Superman, supposedly hails from Metropolis, a town whose local newspaper goes by the name of the Planet. And if you’re think I should have written “The Daily Planet” it’s because you’re thinking of the fictional Metropolis, and I’m talking about the real Metropolis in Illinois, which hosts an annual Superman festival and is home to a Superman Museum. I’m not sure what you’d find in a Superman Museum, to be honest, apart from green glowing rocks of doubtful origin, but that’s because I’ve never been to Metropolis.

I only know about it from scanning the web for mashups. I came across one mashup that purports to show America’s One Trick Towns, a marriage of Google Maps with places that are desperately trying to tempt visitors with a single bizarre attraction. Like Paris, Texas with a 69 ft Eiffel Tower that wears a cowbot hat (I’m not lying), or Alton, Illinois, the most haunted town in America, population 30,496 if you only count the living, or Darwin, Minnesota, which will astonish you with the world’s largest ball of twine rolled by man (the ball weighs 17,400 pounds and is 12 feet in diameter).

There are hundreds of mashups similar to this, which marry Google Maps and a list of one kind or another (wealthy film stars, America’s best Medical Schools, retail outlets that currently have or will soon have Nintendo Wiis in stock, and so on). There’s one which provides a map of open webcams streaming information in real-time. This one’s kinda cool, because you mouse over a web marker and it throws up the current web cam image.

If you visit Programmable Web you will find links to over 1400 mashups based on maps (usually Google Maps), and you’ll notice that map-based mashups are both the most popular and most prolific. This may have something to do with the fact that there’s a web site, Map Builder, that allows you to build mashups that link to Google Maps without having to write a line of code.

Most of the mashups on Programmable Web are there for the sake of amusement, but some are not. There are about 20 or so that are business oriented including a couple that link together useful services such as Salesforce.com with Google AdWords or Zoho’s office products with Omindrive’s online storage. If you’re a business and you’re hoping to capitalize on the whole mash-up movement, a good way to do it is to set up a contest for the best mash-up that enhances your web site. There’s a list of such contests on Programmable Web and one or two offer prizes of $25,000 or more.

  Subscribe to HaveMacWillBlog in a reader