Yahoo Pipes - a bit complex but worth a try.

This week the focus is on Yahoo Pipes, Mozilla's Popcorn Maker (video editing app) and MeeMoo (used to hack web applications) and it's true, they're all just a bit more complex than your average tech tool. But as with any tool on the web, exploration and practice goes a long way.  I'll be honest, until now, all of these tools were new to me and if you're like me, the first challenge is finding an instructional video or website that does a good job of describing what the technology or tool is, it's purpose and how to use it.

Fortunately, my search has yielded some pretty good sites that explain these tools but today we'll spotlight Yahoo Pipes. I really wish I had more time to fully explore the concept of creating filters on the web as Pipes does. It reminds me of the old MS Query for MS Access where the user would use commands to filter items in a database.  Pipes treats websites, particularly those with RSS feeds, like they are databases of information and allows the user, through a graphic interface, to filter and sort (curate or mashup) content.

Four engineers from Yahoo! (Pasha Sadri, Ed Ho, Jonathan Trevor and Daniel Raffel) back in 2006, built Yahoo Pipes. During a workshop presentation titled "Pipes: A Tool For Remixing the Web", Pasha himself explains the genesis of Yahoo Pipes! He further describes how it all fits together as a viable online resource tool. Very interesting though complex. I figure it's worth a try.