Under Construction - Yahoo Pipes

This week I’ve been both astounded that this sort of technology has such a simple user interface and frustrated that, as simple as it looks, I can’t seem to make it work. I think, of all the tools we’ve looked at this semester, Yahoo Pipes is the one I’d most like to master. The idea that you can pull together data and filter information from all over the Internet into one feed is an invaluable resource. It’s designed to help both ordinary web users and big businesses alike get the most out of global information retrieval.

The program allows users to add RSS feeds together and filter content, so you receive only what’s relevant to you. Instead of going to ten different websites, you’re only going to one. Plus, instead of looking through a thousand articles you’re not interested in, you can set parameters that mean only articles with your keywords end up in your feed. 

Think of the possibilities. If you’re a crazy-cat-lady, you could be pulling thousands of images and videos from all over the web into the one place. On the other hand big businesses have the ability to monitor and keep up with information on different trends; technology, Social financial - all the information comes to you.

I am not a crazy cat lady; I’m more of a dog person myself. But I do spend hours each week trawling through different websites to keep up-to-date on the latest job postings. So I attempted to build my own job search pipe. Yahoo Pipes seems like the perfect way to bring the information to me. It could save me hours of research time. Imagine my excitement.  

But this story does not have a happy ending. Actually it doesn’t yet have an ending since I refuse to give up. What Yahoo Pipes has highlighted for me so far is that there are still a lot of gaps in the learning literature surrounding a lot of programs like this. Like a lot of digital media, a certain amount of web literacy is needed to intuitively interact with it. In my personal experience using the program, the most frustrating thing about it was that I couldn’t locate a truly comprehensive learning guide. I couldn’t seem to find anyone who could explain the program in plain English. Even trying to emulate an existing job search pipe feels like looking into space – it looks great, but you have no idea what’s going out there. 

Yahoo Pipes Job Search

The user face may look simple – a couple of bubbles joined by lines, but there is little to no description of what each module is and how to use it. As a beginner, how do I know what the difference between ‘Fetch Feed’ and ‘Feed Auto-Discovery’ is? And trust me – this is just the start of the questions that you will be asking. Yahoo does provide a short tutorial before you get started, and there is a short run down of the modules - but for me, this just wasn’t in depth enough.

A lot of user reviews suggest that you just need to dive in and eventually you’ll get the hang of it. But even when I grasped a rough idea of what each function is for I still had problems. I encountered issues as simple as being unable to locate the link for websites RSS feeds. And I encountered issues that not even the forum experts seem to have puzzled out. In fact, when I dove into the forums I found that even when a pipe has been successfully functioning, it can start to break down and shoot-up error messages further down the line. This isn’t a criticism of Yahoo Pipes; all media needs a certain level of maintenance. But what do you do when you don’t have the expert knowledge to figure out what’s gone wrong?. 

All I can say is that I envy, I'm in awe, and I aspire to be one of those with the know-how to competently use this tool.