enrguerrero’s photo of a Lincoln/Obama paste up mashup on the corner of Larkin and Myrtle streets in San Francisco.

The Phonepedia concept is simple: take Wikipedia’s rich content and add voice recognition. It’s as easy as calling a number and asking your question, the answer will be returned via SMS and email. Go ahead and try it for yourself.

The voice recognition is powered by Jott, and thanks are due to Heidi for writing so glowingly about it (Cluetrain moment: I’d heard about Jott before, but hadn’t been stirred to look at it until I saw Heidi’s post speaking in the voice of a real person). And the thing about Jott that got me interested was the remixability of the service. They call it Jott-Links, and it allows any user to connect external applications to the service.

Jott handles all the interaction with the user. The email responses look like these, though the URL is truncated from the SMS message. Wikipedia doesn’t offer an API, and the content requires a lot of massaging to get consistently useful text for applications like this, so I built those pieces, as well as the glue to connect it to Jott.

It’s not perfect, and I’m certain there are a number of things it gets wrong, but it’s worth a try. I think it also highlights the value of having free information and remixable systems. I’m looking for ways to connect it to a library catalog, but I’m at a loss at the moment to figure out what kind of spoken questions of our catalogs can be usefully answered in a 140 character response.

Of course this also raises the question about which technically aware people might have questions for Wikipedia and have a Jott-registered phone but don’t have web access handy. But I’m a librarian, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I wasn’t looking for new ways to access and use information.

Finally, I hope nobody is so confused as to think this is in any way officially affiliated with or sanctioned by the Wikimedia Foundation or Jott.com. It’s not.

Bush speech mashups rock. From Google Video:

So, you wanna learn how to beatbox? GWB is back with another amazing performance. Surprisingly he is actually very good.

Previously: State of the Union? Not good.

Also, note the tags on that video, and the way somebody snuck “????? ??? ? ???” past the filters.

awesome, beatbox, beatboxen bush, bush, bush beatbox, cheney, cool, funny, george bush, george w, george w bush, hilarious, lol, mashup, speech, stupid, w, weapons

TeamTigerAwesome’s Top Gun: A Requiem For Goose is more than funny, it’s the sort of thing a person should mine for insults and one-liners to use later. Of course, the recent Tom Cruise flap doesn’t dampen it any.

From the title cards:

On March 3, 1919 President Harding established the swingenest, scientologist, dew drop of a flight school in all 38.

Now, you boys may think that you are the high-hattenest group of flyboys ever to shoot down a Mrs. Grundy.

I’m gonna make you better.

So I ask of you?

Who among you wish to fornicate with immortality?

I dare say, me and my favorite Irishman, Goose, are the Real McCoy.

See that Sock Dollager over there?

The skirts call him Iced-Man.

She has misplaced feelings of love.

I despise it when she has misplaced feelings of love.

That Jester didn’t have a flapper’s chance against us Protestants!

I dare say you, you could call me Grover Cleveland…For I just orgazimized, on non-consecutive terms.

You’re still a splifficated, piker as I ever saw. But you can be my wing man anytime.

Applesauce. You can be mine.

Grover Cleveland, TeamTigerAwsome, Tom Cruise, Top Gun, funny, high-hattenest, mashup, misplaced feelings of love, movie, piker, remix, sock dollager, splifficated, swingenest

Michael Sauers pointed out Q-Unit, a mashup of Queen and 50 Cent. They’re sure to have Disney (the rights owner for Queen’s catalog) on their back soon. At least, it didn’t take Disney long to shut down The Kleptones, whose “A Night At The Hip-Hopera” has a spot on my iPod.

And that’s where the story comes around, are we at the point where we can say Queen’s music has taken on the status of a modern fairy tale? And are these artists — The Kleptones and Q-Unit — the new Disneys, remaking old tales for new times?

disney, queen, mashup, copyfight, copyright, copyright law, q-unit, music, rock, rap, hip hop, remix, remake