US Only: Crime-mapping mashup SpotCrime pulls data from city police records and news sources and plots it in an easy-to-snoop fashion. Choose a city, a time frame, and the types of offences you want to see, and you can mouse over the pinned icons to see thumbnail descriptions, or click an item for a full read. The site claims that humans are working in the background to make sense of the data, and that incidents show up anywhere from 3-24 hours after they're reported. A good tool for checking out a potential neighbourhood for moving or exploring, or just keeping up on what's going down across town.

TimeTube is one of those rare YouTube mashups that make the video-sharing site both fun and functional. Type in a search term, and TimeTube lines up the results on an easily-navigated timeline, letting you trip down memory lane or learn more about a topic as it progresses through the social media jungle. There are alternate views—a list, a flipbook, and geo-located—but the timeline view is what really sells this mashup. Got another tool that stramlines and organises YouTube searches? Let's hear about it in the comments.

Keep a watchful eye on the results of tonight's primary results with a Google Map mashup directly from the folks at Google. The map displays the results of already held primaries and will help you stay up-to-date with tonight's... Read More »

US-centric: Google Maps mashup WhatsOpen pinpoints local businesses just like any other local search, then goes one step further by indicating which stores are currently open and which aren't. It's a simple concept, but if you're actually using local search to find somewhere to grab a cup of coffee or get something to eat, it's a really useful idea. Currently the search needs a little refining, and the public beta is California only (sign up for the full beta for US, EU, and China support), but this is one feature I'd kill to see integrated into Google Maps proper.

BitTorrent search sites like The Pirate Bay can help you find recently-released tunes, flicks and video games, but deciding which are worth the hefty downloads usually involves digging in more mainstream channels. Enter PickyPirate, a mashup website that matches scores from review compilation sites Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes to download links from torrent search sites The Pirate Bay and Mininova. For casual torrent browsers like myself, the site could be a nice reminder of what's floating around and save a few clicks on the way to a download.