Piping hot... (a DIY plumbers guide to Yahoo! pipes)

Link to: WackyB + Yahoo! Messenger & More... news feed (created with Yahoo! pipes)

In the words of Yahoo.... "Pipes is an interactive feed aggregator and manipulator. Using Pipes, you can create feeds that are more powerful, useful and relevant." Pipes is a relatively new site/service from Yahoo! that has almost made it's way in through the back door (apart from the '' stamp at the bottom right of the page you would probably be hard pushed to recognise it as a Yahoo! product at first). Those that really know about it (mostly programmers/technical) rave about it as the next web revolution. It wasn't the description given by Yahoo!, or the news hype that drew me into wanting to come back for a second look (and play) with Pipes, but simply the graphical user interface used to create the pipes.

When I first heard about pipes my initial response was 'big deal'!? after all I could do the same with news reader software on my own PC. Turns out that was a rather simplistic overview at what pipes was about, even now I'm still learning or rather discovering what pipes is capable of and where it fits. Pipes lets you select a number of data (news/RSS/blogs/etc) sources and manipulate them to produce a new data source as the end result; This could be as simple as taking a news feed and cutting the number of news items down or combining news feeds from many different sources and sorting them in correct date order. Pipes offers you the ability to perform much more complex operations with filtering and programming style tools as well as converting source feeds in to other formats; Yes I can do most of what pipes has to offer with software on my own PC but doing so online as a number of benefits not least the fact I can now share the results with others or use the live data on a website.

such a lot has been happening around here lately I thought it best to do a quick summary for you :)

Yahoo! Messenger Blog
If you weren't already aware, Yahoo! Messenger now has its own blog, you can swing by and check out all the latest news and offerings.. and also an article about us The Wacky(B) World of Yahoo! Messenger so if you want a little bit our history then check it out :) Just to mention another great Yahoo! resource.. have you checked out Yahoo! Answers yet? they have a Yahoo! Messenger category where you can post, ask and answer all things YIM related.. if you bump into me over there say hello :)

IM content Archived
the Instant Messenger information over at WackyB.com has now been archived, it's still available for searching and is visible to all, it's just we aren't accepting any new IM posts over there so if you have an IM question, concern or comment please use our WackyB.co.nz forum.

use your Yahoo! Login here
You can now login to our WackyB.co.nz ~ forum with your existing Yahoo! ID, no more registration forms to fill out (although you can still get a full membership if you like). You can read more about it our forum posting Yahoo! Login - Login, post & reply on this site using your Yahoo ID or for the back end side of it all check out WackyB forum authentication on the Yahoo! Gallery.

Tabbed IM's in Yahoo! Messenger v8
yes it's possible.. check out this thread Yahoo! Messenger tabs..., then head over to the Yahoo! Messenger Blog article Hack: Tabs in Yahoo! Messenger then head back to this forum post to download Andy's TabIM Fix Utility... there is no point just running the reg files as they tabs don't work correctly and you wont get your first Instant Message ;)

Welcome and thanks
I would just like to take the opportunity to thank all who have helped out around here and at our .com, you can read my full thanks to the very special ppl in our Wacky (B) World at this forum posting. Speaking of special ppl.. this week we welcome Direwolf on board as a moderator at our WackyB.co.nz forum, Dire is old hand at our WackyB ways and is a fully fledged family member over at WackyB.com... Dire now walks with one leg in each camp so lets keep the coffee coming ;) I'd also like extend a special thanks to cchris78 who has put some huge hours into the forum this week, one worth bookmarking his is thread Yahoo! Messenger Versions Available which lists all currently available Yahoo! Messengerversions (v7, 7.5, 8+) that are still available for download.. and he's done it by country to make it nice and easy :)

... WackyB Utilites is now up and fully operational, we added it late September and it's been ticking over nicely ever since.

In there you will find Miscellaneous Utilities which houses Andy's  Easy batch Image labeler and under Yahoo! Messenger Utilities, Add-ons & Fixes etc you will find, as the title suggests, Utilities, Fixes and Plug-ins for Yahoo! Messenger. The Clear/Edit YahooMessenger Status History is proving very popular along with  Old/New Alert Sounds Toggle which is a much more effective way of dealing with the Yahoo! Messenger Sound Alerts as by using that instead of the replacement files we have available, you can happily upgrade Yahoo! Messenger in the future without have to repeat the .wav installation again.

The most recent addition to our remository is Yahoo! Messenger Smiley Shortcuts which Dave created to give us easy shortcuts for all our Yahoo! Messenger smileys, it's well worth checking out especially if you're not running version 8 of Yahoo! Messenger with allows plugins like YEmotePLUS or you haven't got your head around the whole plug-ins system yet.

I'd seen a little information about Yahoo's latest offering of a customized sign-in seal to protect users ID's and passwords from phishing sites but as per my norm I never really found the time to check it out.. then the other day I noticed a posting from tim2679 in our forum thread Is there a way to "lock" my Yahoo Account? where he suggested bobg go check it out.. so I thought I should too.

Their latest offering is quick, it's simple, there's the option of customized text or image seals (I opted for image) and it works brilliantly! After creating mine I then spent a wee part of my day poking my nose into typical Yahoo! sites where your Yahoo! ID and password is required (like Yahoo! Photos and Yahoo! Mail) and all was still aok... in fact I was thrilled.

If you want to know more about Yahoo's customized sign-in seal then swing along to bee.geek.nz and check out my article Yahoo! Tries to help...