This is as far as any self-respecting Non-Programistani will go with Popfly. Once one realizes that you have to compromise all dignity and get a Windows Live ID, this tool (no matter how good it may have been) becomes irrelevant to the masses.

Non-Programistan Rating

Open: What do you think?

Friendly: Perhaps, much like Vista!

Portable: Sure, anything you say…

Image by boeke.

Yahoo! Pipes is not yet a tool for the citizens of Non-Programistan! Here’s why…

(Click on any of the following images for larger version.)

Linguistic Mystification: Pipes is not designed for and by the people. One look at the Options interface reaffirms their refusal to extend a helping hand to the working class. Words and descriptions like Sub-element, truncate, Union, Unique, Regex immediately aliente the worker from the means of mashup production, resulting in capitalist mystification of production viz-a-viz programming language.

A Menace to the Masses: The pursuit of the Non-Progmmistan holy Grail (eduglu) was very hopeful with the introduction of Pipes more than a year ago. But since its much anticipated arrival, it has failed to deliver the tools necessary to foment the revolution. Case in point, filtering a feed by tags or categories from a blog has never been easily accessible through pipes. And while you can filter by author, description, link, date, and title, these elements often vary wildly in an open system, and rarely provide any useful means of categorizing content. As Comrade Cathy said here over a year ago, a sentiment we still find relevant today, “Pipes is an innovative project but it does need to become more user friendly before the masses will even try to use it.” Yes, indeed, Cathy, and the Masses are the heart & Soul of Non-Programmistan.

The Revolution Won’t be Parsed: If Yahoo! Pipes is not willing and able to parse the feeds from the revolution, than the revolution must parse ways with it. In short, the auto-discovery for feeds I tried on several different WPMu blogs balked, making it somewhat irrelevant to many of the projects I might encourage other to undertake. The Mashedup web is certainly the future of Non-Programmistan, but its faith in the solution being housed so neatly within a one-stop shopping interface like Pipes is another question all together.

Non-Programistan Rating

Open:

Friendly:

Portable: