Yahoo Pipes

ahab_2001 writes "Yahoo has introduced a new product called Pipes. It seems to be a GUI-based interface for building applications that aggregate RSS feeds and other services, creating Web-based apps from various sources, and publishing those apps. Sounds very cool. TechCrunch has a decent write-up, and Tim O'Reilly is all over it. The site was down for a few hours and is just back up. Has anybody tried this?" From the TechCrunch article: "Pipes is... akin to a shell scripting environment for the web rather than just a simple conduit between applications."

Priceless...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Our Pipes are clogged! We've called the plumbers!"

Though I thought we all knew that the Internet was a series of tubes...

damn right.

[User 956]

Though I thought we all knew that the Internet was a series of tubes...

Well, it's certainly not a big truck, that you can just dump something on.

Once again...

[ImaLamer]

The internet is a highway. You put the info the dump truck and you drive it along the highway. If a road is out, you take another section of the Interstate. If it's backed up, take a different section of road.

It's almost a super highway.

Re:

[thatnerdguy]

You mean like some sort of Information Superhighway?

I remember having a Popular Mechanics magazine from sometime in the 90s that had a cover article about this new-fangled Information Superhighway and how it was going to make out lives easier or something.

Re:

[maxwell demon]

That may turn out as a pipe dream ...

Re:

[shokk]

Sen Ted Stevens got a preview of the product last week, where he exclaimed
      - "It's a series of pipes!"

Re:

[pipingguy]

For the current level of internet pipe clogging you need piping designers and engineers, not plumbers.

Y'see, we have these things called intelligent pigs...

Would've been more hilarious...

[mikecardii]

If the service were called "tubes"

Re:

[I don't want to spen]

Or - more esoterically - uStation ...

Tubes?

[CastrTroy]

Is this anything like Tubes [adessonow.com]?

Re:

[Rude Turnip]

Very similar...if you go to pipes.yahoo.com, you get "Our pipes are clogged. We've called the plumbers!"

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, Tubes http://www.tubesnow.com/ [tubesnow.com] is different: replicates/controls content via your own defined social nets

What's googles version going to be called??

[yecrom2]

BONG. Bigger than a pipe. And it holds more too. Just don't drink the water.

Re:

[zappepcs]

I'm hoping that soon Google will name some new service "G-Whiz"

Re:

[gEvil (beta)]

I believe that's our upcoming Google Piss (beta) product.

Re:

[jb.hl.com]

There was, for a short spell, a British ISP called G-Wizz.

So if that ever happens...cue more GoogleMail vs GMail fun :)

Re:

[bibendum59]

But how will it compare with the Wii?

Re:

[Blue Stone]

>I'm hoping that soon Google will name some new service "G-Whiz"

I think it's their new IP distribution service.

Senator Stevens (NT)

[Groo Wanderer]

(NT)

Re:

[stratjakt]

Google is working on a big truck you can just dump stuff on.

Sorry, I thought that quote was funnier than the "series of tubes" ones - or well, both in context.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[mscdex]

They could call it GooTube... er wait..

Looks like yahoo

[PB_TPU_40]

Needs a to run a lottery, so some lottery balls can clean out those stacked poker chips clogging the pipes.

Re:

[wolfemi1]

Or let some racehorses loose, so they can just gallop on through

Broken Pipe

[Anonymous Coward]

Cannot write to STDOUT. Errno = 32: Broken pipe

YubNub?

[johnseq]

I spent some time looking at it, but I couldn't figure what the advantage was over Yubnub ? ( except maybe the GUI+ the name brand/network effects )

Re:

[gEvil (beta)]

The biggest one I could see is that it's not named after some damned Ewok song.

Re:YubNub?

[maxume]

It doesn't really even resemble yubnub. The point of pipes is that you can pull in say 10 different rss feeds and push out a new feed containing the entries from those feeds that match a search or whatever. It isn't really anything that couldn't be done already, but it does(theoretically at this point...) offer an easy to use web based interface for putting it together, so it significantly lowers the bar.

Re:

[kirun]

How does it compare to Planet [planetplanet.org]?

Re:

[maxume]

I don't really have much experience with either, but I would say the biggest differences are that it runs on someone else's server(Yahoo!), and that it is targeted more at mucking with feeds and consuming them elsewhere than it is at displaying them.

