What is Digg?32 Comments
- RT55J, on 10/12/2007, -5/+23The internet is a series of tubes, not pipes.
- RadiantBeing, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16Someone will come up with a "killer app" for this and everyone will go "Oh, that was so obvious."
- Mattie, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Ok, at the risk of being flamed for random my fanboy over-reaction, here's my dramatic email to a friend while discussing this. I'm not nearly as impressed today (like a Christmas gift that you're now used-to), but I'll share my initial enthusiasm so you can laugh at my starry eyes:
"Pipes turns the entire internet into one big computer. One which anyone can program and write widgets for. I feel this is revolutionary. It will be rickety at first, but I can't get it out of my mind that the web just completed a transformation overnight that is game-changing. (Surely something more brilliant will come along and ruin my predictions on this, but that would just make me happier.)
It's funny you mention friends list. Because I wrote a simple page last night that reads someone's LiveJournal friends (from a text feed) and transforms it into validating RSS. Nothing clever here. I wrote a pipe that took a username input and used that to snag the list of friends. And then I wrote a pipe that allowed you to get the union of the two friend lists for two (n) users. People can now take that pipe as a black box and do whatever they want with it. I did something similar for LiveJournal interests, too. It's just a matter of time before someone could build a tool that could provide an interest picture collage, show you delicious feeds based on your interests, news on interests, etc.
It's all slow and silly and obvious, but this is just an example. Now I can write cogs and wheels in the system that anyone on the planet can near-instantly drag around to transform their data. Yahoo doesn't have a 'list intersection' operation? Well, I'll just code one that takes two RSS feed URLs and returns that intersection. Oh, it also doesn't do X? Well, I'll make a page that does X and plug it in. (My own pages won't be as fast as if it were running natively at Yahoo, but we've all seen that progression before with the natural selection/relocation of important functions closer to the core.)
So we have a distributed computer with a graphical interface that not only allows cross-machine computation, but allows every web-savvy human on the planet to build black boxes for it. It takes the three greatest things about the web's evolution (cross-platform/content-generation/distributed) and creates a mind-blowing list of possible outcomes. It's almost like inventing a programming language for the internet. Oh, that anyone can create components for and have instantly shared with everyone else.
This is what we should have seen with boring-old web services. I imagine those could be supported before long-- I see no reason Yahoo can't eventually add SOAP/etc support and really just win. (The great part is that if someone comes up with competitor/similar 'pipe' services-- they will, probably, all interoperate at some level.)
The problem with all of that is that it's really hard to see how this will make anyone much money. But it doesn't change how wonderful this is.
I'm clearly a little smitten right now. I wasn't when I looked at first, but while using it last night something just clicked. Now I just want to sit around building custom widgets for people to build upon. Sure as hell beats working with [insert-boring-technology-here]. " - DarthFredd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9"And kids, whats the number one rule when using the intertubes as a relational database?"
**NO CARTESIAN JOINS** - kasted, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Am I the only person who doesn't know what the ***** Yahoo! Pipes is, and what the point of it is?
- computerdude33, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Suck it up like a man. It looks like Gnome, KDE, and almost every other frikin' GUI.
- DarthFredd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8"And thus did the Lord say, Fastfood, thou art an Apple Whore"
I like apple products just as much as the next guy, but if you insist on every user interface looking like a minimalist piece of trout, you are indeed whoring for apple. Now digg me down with the fire of an angry (although dedicated) elitist consumer! - goodnewsevery1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6What good are pipes??
Here is a quick pipe that allows you to search for a Digg user and display information about them.
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/qsRZko672xGF7CPQdLq02Q/ - Flummoxer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6"this is too difficult for the ordinary web user.. its never gonna take off and people can quote me on that!!!"
-liquidboy2006 (February 14, 2007)
Thanks, I'm going to use that in a paper I have to write. - eelco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Kasted, i think it is difficult to foresee what people can do with these pipes. But there is one very simple thing i really like about it, and that is that everyone can make his or her own planet. See my OSS Planets, for example: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/7uLMPk232xGR6s7QZVUMqA/
- Mattie, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I think the real impressive part of Pipes comes from people writing their own sites to expand its power. See my comments on the post:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yahoo_pipes_web_database.php#009776 - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+9Yawn. Yahoo pipes is the next Ubuntu on digg.
What's funny is I keep asking how it's useful and no one can give me a straight answer, which leads me to believe people are only using this because it's trendy, or because their friend said it was cool. - osbjmg, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Can your teacher take points off of your paper for his bad punctuation?
- natch, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3These Yahoo! pipes are brittle-ass *****, pure glass, and barely hanging together like a contraption from a Dr. Seuss book.
But, just watch, they could finally jump start the semantic web. - azmoviez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1For me this is going to be amazing. I have several fantasy baseball teams but it's nearly impossible (as of a few weeks ago) to get an RSS feed on just my players. Now I can take information from several different sources and have them feed my customized newsfeed based on just the players that I want. Very specific app and I doubt the average user will go through the trouble.
Granted I'll agree with the commenter that mentioned "How are they going to make money on this thing", but damn if it's not cool. - toasterweasel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Very cool. Thanks for the demo. I had no idea what this pipes thing even was before.
- liquidboy2006, on 10/12/2007, -6/+6this is too difficult for the ordinary web user.. its never gonna take off and people can quote me on that!!!
- arimajunichiro, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Interesting. I will give it a try.
- AdmiralAdama, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Mattie -- I feel that way too and I have no idea how it works. I can't get it out of my head. i gots to play with it.
- MastaBaba, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Am I the only one for whom Pipes doesn't work? Existing pipes never finish loading and new pipes don't accept connections.
- koonchu, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4I'm sorry,but I just don't get this *****.
- mep8, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3This is supposed to be simple for the non-techie "Mon and Pop" crowd? My ass. I'm a database admin and this pipe thing is pretty far from intuitive. So instead of typing a few words into a gooooooogle search box I'm supposed to structure a query? Ummm, yeah, that'll catch on.
- kidcodea, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1its HENTAI time at YAHOO!
- arunforce, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2Holy *****, the first reason I can think of to sign into Yahoo! after 3+ years, (excluding Yahoo! Answers).
- justintsmith, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2Breakthrough: Yahoo becomes largest porn server in internet history
- drjekelmrhyde, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3Damn Yahoo headline on Digg WTF
- mathena, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1The best digg comments on the yahoo pipe I've ever seen!
- arunforce, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1Wouldn't it be "Ted Stevens was WRONG all along..."?
- diggapleeeze, on 10/12/2007, -10/+1Yep, guess Ted Stevens was right all along...
- fastfood15, on 10/12/2007, -10/+1BOOO!!! on Yahoo! Pipes for using a UI that looks like XP. now i have to get used to the [X] on the right side again...
- nextlevel233, on 10/12/2007, -12/+1I still like food afterall
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