Getting a Yahoo Pipes Badge

Continuing along the Yahoo Pipes topic, a question was raised as to how to publish a pipe on a website. Based on the documentation for the website I learned this can be accomplished with the help of a Pipes Badge. As stated in the documentation, "A Yahoo! Pipes badge allows you to have Pipes generated content on your blog, website, or social network".

There are three types of badges; a list badge, an image badge, and a map badge. The list badge is used for a simple list of items, description fields, and thumbnails. An image badge shows images present on a feed, displays images as a thumbnail, and description field if one is available. The third badge type is a map badge. If geocoding is available a dragable map is displayed with pin points.

To get a badge all that is required is to open a pipe by logging into yahoo.com and visiting pipes.yahoo.com. Next click the "Get as a badge" wizard seen on the pipe.

Next, select where the badge will be placed. If it's a basic web page select Embed.

Finally, you are presented with the javascript to use on the page which can be copied/pasted into your html file.

Here's how the pipe I created appears on a web page:

Once a pipe is created it's quite simple to integrate it into a web site. I thought this would be much more complicated than it was but after reviewing the documentation and trying it out myself I discovered it's super easy!

Creating a Simple Yahoo Pipe in Minutes

As a continuation from my last post on Yahoo Pipes I decided to try and create one to see just how simple it is. You have to have some basic knowledge on how to construct code to use it but I must say, it was truly very simple. The Pipe I created converts an RSS feed from German to English. My husband is German so I've been trying to learn as much of the language as I can given his parents do not speak English by reading news at tagesschau.de. It's hard to find the time with my husband to translate what I'm reading so I decided to try using a Pipe to translate the RSS feed for me. Here's how it was created:

Step 1: Add the components

All that is needed is to drag and drop the components from the list on the left. I added Fetch Feed and 2 Loops (each with a translate component). By default the Pipe Output component is automatically created when creating a pipe.

Step 2: Configure the components

In this step I placed the RSS URL into the Fetch Feed component and set the translation from German to English by selecting it from the component selection list.

Step 3: Connect the components

Now for the easiest part, connecting the components. All that you need to do is click on the bottom of one component and then click on the top of the next. It's that simple.

Here's what the finished product looks like:

This took me less than 5 minutes to create. A dubugger also exists and I found it ti also be quite helpful. It was amazingly simple. While the translation isn't perfect, it will at least help me understand what I'm looking at in German. I plan to play around with this more. It really is as easy as 1, 2, 3.

Yahoo Pipes

Between Google and Yahoo you can find all the apps you need for the most part. When it comes to making a mashup I didn't think Yahoo would have anything to offer. Last week I discovered Yahoo Pipes (beta released to the public in 2007). It is defined by Yahoo as "a hosted service that lets you remix feeds and create new data mashups in a visual programming environment. The name of the service pays tribute to Unix pipes, which let programmers do astonishingly clever things by making it easy to chain simple utilities together on the command line." An example of the site in action is craiglook.com which is a mashup where Pipes uses aggregate RSS feeds from Craigslist.org.

The tool is boasted to be very robust. Here's a 4 minute tutorial on "Learn How to Build a Pipe in Just a Few Minutes":

@ Yahoo! Video

This appears to look easy and all that is required is a Yahoo login. I haven't attempted to create anything with this tool yet but it is designed to minimize coding by using a GUI designer. Essentially, it's a way for noncoders to build mashups. There are many sample mashups that can be configured for your use. User's do not have to login when trying them out but a login is required to create them. It looks so easy that it is quite possible my father could build a mashup! Okay, that's stretching it but it sure does look easy.