Uldis Bojars writes:
Pipeline architecture itself is not unique to Pipes. Applying it to the Semantic Web (or to RSS) is not unique either – many have been collecting / integrating information from a number of sources and asking questions like “show me the publications by people who know [user input here, e.g. “Stefan Decker”] and filter the answers according to some criteria” and passing the results to other applications in JSON or RDF/XML. That makes a simple pipeline, even if it is built manually and without a nice UI.
What is unique, though, is how easy it is to create new mashups with Yahoo! Pipes and the potential they provide to make Semantic Web used by a large group of people.
Leaving aside fixing Pipes to work with RDF rather than syndication feeds, another problem with Yahoo Pipes it is seems to have missed its target: the only folks playing around with the site are people capable of creating their own mashups. I’ve seen no interest in Pipes outside of the geeks.
