February 14, 2007 at 03:545 interesting ways to use Yahoo! Pipes
- Transfer
The story of how you can use Yahoo! Pipes, the new rss aggregator from Yahoo!
1. Playlist in pictures
What is it and how does it work? The user enters their username with Last.fm , and the pipe returns the last 10 tracks listened to and replaces them with five images from Flickr , which are most likely related to the music from the playlist.
How useful is this?This is pretty cool. All you need is to use Last.fm as usual, and the pipe itself will display images related to your music. It would be better if this could be done with videos or album covers, but I don’t think that this is real at the moment (there is no way to analyze the contents of the feeds and divide it into two different pipes). If anyone knows how to do this, let him know.
Problems? See the link on the left side of the workspace, which leads nowhere? This is a bug, really completely harmless. I decided to use Last.fm’s real username by default because there are always fresh tracks in his feed. I hope he will not mind.
Link: pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ONlam5K62xGFsczFr8cPhQ
RSS:pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ONlam5K62xGFsczFr8cPhQ/run?_render=rss
2. More on the same topic
What is it and how does it work? This is not my idea and not my pipe, but it is the hardest thing that I could do, so I decided to talk about it. The author uses Technocrati search to find articles similar in topic to articles from his blog, and adds links to them using Ajax. Here you can look at the blog, and here read about how this is done.
How useful is this?Wordpress plugins have similar functionality, but the ingenious thing about this approach is that you can easily change the source of articles: they don’t have to be Technocrati, they can be anything. In other words, this is a really useful blogging plugin.
Link: pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/AHaR2Y242xGwcHpiZFUMqA
3. News in English
What is it and how does it work? Reddit, Netscape, and Digg aren't enough for you? Want to read what Europeans are interested in, but don’t know the language? No problem, with the help of a pipe I took the 10 most popular entries from the Spanish site Meneame.net , and from the German and French versions of Wikio , and created one feed with their translation into English.
How useful is this?Quite a bit, I took a simple example, but the ability to combine feeds in different languages and turn them into one feed in a language of your choice can be very useful for many.
Link: pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/2E8akQO62xGrchCW0kqv4w
RSS: pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/2E8akQO62xGrchCW0kqv4w/run?_render=rss
4. Travel lover
What does this and how does it work? Are you planning a trip? This can take a lot of time and many sources have to be dug up. Or maybe you can just create one pipe, which in a second will bring you answers to all your questions? Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Travel Lover. It may seem that this is the most difficult of all the pipes presented here, but making it is extremely simple. It combines images with Flickr, texts fromYahoo Answers and news from Yahoo News that relate to the place you want to go. (Of course, you can add as many sources as you like, I chose these three simplicity for the sake of). The result is a useful feed with a lot of information about the place of interest.
How useful is this? Very helpful. By slightly adjusting this feed, you can get a full replacement for what could become a full service.
Link: pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ZGq6pJm62xGxnbZme_gC8A
RSS: pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ZGq6pJm62xGxnbZme_gC8A/run?_render=rss
5. Fligg, Fleddit and Fletscape
What does this and how does it work? Read Digg via Flickr. On the idea prompted me thisa pipe that allows you to read New York Times articles, replacing each article with multiple Flickr images. I just replaced NYT with Digg. However, I wanted to do something original, so I decided to combine articles with pictures.
How useful is this? Not really. Digg news is analyzed through a special module, and the result of this analysis is used to get one image from Flickr. More often than not, the result has nothing to do with the article, but occasionally it works. No matter what, this is a fun way to read news with Digg.
Problems?Yes. I could not sort the feed so that the images went for articles. This would be possible if Pipes had a counter that allowed adding a new field to each feed with a number that would be used for sorting. I did not find a way to add such a counter, but if anyone knows, let me know. This feed is not so useful at the moment, but I decided to write about it because it shows what difficulties you may encounter when you want to do something more complicated.
References: (Digg, Flickr images only)
pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/OhruDKC62xGVgXkcjwtvUw
RSS: (Digg, only images from Flickr)
pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/OhruDKC62xGVgXkcjwtvUw/run?_render=rss
Link: (Reddit, only images from Flickr)
pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/DiJJptm62xGe58jaHxeTaQ
RSS: (Reddit, only images from Flickr)
pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/DiJJptm62xGe58jaHxeTaQ/run?_render=rss
Link: (Netscape, only images from
Foor.com.pipes ) pipes / PP2brtm62xG1dhzxE2_cUw
RSS (the Netscape, only images from Flickr)
pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/PP2brtm62xG1dhzxE2_cUw/run?_render=rss
Link: (image from Flickr and news from Digg)
pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/qux2krm52xGJarAmZoQMOQ
RSS: (Flickr images and Digg news)
pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/qux2krm52xGJarAmZoQMOQ/run?_render=rss
1. Playlist in pictures
What is it and how does it work? The user enters their username with Last.fm , and the pipe returns the last 10 tracks listened to and replaces them with five images from Flickr , which are most likely related to the music from the playlist.
