Yahoo Pipes
As you know, I'm a pipe addict. Let me explain some of the value of yahoo pipes, or mashups in general. First, you can create a useful mashup very quickly. You could consider them 'throw away.' This has value in and of itself. A pipe can be transient but powerful during its heyday- take those focusing on current news, like the 2007 wildfires in California. This type of pipe soon becomes historical and will have less value. But they are so easy to build you just have to do it. It is important to get some news out to people.
I came up with another use for pipes which I think is unique. The standard tools allow for you to use a translation module. It of course is horrible and can't handle anything but single words and very common terms. I turned that weakness into strength by creating a pipe that only translates a term at time from the NY Times and translates it into Spanish. The output RSS document is created entirely by my pipe. The title property is changed to show the English and Spanish versions of the same term, creating a simple tool to assist in learning Spanish vocabularly.
These are 2 of my pipes that are being run regularly by denizens of the web and illustrate the points discussed above.
Wildfires in California
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=RIuSHE6C3BGakzE3JphxuA
Learn Spanish with pipes
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=MpsxsU_G3BGPdPIfmijV_Q
