Pipes for Telecom
No, this is not some reference to the internet being made of tube. Instead I’d like to expound on an absolutely amazing new web 2.0 application getting a lot of attention - Yahoo Pipes.
I can’t remember who said it first, however, I have to agree that code is the next major content. Personally I have been involved with open source for a while and have seen the effects of code in of itself. Yet, to the lay person that is just geek stuff. Until recently, the closest to one came to a non-programmer “getting it” was the likes of Lawrence Lessig in his seminal work Code. Then came widgets. These are wonderful little snippets of code you can share with friends and post on your myspace or other web presence. Only problem is that you still need to understand some level of programming to truly customize these, although platforms to aid this are coming further along.
So Pipes are not widgets, but imagine if you could turn a pipe flow into a widget and share it. M. David Petterson over at O’Reilly’s XML.com goes one step further with an example of using LiveClipboard to get code off of a site via RSS. Yes, have an RSS feed for your favorite pieces of code that makes your site happen and allow others to read in that code for their own use and assembly.
To take this over into the telecom space, imagine using something like pipes to direct SIP flows instead of RSS flows. Then A.Users would be able create something like a personal agent directing, screening, etc their calls. Drag a filter here, connect a Colored Ring Tone there and you have the killer customized phone service. Best yet, post it (hypothetically) to your Gizmo or TalkNow page and it takes instant effect.
And you don’t have to have a pony-tail and wear Birkenstocks to understand.