How useful is this?This is pretty cool. All you need is to use Last.fm as usual, and the pipe itself will display images related to your music. It would be better if this could be done with videos or album covers, but I don’t think that this is real at the moment (there is no way to analyze the contents of the feeds and divide it into two different pipes). If anyone knows how to do this, let him know.
Problems? See the link on the left side of the workspace, which leads nowhere? This is a bug, really completely harmless. I decided to use Last.fm’s real username by default because there are always fresh tracks in his feed. I hope he will not mind.
Link: pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ONlam5K62xGFsczFr8cPhQ
RSS:pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ONlam5K62xGFsczFr8cPhQ/run?_render=rss
2. More on the same topic
What is it and how does it work? This is not my idea and not my pipe, but it is the hardest thing that I could do, so I decided to talk about it. The author uses Technocrati search to find articles similar in topic to articles from his blog, and adds links to them using Ajax. Here you can look at the blog, and here read about how this is done.
How useful is this?Wordpress plugins have similar functionality, but the ingenious thing about this approach is that you can easily change the source of articles: they don’t have to be Technocrati, they can be anything. In other words, this is a really useful blogging plugin.
Link: pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/AHaR2Y242xGwcHpiZFUMqA
3. News in English
What is it and how does it work? Reddit, Netscape, and Digg aren't enough for you? Want to read what Europeans are interested in, but don’t know the language? No problem, with the help of a pipe I took the 10 most popular entries from the Spanish site Meneame.net , and from the German and French versions of Wikio , and created one feed with their translation into English.
How useful is this?Quite a bit, I took a simple example, but the ability to combine feeds in different languages and turn them into one feed in a language of your choice can be very useful for many.
Link: pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/2E8akQO62xGrchCW0kqv4w
RSS: pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/2E8akQO62xGrchCW0kqv4w/run?_render=rss
4. Travel lover
What does this and how does it work? Are you planning a trip? This can take a lot of time and many sources have to be dug up. Or maybe you can just create one pipe, which in a second will bring you answers to all your questions? Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Travel Lover. It may seem that this is the most difficult of all the pipes presented here, but making it is extremely simple. It combines images with Flickr, texts fromYahoo Answers and news from Yahoo News that relate to the place you want to go. (Of course, you can add as many sources as you like, I chose these three simplicity for the sake of). The result is a useful feed with a lot of information about the place of interest.
How useful is this? Very helpful. By slightly adjusting this feed, you can get a full replacement for what could become a full service.
Link: pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ZGq6pJm62xGxnbZme_gC8A
RSS: pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ZGq6pJm62xGxnbZme_gC8A/run?_render=rss
5. Fligg, Fleddit and Fletscape
What does this and how does it work? Read Digg via Flickr. On the idea prompted me thisa pipe that allows you to read New York Times articles, replacing each article with multiple Flickr images. I just replaced NYT with Digg. However, I wanted to do something original, so I decided to combine articles with pictures.
How useful is this? Not really. Digg news is analyzed through a special module, and the result of this analysis is used to get one image from Flickr. More often than not, the result has nothing to do with the article, but occasionally it works. No matter what, this is a fun way to read news with Digg.
Problems?Yes. I could not sort the feed so that the images went for articles. This would be possible if Pipes had a counter that allowed adding a new field to each feed with a number that would be used for sorting. I did not find a way to add such a counter, but if anyone knows, let me know. This feed is not so useful at the moment, but I decided to write about it because it shows what difficulties you may encounter when you want to do something more complicated.
References: (Digg, Flickr images only)
pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/OhruDKC62xGVgXkcjwtvUw
RSS: (Digg, only images from Flickr)
pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/OhruDKC62xGVgXkcjwtvUw/run?_render=rss
Link: (Reddit, only images from Flickr)
pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/DiJJptm62xGe58jaHxeTaQ
RSS: (Reddit, only images from Flickr)
pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/DiJJptm62xGe58jaHxeTaQ/run?_render=rss
Link: (Netscape, only images from
Foor.com.pipes ) pipes / PP2brtm62xG1dhzxE2_cUw
RSS (the Netscape, only images from Flickr)
pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/PP2brtm62xG1dhzxE2_cUw/run?_render=rss
Link: (image from Flickr and news from Digg)
pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/qux2krm52xGJarAmZoQMOQ
RSS: (Flickr images and Digg news)
pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/qux2krm52xGJarAmZoQMOQ/run?_render=rss