Re:

[Kris_J]

Sounds like blastfeed [blastfeed.com].

Finally

[MrYotsuya]

Finally, an internet service even a member of Congress can understand.

The site was Dugg last night

[popo]

How does something make it to the front of Slashdot when it the server was down *before* the story was posted here. The site went down after it was posted to Digg "upcoming" last night.

Apparently /. editors never clicked the link to see if it actually worked.

Editors? Editors? A Perl script could do your job better,

Re:

[Cheapy]

Because it'll be back up eventually today.

Re:The site was Dugg last night

[DigitalReverend]

Editors? Editors? I didn't know /. had editors, I thought it WAS a Perl script doing the job!

Re:

[solevita]

I think you're being a little unkind. Script is such a strong word...

Re:

[lachlan76]

A perl script would find the dupes and be able to check the link with WWW::Mechanize. The job must have been outsourced.

To a country that doesn't have access to the internet.

Re:

[tygerstripes]

Don't be silly. With a little effort, anyone can understand what's going on in a Perl script...

Re:

[evil_Tak]

Editors! Editors! Editors!

Re:

[metlin]

Well, you forget the fact that a lot of folks come here for the news.

While the site maybe down, I would not have known about it had Slashdot not posted the story.

Sure, the link is down now, but that does not mean that you can't check it out later. When the site is back up, a lot of folks will have a look at it.

Pwah!

[msimm]

If you're going to do it do it right. Python all the way!

I'm working on a similar service

[stratjakt]

Except mine is called "A big truck you can just dump stuff on"

Pies, no problem

[rimugu]

I will just call Super Mario Bros.

Well, I guess that proved ME wrong...

[NerveGas]

... about a week ago, one of my friends called me, and said "I have a tech question for you. What are pipes?"

I sat there for a few seconds, trying to figure out what in the world they were talking about, and finally answered "Round hollow things, like tubes."

Re:

[SpectreHiro]

I take it you're not a Unix user.

| is a pipe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_bar [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[NerveGas]

I am, but the person in question is doing well to be able to read email. I knew that they weren't talking about |-pipes, nor were they talking about t3 pipes, or anything else that I could come up with.

It turned out that they had some trouble accessing a web site, and someone else said "They're having trouble with their pipes."

Re:

[lachlan76]

And so are named pipes, and file descriptors generated by the pipe(2), and a million other things. Or someone could simply be talking about "pipes" in reference to network links.

Re:

[ComaVN]

|
Ceci n'est pas une pipe

Similar to QEDWiki

[uss_valiant]

The concept sounds very similar to QEDWiki demo video [zend.com] (demo video requires Flash).
QEDWiki [ibm.com] is an IBM product based on the Zend Framework. You can create mash-ups and other things much like by drag and drop of components, all in your browser.

Slashdotted!

[dmuth]

When I went to http://pipes.yahoo.com/ [yahoo.com], I saw this message:

Our Pipes are clogged! We've called the plumbers!

Well, at least the folks at Yahoo have a sense of humor. :-)

JDA (Javascript Device Architecture)

[higgins]

I haven't been able to try pipes yet, because the site is down. But I have a colleague who built something that sounds quite similar. It's called the Javascript Device Architecture [maya.com]. At the link, you can find demos and downloadable code. So, if you can't get to pipes, you could always try JDA out ;-)

slashdotted?

[valeurnutritive]

Site is showing: Our Pipes are clogged! We've called the plumbers!
One would assume that atleast Yahoo won't get Slashdotted...

Re:

[carlivar]

Yahoo's primary stuff should not get slashdotted, but the little niche apps like this I'm sure are more vulnerable, especially if their popularity is underestimated.

Who's more foolish...

[google]

... the blog or the service that aggregates it?

Tinfoil hat ON!

[hal2814]

So Yahoo has this great new service and has talked O'Reilly into covering it. Unfortunately, the Yahoo site promoting that technology was down before Slashdotters even got a chance to check it out. Supposedly, this is because the site was already Dug, but you and I know that Digg is really a front for the Federal government to collect all the weirdos in one online community. I think Yahoo doesn't really have a pipe system is place at all and they're just trying to build hype about it by paying off O'Reilly to write a favorable but not over-the-top review of the non-existant program. I think Pipes only exists as a screenshot right now. It's probably just another attempt to get Google to spend money on a project Yahoo has no real interest in. That way Google will never notice President Bush wiretapping Google monitoring China.

