Wednesday, September 12, 2007

HORSERACE

The Huffington Post's "Mash-Up" Debate, Except Without Any Mashing Up.

I'm no tech guy, but I wasn't sure I understood the point of tonight's Democratic "Mash-Up" debate. Basically, Yahoo and the Huffington Post were going to provide users with footage of the Democratic candidates that users could "mash up" in any way they liked.

(To those asking, "what the heck is a mash-up?", Wired explains,"Mashups typically involve the combination of two disparate elements — for example, metropolitan crime data and Google maps, or rapper Jay Z's The Black Album and the Beatles' The White Album — to make new creations such as chicagocrime.org or Danger Mouse's The Grey Album.")

Except it appears there's no mashing-up tonight:

To that end, Yahoo said as recently as Friday that it would upload the raw footage from the online debate to its own web-based video editing service Jumpcut, to make it easy for the footage to be spliced and diced as citizen editors saw fit. "Users will be able to create their own mashups and post the footage onto their websites afterwards — that's for the hardcore fans who want to engage with this video," spokesman Brian Nelson told Wired News.

But on Monday, Nelson called back to say the company had changed its mind. Instead the "mashup page" will only lets citizens pick and choose which candidates they want to hear from on particular issues, by pointing and clicking on a web interface.

So in the end, users can... watch 15-minute interviews with the Democratic presidential candidates conducted by PBS host Charlie Rose. Thrilling!

09/12 11:04 AMShare