Tech News

I've been hearing a bit about mashups and seen a few products out there. For those who don't know, mashups are built by combining various sources of data and producing a new product from them. They are often web service driven. E.g. Combining Google map data, listed shops combined with pricing and a delivery service to provide a totally new shopping product. OK maybe not the best example but you get the idea. The big thing is that there are products available to enable end users with no programming experience build these applications using a GUI. The thinking is that it is better to get the end user to develop their own products than getting some developer's interpretations.(Think developing simple spreadsheets in Excel - everybody has one somewhere.) At the moment I think that it is still largely developers that produce, but this is where its going. There are some interesting products out there E.g. Yahoo Pipes. Now if companies like Yahoo and Google are putting big money to develop products, this is probably where it's going. I just wonder where this leaves the developer? I know there will always be a need for programmers but as this idea takes hold and ease of development improves for an end user, it may redefine a few things - I just wonder what and how much.