RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, depending on who you ask. Many websites publish a rich set of RSS feeds, which can be processed by other websites as a form of syndicated content. But the regular structure of RSS as an XML application means that feeds can be easily edited (“munged”) and combined (“mashed up”). Programming libraries exist for processing feeds, but Yahoo! Pipes makes this easy with a graphical user interface and no coding. We will discuss methods and applications of RSS feeds which might be suitable for a course website—for instance, combining feeds from SlideShare and scribd and publishing them to Facebook, or publishing your office hours on your blog automatically. (Received September 21, 2010)

1. Mashups for Course
Websites with Yahoo! Pipes
Matthew Leingang
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
MAA Session on Harnessing Mobile Communication Devices
and Online Communication Tools for Mathematics Education
New Orleans, Lousiana
January 6, 2011

2. Mashup
a web page or application that uses and combines data,
presentation or functionality from two or more sources
to create new services.

3. Example

4. Anatomy of a Mashup

5. Anatomy of a Mashup
Web
extract/parse
Data

6. Anatomy of a Mashup
Web
extract/parse
Data
manipulate
Data Data
“munge”

7. Anatomy of a Mashup
Web
extract/parse
Data
manipulate
Data Data
“munge”
syndicate
Data Web
“smush”

8. Yahoo! Pipes

9. Yahoo! Pipes
Feed
Items

10. CSV
HTML
Yahoo! Pipes
RSS
Feed
iCal
Items

11. CSV
HTML
Yahoo! Pipes
RSS
Feed
iCal
Web
Items
YQL

12. CSV
HTML
Yahoo! Pipes
RSS
Feed
iCal
Web
Items
YQL

13. CSV
HTML
Yahoo! Pipes
RSS
Feed
iCal
Web
Items RSS
Web
HTML
YQL

14. CSV
HTML
Yahoo! Pipes
RSS
Feed
iCal
Web
Items RSS
Web
HTML
YQL

15. CSV
HTML
Yahoo! Pipes
RSS
Feed
iCal
Web
Items RSS
Web
HTML
YQL

16. Pipes are made of Modules

17. Pipes are made of Modules
• Sources (RSS, HTML, CSV, searches)
• User Inputs (specified in forms or queries)
• Data constructors and manipulators
(dates, locations, URLs, strings)
• Operators (map, Sort, Filter, Truncate, etc.)
• Output (RSS, Web Service)

18. Pipes are made of Modules
• Sources (RSS, HTML, CSV, searches)
• User Inputs (specified in forms or queries)
• Data constructors and manipulators
(dates, locations, URLs, strings)
• Operators (map, Sort, Filter, Truncate, etc.)
• Output (RSS, Web Service)
• Connecting modules produces output
• GUI!

19. Example

20. Example
• Input: static web page with course topics by
week
• Output: dynamic feed of topical videos
• Posted to Blackboard and Facebook

21. Input

22. Zoom in on the <table
highlighted bit

23. Fetch

24. Fetch

25. Fetch
A source
module

26. Fetch

27. Fetch
An
operator
module

28. Fetch

29. Fetch
Output

30. Chunk

31. Chunk

32. Chunk

33. Clean

34. Clean

35. Clean

36. Parse

37. Parse

38. Parse

39. Parse

40. Select

41. Select

42. Select

43. Select

44. Select

45. Select

46. Mashup!

47. Mashup!

48. Mashup!

49. Mashup!

50. Publish

51. Publish
Post automatically to these sites

52. Publish
or paste this HTML anywhere

57. RSS URL

62. Other Examples
• Post slides on an external site (e.g., scribd,
SlideShare) and import to Blackboard
• The day’s office hours scraped from Google
Calendar and posted to Facebook
• Density map of tweeps at a conference

63. Pros and Cons

64. Pros and Cons
• Graphical
• Intuitive (eventually)
• Powerful
• Versatile
• Fun

65. Pros and Cons
• Graphical • Steep learning curve
at the start
• Intuitive (eventually)
• Regular expressions
• Powerful even steeper learning
curve
• Versatile
• Slow
• Fun
• fragile
• Perfect is the enemy
of the good

66. Thank You

67. Thank You
• More on the web: http://pipes.yahoo.com/
• ReadWriteWeb and Mashable are good
Web 2.0 resources
• Follow me on Twitter: @mleingang
• Coming in Fall 2014: Calculus for the Digital
Student by MPL (John Wiley & Sons)

68. Credits
• “Pipes” by Flickr user autowitch
• “Mashup (web application hybrid”
Wikipedia
• “Hamburger” by Flickr user tomklaver