget about the MASH IT UP WITH ASP.NET ATLAS contest.  I blogged about a bunch of publicly available web services to help get you started here. 

-Marc

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, .NET, Atlas, AJAX, Windows Live, Web 2.0