As some of you know, fetching Twitter feeds via Pipes often produces a 406 error in our editor, and the Pipe does not run successfully.

We have been in contact with Twitter trying to resolve this problem and supplied them several test cases. Based on various tests we've performed it appears that Twitter's servers are blocking requests from our outbound caches. At the moment they are still looking into it, but until they uncover the reason any Pipes using Twitter feeds will only work occasionally.

If there is any change in status regarding this situation, we will let you know.

Thanks - The Pipes team

Until now JSON output has been the only way to obtain all the data flowing through a Pipe. Starting today we’ve added a second way of getting all the data - serialized PHP Pipe output.

To get this, go to your Pipe -> More options -> Get as PHP. Right click the “Get as PHP” link to copy link location (or copy shortcut if using IE).

After obtaining the link location, you can do something as simple as this to get Pipe output data as an array into your PHP script.

// Pipes Request
$req = 'http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=ZKJobpaj3BGZOew9G8evXg&_render=php‘;
// Make the request
$phpserialized = file_get_contents($req);
// Parse the serialized response
$phparray = unserialize($phpserialized);

To view the array in your web browser, use this piece of PHP code to help visualize the array.

print_r($phparray);

To view a code sample on how to do a request go here. To read more about serialized PHP at Yahoo!, go here.

It’s then up to you on how you want to display or use the Pipe data. The possibilities are endless.

Did you ever want an easy way of putting Pipes output onto your website or blog?

Introducing - Pipes badges!

We currently have three types of badges - map, image and list. Map badges are available if there is geocoded data in the feed. Image badges are available if there are media images in the feed. List badges will always be present if there is valid data.

Read more about how to configure them here.

You’ll notice that on the Pipe info pages there is a new link called “Get as a Badge.”

Click on the “Get as a Badge” link and a wizard will guide you on adding it to certain destinations like your WordPress blog, iGoogle page or any web site (that supports Javascript).

For those of you that are more technically inclined, we are using a script node replacement technique that uses JSON embedded configuration (This is based on Kent Brewsters “Case Harded Javascript”).

This week we have two updates to our site: A new module to fetch a pages source and a small fix for easy web paths when running a Pipe.

This weeks release incorporates a new module named “Fetch Page”. The new module will fetch the source of a given web site as a string. This data can then be converted into a RSS feed or merged with other data in your Pipe using the Regex module. The module is located under the “Sources” menu in the editor.

The module can fetch an entire page or you can specify a “starting” and “ending” point. We also offer support for specifying a delimiter to allow you to easily separate the text into strings.

Our team as also created a few examples:
1) Fetch Page Example #1 is our first example. The goal of this Pipe is to extract train schedules from a local train scheduled provided in the San Francisco Bay Area.
2) Fetch Page Example #2 is a simple example that utilizes the first example as a sub-Pipe to obtain addition train stops.

Additional information about this new module along with its limitations can be found in the documentation modules/sources section.

Our second change to the site this week is a minor fix/enhancement to allow for easy web paths of all Pipe.runs page. This will allow you to use the easy paths you created for your Pipes. For example, the Pipe above “Fetch Page Example #1″ would look like the following below (please note the “?” instead of the “&”):

Original name:
“http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=1qoLq6ai3BGv06982R2EvQ&_render=rss&station=Palo+Alto”

Easy web address name:
“http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes_team/fetch_page_example?_render=rss&station=Palo+Alto”

This week we’ve got three more updates to our site: Give you and your Pipes easy to read URLs; RSS and JSON output from most pages; and quick links to various social bookmarking sites.

First, are you fed up with those impossible to remember Pipe URLs? We certainly were, so now we’ve implemented a way for you to create nice human readable (and memorable!) URLs for your Pipe page, and all of your Pipes. It’s as simple as two clicks for yourself - find the web path URL at the top of your “My Pipes” page, click “edit”, choose a nice name for yourself, and hit “Save”. Done!

Once you’ve got a nice name, its time to move on to your Pipes. Again, it’s as easy as two clicks. Go to your Pipe’s page, press “edit” next to the web path shown just above the actions, type in the nice name for the Pipe, and press “Save”.

Secondly, wherever you can find a list of Pipes on our site, such as our search pages or anyones “My Pipes” page, you can now get that same list as JSON or RSS. So now you can keep up to date with Pipes being created by other great developers, or mash them up in Pipes!

Finally, once you find a Pipe you find interesting, why not share it with others outside of your fellow developers? Just to left of each Pipe’s run page you can find quick links to add the Pipe into various social bookmarking sites.

The Pipes team spent a hectic 24 hours as part of the recent internal Y! hack day (video coming soon) creating an iPhone interface for Pipes. We thought it was so useful we wanted to get it out as soon as possible. Now everyone can access their mash-ups while mobile by going to iphone.pipes.yahoo.com. In addition to running any of your pipes and getting the output in a suitably styled interface, one of the coolest parts of our hack was integrating Pipes with the built-in iPhone mapping application. You can put any of your geo Pipe results on the iPhone just by pressing the “Map” button:

So you can display results from Y! local, as well as answering the question posed by one of our more “urgent” Pipes: the restroom locator. Some other featured pipes that work well while mobile include Live Traffic Results (what exactly is causing that snarl up), and Price watcher - for those of us standing in Frys to work out if that really is a good deal…

We suggest tagging your pipes with “iphoneapp” so we can find and feature the best mobile mashups in the future.

On Monday, October 22nd, Pipes will be offline for approximately 1 1/2 hours starting at 9:00 PM PST. We’ll be performing a routine, scheduled update (lookout for some cool new stuff and fixes on Tuesday). We expect regular service to return by around 10:30 PM PST. Click here to find out what time the site will be offline where you are located.

An unexpected hiccup means that we won’t be having any schedule downtime tonight.

On Wednesday, October 17th, Pipes will be offline for approximately 1 1/2 hours starting at 9:00 PM PST. We’ll be performing a routine, scheduled update and expect regular service to return by around 10:30 PM PST. Click here to find out what time the site will be offline where you are located.

The latest updates to Pipes includes a entity detection module and improvements to our existing keyword analysis capabilities.

There are 2 new modules under String:

• The Yahoo! Shortcuts module analyzes the input string for popular entities (for example: person, place, concept, organization, etc). If any entities are discovered additional information about each entity is returned (an example of the data returned could include geodata if the entity detected is a place). You can return the data either as a list of items or a string. Here’s an example.
  
• The Term Extractor module analyzes the content in the input string for significant words or phrases. If any terms are found it appends them as a sub-element under each item containing the results of the analysis. It’s functionally similar to the Content Analysis module but adds the ability to analyze any data element (not just title and description). You can return the data either as a list of items or a string. Here’s an example.
  

Some other updates worth noting:

• The Location Extractor module has been updated to support entity detection, and geocoding, using the Yahoo! Shortcuts API. If the title or description of your data source doesn’t contain one of the other popular geocode formats we look for now we’ll do keyword detection.can return the data either as a list of items or a string. Here’s an example.
• The Content Analysis module has been replaced by the Term Extractor module and can now be found under the list of deprecated modules. Deprecated modules will continue to work but we’re discouraging their use.