No Tubes! Pipes!

Do you like putting two and two together? If so, you’re probably a fan of mashups. You witness everything that goes on over at Mashable!, you refuse to outgrow LEGOs, and you want to bring the Transformers to life.

Good news, then, because Yahoo! just delivered (Wednesday) an easier way to create mashups on your own, online. It’s as basic as basic can get, sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s no fun. The company says Yahoo! Pipes is for those that want to bring together feeds from around the web and do quirky and interesting things with them. We don’t quite know how far they allow you to push it before you’re breaking copyright and all that stuff, but we’re sure they’re gentle on the sophistication with the tools given to Average Joe and Josephine. Too bad we can’t tell you for sure, though. It looks like Yahoo!’s Pipes got clogged.

After reading about it on Webware , I visited the site to see what it was all about, but a discreet message showed up:

The situation doesn't look very good, as Yahoo! and humor tend not to mix. We kid, we kid. Still, bad execution, we say, and hey, don’t they have in-house technicians to deal with downed servers and all that?

There’s a lot of talk about Yahoo! Pipes, however, downed or not. Web 2.0 Man himself, Tim O’Reilly, said that the development of the utility marked a “milestone in the history of the Internet.” But he was quick to point out that one mustn’t fiddle with Pipes before they know the basics of technology and know at least the basic logic of programming.

We definitely fear the mutants that will undoubtedly arise from this new toolbox, whenever it comes back online. Who wouldn’t? But we’ll find diamonds in the rough, don’t you worry.