Taylor McKnight is the co-founder of Podbop, a mash-up of the online events calendar Eventful.com, publicly shared MP3 files from musicians and the mapping program DIY Map.  Podbop asks you what city you live it then shows you what bands will be in that city soon and delivers a song recorded by each scheduled band that has put music online. In addition to visiting the site and searching for any city in the world, you can also subscribe by RSS to receive schedules and sample songs from any bands coming to your town that are listed on Eventful.com.

Mashups, or the combination of data and functionality from more than one site on the web, are a hot new class of tools best known for the ways that people are mapping different sorts of data online. (See, for example, the map we've created to display the geographic locations of the Net Squared in Action case studies, using Community Walk - a Google Maps mashup.)

There is far more to mashups than just maps, and the phenomenon is expected to become far more widespread in both the consumer and enterprise spaces in the future. In the following interview, Taylor and I talked about the creation of Podbop, the issues that developers face in the emerging mashup scene and the future of hybrid web services like Podbop.

Marshall:

Can you start by letting our readers in on why you created Podbop?

Taylor:

I came up with the idea for Podbop about about 8 months ago. I was tired of the "old way" of finding concerts in my town. I'm all about letting technology/computers make my life easier.

This was about a month after I had discovered Eventful, when I reviewed a bunch of event calendar sites on my blog. When I learned that there as an API [application programming interface], then I got really excited

Marshall:

Why did you chose Eventful instead of, say Upcoming, or another site with an API?

Taylor:

My goal was for Podbop to be as useful as possible, which really means two things. Lots of events and lots of bands/mp3s in our database. I really liked that Eventful offered the best of both worlds by pre-listing events (from sites like Ticketmaster etc) in addition to letting anybody add their own. Especially with smaller cities, it gives them a bit of a head start if the cities don't have a thriving Upcoming community.

Marshall:

Right on. I presume this helps mitigate the need for volunteer input on your end as well?

How is that going, are people providing input into Podbop's database at the rate you'd like?

Taylor:

Somewhat. I think that Podbop will only really succeed if we do get a decent amount of volunteer input. I look at it [Eventful’s pre-listings] mostly as a jump start. There are websites out there that have great community oriented ideas, but never get going because they are only useful if there are many contributors. To make the jump from no contributors to a full blown community is a difficult one.

It's growing, but slowly. Not as fast as I would like it but I blame some of that on myself. We've been busy revising the site for a "version 2". After that launches I'm going to concentrate on providing more tools to make it easier for the community to get involved.

Marshall:

What kinds of thoughts do you have on making a community based site useful and compelling for people to contribute to?

Taylor:

I agree with Joshua Porters write-up on "The Del.icio.us Lesson" http://bokardo.com/archives/the-delicious-lesson/ . He emphasizes that to create a network value (thriving, contributing, community) you need to provide personal value first.

Marshall:

Any thoughts on common pitfalls experienced by Web 2.0 services in trying to provide this personal value?

Taylor:

Many don't make it painfully clear of the personal benefits upfront. I'm guilty of not doing this with Podbop, but I think it's important to provide the tools upfront and right away. Things like the Upcoming calendars you can paste on your own site, or integrating del.icio.us links in your blog

Marshall:

So the folks at Mashup Camp voted Podbop the number one mashup in the house. Was that just because it is cool, or are there things about Podbop that a newbie to mashups should know make it an especially good example of the milieu?

Taylor:

I think Podbop won because it appealed to a mass audience as a simple, but extremely useful service. Many mashups are proof of concept or make you say "Hey that's cool" but you never come back. Podbop is something you can come back to every week.

Technically, its really not that complex. Our hardest part was dealing with parsing the numerous variations of event titles that come through.

Marshall:

What do you think are some of the big issues in the mashup space?

Taylor:

Companies are really starting to get it. They are understanding that opening up their information brings more value for both sides of the table. As more APIs are announced everyday (just look at http://www.programmableweb.com/apis !). I think a problem that hasn't really been addressed at this point is, as Mashups get more evolved and become sticky services that are worth coming back to, as opposed to proof of concept or resume builders, how are API providers going to handle the transition into letting these ideas grow into businesses. And how are those making Mashups going to secure their models without having the rug pulled from underneath them when an API provider suddenly changes something.

Marshall:

Doesn't that seem like a deal-breaker, that the API could change, for organizations considering substantial investment in a mashup?

Where is that question today?

Taylor:

Well, to be honest, it could be a deal breaker, but those that are utilizing mashups at the moment are on the technological forefront, and are fairly fast to adapt. For mashups to really gain momentum for organizational use, API providers are going to have to make it clear to developers what their terms of service are (and stick to them).

Marshall:

Is the practice of charging developers to access to your API going to catch on? Is it reasonable?

Taylor:

I think it is reasonable to charge developers making money off of your information. I also think its absolutely critical to have a free service as well.

Marshall:

Are API's typically offered under GNU or Creative Commons or any other legal framework?

Taylor:

Eventful offers their own terms of use (http://api.evdb.com/terms). Same with Yahoo and Google. Most of these big companies that are providing API's create their own terms, but as mashups and apis and open-ness of information expands and becomes more popular, I don't think it would be uncommon to see lots of smaller sites, releasing their own APIs under CC.

Marshall:

WIll API's become ubiquitous in the near-term future, and if so, how could data holders or any one else best prepare for that future now?

Taylor:

I sure hope so. It's already letting us push the web further than the original content providers imagined. Data holders should just get their API's out there in the wild (with a clear license) and see where it takes them. Taking a look at those that are doing a really good job (Eventful, Flickr, Google Maps) would be good models to copy.

Marshall:

What makes a good API vs a bad one?

Taylor:

Thats probably more of a question for my co-creator Daniel. I'm not a back-end guy, but I can say that it is frustrating when you discover an API you want to use and the bits you want aren't available via their API.

Marshall:

Speaking of Daniel, I was wondering if you could tell us about what he's up to these days. Are the two of you, or you in particular, working on any other projects that might be of interest?

Taylor:

Daniel and I still work side by side everyday at the University of Florida Web Admin office. We've recently released http://phonebook.ufl.edu and keep pretty busy during the day. We are also planning on launching an updated version of Podbop next week before I head to the Florida Music Festival (http://www.floridamusicfestival.com ). We are really concentrated on Podbop and taking it to the next level. I'll be letting label execs at the Festival know about Podbop and how they can get involved.

Marshall:

That's great. Hopefully this interview will turn some of our readers on to Podbop, as well as inspire and inform them about mashups in general for their work in the nonprofit sector.

If you are interested in keeping up with Taylor McKnight's blog, learning about new mashups from the wonderful website programmableweb.com and subscribing to future interviews on the Net Squared site, you can import the following OPML file into your feed reader. You can get a live preview of those feeds in the box below, click around, the left side takes you up one level.

PodbopNetSquared