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.

US-centric: The Wi-Fi Hotspot Finder webapp displays free wireless internet hotspots in your area on a Google Maps mashup. To use it, just give it your address, city, or postcode and it'll display many of the nearby hotspots. This... Read More »

Splice together YouTube clips without downloading a single one using Omnisio, a free video compilation website with all the standard share/embed/reply features of modern web apps. The editing interface is decidedly simple—move the sliders to the start and ending parts of the clip you want, then choose the next video and do the same. For presentations with online access and web projects, it's a pretty handy tool, but having the entirety of YouTube, Google Video and Blip.TV as your stock material might inspire more than a few would-be film splicers. Omnisio is free to use, and a sign-up lets you save and embed videos.

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US-centric: Google Maps mashup Mezzoman finds the perfect meet-up point for two addresses by establishing the midpoint and suggesting restaurants by cuisine nearby. Finding a good meet-up spot can be a bit difficult, and at one point or another... Read More »

Blogger Tony Hirst spent a few minutes mixing the RSS and KML feeds from Google's Calendar and Maps functions and, with the help of Yahoo Pipes, came up with a fantastic mashup: Mapped Google Calendar events. That means, for example, opening your customised map to see that you've got grocery shopping and a post office stop in one part of town, so you might want to seek out an ATM near there to avoid excess driving. The mashup requires a little Pipes work, and also a public GCal feed, but once you've got it working, you can then add your GCal items to "My Maps" or even embed them on your own start page. In short, people like our reader Mike might have a great solution for getting directions and coordinate timing for their schedules.

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Steer clear of speed traps during your holiday travel with web site Njection's Microsoft Live Maps mashup, Speed Trap. To search for traps, just look for any big red dot in your area. Speed traps are user-submitted, so at the moment the listings are somewhat sparse, but with a free registration users can easily begin adding to the database. We're not saying you should make a habit of speeding when you're not near a speed trap, but just in case—your insurance rates will thank you. For a more comprehensive but decidedly unfriendly alternative, check out the previously mentioned Bear Trap Guide. Thanks rainmanjam!

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.

Blogger and Lifehacker reader Caroline Middlebrook has put together a comprehensive guide to using, being productive with and—just as important—not abusing the micro-blogging service Twitter. Many of her tips and advice should be familiar to regular Twitter users (and Lifehacker readers), but her compilations of software tools, webapps, mashups and productivity tools are great all-in-one lists to check out. While you're trying out new Twitter tools, don't forget to check out Lifehacker's own Twitter feed of top posts. Thanks, Caroline!

Watch edits to the English Wikipedia happen almost real-time on a map with Wikipediavision, a neat dynamically-updating Google Maps mashup. As Wikipedia users make anonymous edits, Wikipediavision maps their location based on IP address and links the article and type of edit. But you better click fast, because edits stream by quickly, and the map updates while you watch. Want to get yourself on the map? Here's how to contribute to the Wikipedia.