If mashups sound like the kind of Web 2.0 application best used for checking traffic jams on Google Maps, think again: Mashups within the enterprise environment are becoming common for functions such as integrating social-networking knowledge into CRM tools. And as they get easier to manufacture, they’ll continue to grow in popularity and usefulness.

Kapow Technologies, which produces mashup environments for businesses, has taken some steps forward in bringing mature mashups into the corporation. that week it released several mashup products that aim to bring business intelligence to desktops with little human intervention. One new product is Kapow OnDemand.

“It can be used in any instance where what you’re trying to do is eliminate the manual process of having society sitting there in front of a monitor finding info they need externally, and next copying and pasting it to get it into the environment they need,” said Ed Julson, director of product marketing for Kapow.

Robot Help

Kapow’s mashups work with the help of “robots,” automated tools that gather and integrate selected Web input into a spreadsheet. “If you were a pricing analyst going to a number of different Web sites to gather info on the competition, you’d go to these sites, search for and find what you want, copy that piece of info, and paste it into spreadsheet,” Julson said.

With OnDemand, a robot does that instead. “Instead of a copy-and-paste operate, you actually add structure to that data” by embedding the notes model into the robot, he explained. “When you bring that info back to the spreadsheet, it has structure; you can put it into a database, and applications understand it. Now you have a way to prepare connections to anything on the Web.”

All an organization’s subscribers have access to that data to produce sharing easier. “There’s…

Original post by Top Tech News