Source: adapted from http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/awss.nsf/screenshots/05AD13271D1DD49C88257369006A5436/$FILE/imsk01.jpg, accessed 9 October 2007

IBM is begins to reinvent itself in the Web 2.0 sphere. The two mashup tools that released by IBM today may appealed to some non-technical users that want to access Web information and company’s database for the purpose of mashup the information or data in order to build a decent Web application. What is mashup, it means mix content from the host server with feeds from the API (application programming interface). As stated in the IBM’s alphaWorks site, the IBM Mashup Starter Kit contains two key technologies and they are critical for users looking to take advantage of the IBM solution for creating Web 2.0 initiatives. The aforesaid two technologies, one is the IBM Mashup Hub that served to stores information feeds, the lightweight components in developing Web applications. The other one is the updated version of QEDWiki tool, the visual front-end for accessing the information and developing the mashup. Nevertheless, to build this type of mashup by customize the aforesaid feeds, one must at least have some knowledge in PHP, the most popular programming language nowadays.

Currently, this mashup starter kit is available in preview mode, and it is slated for release in the first quarter of 2008. However, we should not expect the disruption that IBM brought to the market, as more and more software giants are releasing the tools that helped designers or non-programmers to develop Web applications without having to write code. Examples included Microsoft’s Popfly and Adobe’s Flex Builder.