But isn’t that exactly what “democratizing the web” is all about? JScript -> IL -> ServerSide. At least for non-HTMLDOM based java script I can’t see any real technical hurdles. I prefer this model to the cloud only model at least.

What’s your take on a) Silverlight, and b) Popfly’s use of Silverlight?

“I make great use of Yahoo Pipes, primarily as a filter for RSS feeds”

This is absolutely the sweet spot for Pipes. Yesterday, via earideas.com, I found WNYC’s Radio Lab.

http://earideas.com/earideas/explore/feed/176/WNYC's+Radio+Lab

The RSS feed listed at earideas turns out to be a Y Pipe:

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=6DLRYYLO3BGfTM83JphxuA

Investigating, I found it had been used to solve a really common problem. The site wound up with two different podcast feeds and needed to splice them together. Could be done in FeedBurner, but this was a quicker/easier solution. Interesting to see the WNYC blog relying on Pipes in this way to create, and also publish, its combined feed.

Another great example is here:

http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/10/10/combining-tagspaces/

I’d asked about combining tagspaces from different bookmarking services, and engtech solved it neatly with a Y Pipe.

When data flows are in the form of RSS feeds, Pipes excels at combining/filtering/republishing.

With Popfly, OTOH, you can more effectively parse and filter data sources that don’t happen to be in RSS format. Its JavaScript environment, for example, provides an XPath search that abstracts the differing XPath APIs of IE and FF. You can’t republish that data as a feed because that’s not what Popfly does. You can, however, merge that data into AJAX-enhanced HTML rendered in the browser, which is Popfly’s raison d’etre but not that of Pipes.

Like I said: similar-but-different, and complementary.

I make great use of Yahoo Pipes, primarily as a filter for RSS feeds. Some feeds insert ads, which I filter out (especially those that have graphics in the ad).

I also use the Pipes to filter the RSS feeds from bargain sites, such as Slickdeals.net, because these sites produce way more bargains than I want to see, so I can create a new, filtered feed for each item I might be looking to purchase. For example, I have created feeds for a specific MP3 player from any store and a feed for sale dog food from a specific store.

My favorite Pipes feed is a filter for the Netflix New DVD Releases RSS feed, where I see only new movies and TV Shows I want (after making a simple insertion of the correct info into Pipes), instead of the massive number of new releases.

Interesting point, hadn’t considered that.

“There’s also no real technical reason why you couldn’t proxy a Popfly mashup from a server”

I guess, but to do it in a complete way would seem to require server-side JavaScript, at which point it’s kind of a new ballgame.

“The Popfly architecture is therefore more versatile.”

I think it’s tricky to make such characterizations. Either system can appear more or less versatile depending on what you need to do, and what kinds of skills you bring to the table.

a) Popfly’s mashup engine is a hybrid of a cloud-based service and the browser. The original version omitted the former and thus overstated the role of the latter.

b) Popfly’s programming model is likewise a hybrid. Whether you see it as a mainly a visual programming environment or mainly a JavaScript environment depends on your background and experience. From my perspective, I see it mainly as a JavaScript environment. That’s where you create new blocks.

There’s also no real technical reason why you couldn’t proxy a Popfly mashup from a server. The Popfly architecture is therefore more versatile.