Live data from Hacker News

Yahoo Pipes End-Of-life Announcement

pipes.yqlblog.net

161–170 of 184 posts

Re: Yahoo Pipes End-Of-life Announcement

#161
post #6

pipes creator here: sad to see pipes shutdown. i am surprised it lasted this long -- it was abandoned years ago. on the positive side, it is nice to see it mentioned in the same sentence as y! maps which used to be a big deal back in the day.

Pipes has long been a sort of monument to the faith of a bygone age -- the first flush of Web 2.0 optimism, when standard formats and open APIs were going to let us mix and match and mash up services of all kinds at will. That faith is dead now, of course, scoured from the earth by walled gardens and VC money. But like Catholics in Elizabethan England, some of us quietly tend our secret shrines and pray for its retur…

Love your analogy, sure made me laugh (visualising a geeky dev like myself tending a weathered gnarly monument in a secluded English glade... in real life, that is, not in an RPG).

However, why such pessimism? I hardly think that standard formats and open APIs are dead. Sure, there are some nasty blights upon cyberspace in this regard (ahem, Facebook, Apple), but other players are still keeping the dream alive to some extent (e.g. Google, Yahoo).

Re: Yahoo Pipes End-Of-life Announcement

#162
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many see tools like http://Zapier.com or http://elastic.io (disclaimer - I'm a founder) as alternative to Pipes and IFFT.

But all of them seem to miss the focus on RSS, or even just the ability to manipulate feeds.

IFTTT works well for feeds, also had good success with Huginn in the past for feeds.

Re: Yahoo Pipes End-Of-life Announcement

#163
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pipes has long been a sort of monument to the faith of a bygone age -- the first flush of Web 2.0 optimism, when standard formats and open APIs were going to let us mix and match and mash up services of all kinds at will. That faith is dead now, of course, scoured from the earth by walled gardens and VC money. But like Catholics in Elizabethan England, some of us quietly tend our secret shrines and pray for its retur…

Love your analogy, sure made me laugh (visualising a geeky dev like myself tending a weathered gnarly monument in a secluded English glade... in real life, that is, not in an RPG). However, why such pessimism? I hardly think that standard formats and open APIs are dead. Sure, there are some nasty blights upon cyberspace in this regard (ahem, Facebook, Apple), but other players are still keeping the dream alive to som…

I'd count google mostly as an example of deprecating or limiting useful interfaces. Yes, you can feed them stuff in "open" formats, but getting stuff out is harder. First example that comes to mind is youtube APIs, which offered easier access to stuff. Now try to get a feed of someones videos or similar...

But it is possible that it's confirmation bias + uncommon sample on my part.

Re: Yahoo Pipes End-Of-life Announcement

#164
post #39
post #7

In an alternate universe not too dissimilar from our own, Pipes is an independent startup and this announcement is Yahoo buying it for 8-9 figures

There was IFTTT but looking at their page now it seems like maybe they have pivoted, at least I can't tell that it works like it used to: https://ifttt.com/

Wow, this is a jumble of I-don't-know-what:

https://ifttt.com/products/do/button

Their site aesthetic is trying to be Nest-y, but the UX does not communicate simplicity at all.

Re: Yahoo Pipes End-Of-life Announcement

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took a lot of active mismanagement and folly to keep Pipes from living up to its promise. I would love to read a blog post about how exactly it was mismanaged. It would be great for others to learn lessons from the mistakes.

The first rule of Mismanagement Club is you never talk about how you got into Mismanagement Club.

Incorrect. The first rule of mismanagement club is to never know exactly how you got into mismanagement club; but by god you are going to do a bang up job of it now you are in!

Re: Yahoo Pipes End-Of-life Announcement

#166
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget Nokia. Going from #1 in a market to doing so badly that you exit the market--and all in the span of 3 years--is something to behold.

I feel like Atari might be the grandfather of all this.

And Commodore would have to get an honorable mention

Re: Yahoo Pipes End-Of-life Announcement

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget Nokia. Going from #1 in a market to doing so badly that you exit the market--and all in the span of 3 years--is something to behold.

good one. it's what one famous blogger calls the 'elop effect': http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/08/coining...

It wasn't Elop that sank Nokia, it was Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.

By the time Elop was announced as CEO in late 2010, Kallasvuo had already guaranteed Nokia was toast.

Just go back to the way Nokia was behaving, and what they were saying in 2007/2008 for easy proof of that.

"Nokia CEO calls Apple iPhone ‘niche product’"

http://macdailynews.com/2008/04/17/nokia_shares_slammed_in_w...

http://www.informationweek.com/mobile/nokia-ceo-disses-iphon...?

http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/12/nokia-kallasvuo-iphone-face...

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2007/1112/048.html

Re: Yahoo Pipes End-Of-life Announcement

#168
post #163
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love your analogy, sure made me laugh (visualising a geeky dev like myself tending a weathered gnarly monument in a secluded English glade... in real life, that is, not in an RPG). However, why such pessimism? I hardly think that standard formats and open APIs are dead. Sure, there are some nasty blights upon cyberspace in this regard (ahem, Facebook, Apple), but other players are still keeping the dream alive to som…

I'd count google mostly as an example of deprecating or limiting useful interfaces. Yes, you can feed them stuff in "open" formats, but getting stuff out is harder. First example that comes to mind is youtube APIs, which offered easier access to stuff. Now try to get a feed of someones videos or similar... But it is possible that it's confirmation bias + uncommon sample on my part.

Now try to get a feed of someones videos or similar...

What do you mean? Channels have an element linking to an RSS feed. In fact, just pasting a channel URL to an RSS reader should work.

Example of a channel feed: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCr4soU_...

Re: Yahoo Pipes End-Of-life Announcement

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole internet misses the previous focus on RSS...

It's amazing how much a shift of management focus can change things... Google embraces RSS, develops the premiere online RSS reader, so good that even stand alone readers are largely abandoned... then google nukes RSS support from Chrome, and shutters Reader. And the world is worse off for it. It definitely inspires a "never forget" kind of mindset, such that I don't trust relying on a SaaS that I don't have a person…

Twitter took RSS as a concept and humanized it

Re: Yahoo Pipes End-Of-life Announcement

#170
post #163
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love your analogy, sure made me laugh (visualising a geeky dev like myself tending a weathered gnarly monument in a secluded English glade... in real life, that is, not in an RPG). However, why such pessimism? I hardly think that standard formats and open APIs are dead. Sure, there are some nasty blights upon cyberspace in this regard (ahem, Facebook, Apple), but other players are still keeping the dream alive to som…

I'd count google mostly as an example of deprecating or limiting useful interfaces. Yes, you can feed them stuff in "open" formats, but getting stuff out is harder. First example that comes to mind is youtube APIs, which offered easier access to stuff. Now try to get a feed of someones videos or similar... But it is possible that it's confirmation bias + uncommon sample on my part.

Yeah... for Google / YouTube, I blame OAuth for most of the difficulty in accessing data (while retaining one's sanity) these days. Once you've waded through the quagmire of access tokens, auth libraries (in different languages), account permissions, etc... making the actual API calls isn't so hard.
Post reply on HN