Yahoo Pipes: Hottest Thing Since Sliced Bread (Hold the Peanut Butter)
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | February 8, 2007 | Share This
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So far it’s been called a “milestone in the history of the Internet”, “one of the coolest web apps we’ve released in a long time”, and “the future of RSS”. Upon release, it became so popular that within 12 hours, it overloaded the server. It is Yahoo Pipes, a new beta app that lets non-coders create RSS feed mashups. Sounds rather unrevolutionary at first, but once you soak in the details…
“Using the Pipes editor, you can fetch any data source via its RSS, Atom or other XML feed, extract the data you want, combine it with data from another source, apply various built in filters, and apply simple programming tools…It can extract dates and locations and what it considers to be “text entities.” You can solicit user input and build URL lines to submit to sites. The drag and drop editor lets you view and construct your pipeline, inspecting the data at each step in the process. And of course, you can view and copy any existing pipes, just like you could with shell scripts and later, web pages.”
…it becomes a lot cooler. Ian Kennedy aptly calls it “a giant erector set for the web.” Here’re some initial suggestions for what you can create out of Yahoo Pipes:
- A traffic-alert specific to your morning routes
- An ebay vs. craigslist price-watcher
- A weather forecast via Flickr photos
- A buzz tracker across multiple feeds
- A universal calendar
As many have pointed out, these ideas are nothing new. But Pipes is the first tool to create a simple, visual platform that lets anyone with a basic understanding of RSS create powerful new ways to gather and sort information. Kudos to Yahoo.
Discussion:
- Yahoo Pipes: Letting Non-Programmers Make Mashups & More (Search Engine Land)
- Yahoo! Pipes: Unlocking the Data Web (Jeremy Zawodny)
- Review: Yahoo Pipes (Matt Cutts)
- Yahoo! Pipes Remixes the Syndicated Web (Niall Kennedy)
Topics: Yahoo! |