Fix Yahoo TV

[imaginaryelf]

Maybe someone can use this new technology to fix Yahoo TV [yahoo.com] so that it can be useful once again.

Re:

[maxume]

Route around the damage:

http://www.meevee.com/myguide.aspx [meevee.com]

MOAR pipes

[suddenlyawake]

I hope yahoo's Pipes are a bit better than Portland's [nytimes.com]

Tell Me.....

[IHC Navistar]

So when does the evil Bowser and the Koopa Troopers start regulating the wole thing?

I'm assuming the whole project was written by two little Italian plumber brothers, and tha they forsaw the threats posed by Bowser.

still down

[krayyy]

This thing has been on and off for me all day. If Google launched a product of this magnitude only to experience this type of outage on the first day everyone would be chiding them up and down. I demand reprimand!

Re:

[mmkkbb]

I believe Google Analytics did just that.

netvibes anyone

[sideswipe76]

Doesn't anyone else think this is way similar to netvibes [netvibes.com]

Re:

[RoadWarriorX]

Since this is the first time that I seen both services, I think the answer is no. From what I can tell, netvibes is more similar to Google personal pages than Yahoo Pipes.

I tried using Pipes tonight and I think that this may be the best thing Yahoo has really done in a long time. Forget the fact that they had down time because it was "whatever"-dotted. I kinda expected it. But when I got to see it and try it, I think it was the relatively simple and straight-forward to use.

It just makes me what to

AWESOME

[Ffakr]

This was soo cool when I was writing 3d screen savers with it last year. Way to go Apple!! I love Quartz Composer.

Oh wait, Nevermind.

http://developer.apple.com/graphicsimaging/quartz/ quartzcomposer.html [apple.com]

Great

[MarkusQ]

Great. Just what we need--yet another way to shuffle content around.

Am I the only one that things the real bottle neck is finding the time to read and think about all this information--and that yet another layer of goo, no matter how scriptastic, isn't really going to address the fundamental problem of information overload?

--MarkusQ

Re:

[inline_four]

I totally agree. This concept seems really neat, but all we're gonna get is a bunch of clip shows from people who think they're being creative. And then we're gonna get clip shows of clip shows. And clip shows of clip shows of clip shows. And then... the Hasselhofian recursion [monochrom.at]!

Re:

[Z0mb1eman]

Ow... don't post that link without warning... it's just as bad as goatse!

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

Am I the only one that things the real bottle neck is finding the time to read and think about all this information--and that yet another layer of goo, no matter how scriptastic, isn't really going to address the fundamental problem of information overload?

Yahoo Pipes probably isn't designed to solve that problem, though it's going to have to be technology (AI's most likely) that do. Maybe Pipes gets us an inch closer. Maybe it's stupid and useless - in that case it will go away. But something about org

Infinite loops

[Chris Shannon]

I can pipe it further, as an RSS feed in its own right

You have be careful whenever your output can be used as another's input, that you don't wind up with an infinite loop.
That would explain why yahoo's pipes are clogged.

while they're clogged...

[PW2]

here's another one to try: kitchi [kitchi-rss.com] -- it's mostly build to drive some LED signs but web objects are being added as time allows

Re:

[rapid_snail]

Probably using the Canvas tag - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canvas_(HTML_element) [wikipedia.org]

New pipe: slashdot run through flickr

[websensei]

I created this simple pipe in just a couple minutes, now that the site is up again.
Check out

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/LM5nwfu32xGj_1LrZoQMO Q/ [yahoo.com] ... it's not as powerful as rssbus but w/ the friendly(/ier) GUI and visibility from yahoo, this really is pretty cool.

If it's anything like YUI

[Guanine]

If this is anything like the phenomenal YUI javascript library [yahoo.com], then I would be very confident in its usefulness. The documentation for the YUI is just so unbelievably easy to use, it makes developing using those tools very pleasant. I would imagine the experience with Pipes would be the same.

Good Name For Script Correction.....

[IHC Navistar]

They should come out with an add-on program that corrects errors called Yahoo! Pipe-Cleaners.