Bill Thompson has written about Yahoo Pipes in 'The mash-up future of the web' at <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6375525.stm> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6375525.stm
If you haven't heard of Pipes before, this is a reasonable summary:
"Their new offering, Pipes, lets you take a data feed such as the result of a web search, or an RSS feed from a blog or news site, or a set of tagged photos on Flickr, and transform it to produce the outcome you want. You can then make it available for other people to see.
It's web-based, no more complicated than creating programs for Lego MindStorms, and already stirring up a lot of interest.
..
Yahoo!'s Pipes do the same with a simple graphical tool that lets you define and connect data feeds, filters and user prompts, so that you can quickly build the service you want. You still need some technical ability, but you don't need to be a programmer."
The Pipes site is http://pipes.yahoo.com/
My first thought was 'cool, let's make sure our feeds are in a compatible format so people can use our data' and my second thought was 'how on earth will we measure usage?'.
It would be cool to know who's using our data and how, but overall, do we need to measure how it's used and how often it's accessed? Given that we probably can't anyway, are there other potentially useful indicators of use? Would use of our data in a mash-up affect our museums' performance indicators?
I'm curious to hear your thoughts on how the ability to take our data as one of many sources and produce something new with it could benefit or disadvantage museums.
cheers, Mia
Mia Ridge
Database Developer, Museum Systems Team
Museum of London Group
46 Eagle Wharf Road
London. N1 7ED
Tel: 020 7410 2205
Fax: 020 7600 1058
Email: [log in to unmask]
www.museumoflondon.org.uk
Last chance to see Belonging: Voices of London's Refugees - a thought-provoking free exhibition, ends 25 February
Glamour, grandeur, sleaze, disease - discover a great city in the making in the new Medieval London gallery. Click here for free weekend activities for all the family
Register for regular Museum updates with [log in to unmask]
**************************************************
For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, visit the website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk
**************************************************
|