This is a 'worldly' greeting courtesy geoGreeting, a site powered by Google. Visit the howdy link to know more!(Added 2-Dec) geoGreeting is just another 'mashup', which, for the uninitiated, is a technology to separate the presentation and the application layers of a webpage. This is quite similar to the J2EE ideology of Model-View-Controller. You can have different presentations for the same information, provided the information sources allow you to access them. And, when you mashup, you can combine information from multiple sources, and present them in a cohesive and sensible form. For instance, the 7 wonders mashup combines information from Google Maps and Wikipedia. This is possible because Google and Wiki follow an open-source policy. Similarly, an enthusiast could combine coffee outlet information from Starbucks.com, process the addresses through Google and come up with a Starbucks map. Now, he could get the weather information of each location and put that up too. This is one great advancement in web design and is a pointer to what's going to come up in terms of interactivity and personalization in the new internet. Programmable Web keeps track of all these mashups, and has posts on the newer ones that are coming up. It also has a experimental Matrix which is interesting.
Talking about mashups, and what thet means to the future of Internet is this Wiki mashup page. Now that wiki will tell you everything, I don't have to brag on about it!
You also get to know about the recent term Web 2.0, and why the likes of Sir Tim Berners-Lee reject this idea, though positive about what the Internet is becoming. And, you also understand the flip-side of mashing-up, when reliability gets compromised in an effort to pull data from various sources.
Here's my bonus - some interesting mashups I came across!
Flickrscapes
Xrez Gigapixel Images
Web Traffic Comparisons
GooCam
GahooYoogle Search
Hmm! Didn't I just tell you another device to fritter your time away? Just mash it up!
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