Specifications

Solutions
Create No-Code Mashups
with Yahoo! Pipes
NOVEMBER 6, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 103
PROBLEMS SOLVED THIS ISSUE
106 Outlook Expr
ess spell-checker not
working
106 Annoying USB 2.0 warning
106 Unremovable shadows in Excel
108 How can I use multiple monitors?
108 Why is my computer so slow?
110 Building a better Web site
112 Where do customers “drop out”?
114 Making longer documents better
You’ve probably already used at least one
online application that combines the ser-
vices of different sources. You may have
used one, say, to create a local map that
shows traffic reports, or to create a map
of the neighborhood you’ll be visiting in
Prague, highlighting the area’s four-star
restaurants. Now you can take advantage
of an array of new mashup tools designed
to help you assemble the relevant features
of multiple online sources and create a new
application that suits your needs precisely.
Truly sophisticated mashups still
demand coding and often require a Web
server, but anyone can accomplish quite
a lot right now with hosted, Web-based
mashup authoring tools. An easy—and
free—way to begin is by using Yahoo! Pipes
(pipes.yahoo.com). It’s a totally graphical,
integrated development environment that
is surprisingly intuitive, and really easy
enough for ordinary, everyday Web users.
Yahoo! Pipes lets you mix, match, and
kludge Web-based information into a con-
MASHING UP DATA You can com-
bine the most relevant dynamic
data from more than one site. Here
we mashed the PC Magazine Edi-
tors’ Choice feed and the Yahoo!
Tech Advisors feed.
Even if you don’t wear a hat with a propeller or write code, you can “mash up”
a brand-new Web service right now. By Bill Dyszel