Yahoo Pipes – They’re Easy To Use

WHY WE NEED YAHOO PIPES:

In an increasingly information rich world where everything on the web (your blog entries, comments on your blog, photos on flickr/picasaweb,…) is available as a ‘feed’ / convertible to a ‘feed’, its good to know how to create and use them.

I’ve a couple of simple examples demonstrating how to use Yahoo Pipes, the tool to aggregate, manipulate and mash information on the web aka ‘feeds’.

1. A FOOD PIPE:

I subscribe to a few yummy blogs (see the list in the yahoo search box below). I want to make Avial, a South Indian dish. I remember a couple of these bloggers writing about it long back. I dont remember when. I dont want to search the whole internet, but only in these bloggers’ sites. What do I do?

a. I go to http://pipes.yahoo.com. Login with my Yahoo Id.

b. Click on ‘Create a pipe’

c. I insert the following controls from the left hand side:
i. User Input -> Text Input
ii. Sources -> Yahoo Search

d. I add the sites to which the search should be limited using the ’site restriction’ option in the Yahoo Search box. I join the controls as below.

e. I save and run the pipe to get this. The pipe’s ready now. Now, I can search for ‘Avial’ /’Jamun’ /any other recipe.

The pipe results are also available as a ‘feed’. Look out for ‘Get as RSS’ under ‘More Options’.

2. A TRANSLATED NEWS PIPE:

I want to read news about a select few Indian personalities in French Dailies. How do I do that? And an important note is that I dont read French really well. I prefer to read the articles in English.

a. I go to http://pipes.yahoo.com and login with my yahoo id.

b. I go to http://news.google.com. I select France in the Top Stories list.

c. I copy the link of the RSS feed. (Look out for RSS on the left hand side)

d. I insert the following controls and fill in details:

[Insert the RSS Feed url here]

[Insert 2 Loop Controls and drag translators into them. One set each for description and title respectively. Choose French to English in the boxes]

[Insert a filter to permit only the articles which match the keywords below]

e. Join them all, Save and publish. I get all the relevant translated articles here in a pipe.

You can see a list of pipes that I’ve created here.

There is lot of documentation and working examples on the Yahoo Pipes page. If you wish to know more on Pipes and are in Chennai, bother attending India’s first ever Pipescamp on December 23rd. Visit http://pipescamp.pbwiki.com.