Since the release of the share with tarpipe bookmarklet we've been working on a way to give your blog readers the ability to share what they're reading on the spot. We first launched a widget that can be added to any Web page simply by copying and pasting a line of JavaScript code. Here's the widget being used at echoes:

After some initial testing we decided to make it easier for you by launching an easy to install WordPress.org plugin: the Share now! widget. You can easily install it with a couple of clicks and the widget will automatically appear at the bottom of every post.

The widget look and feel is similar to the bookmarklet, letting you type your thoughts, choose any destinations and click on the "share" button when you're done.

As always, please keep sending your suggestions!

These awards will recognise and celebrate the most compelling technology startups, Internet and mobile innovations of the past year (Summer 08 - Summer 09), with the tech community invited to have a say in which finalists should be recognised.

The winners will be chosen by an advisory board from the most voted nominees, so please take a moment to vote for your favorite application. Thank you for using tarpipe and helping us deliver a great application.

We've created a connector that lets you easily extend any workflow by connecting to an external REST endpoint. The REST connector is compatible with the Yahoo! Pipes Web Service Module — the only difference is that we only process with a single entry instead of a feed of entries.

The connector POSTs a JSON encoded list of properties to a service URL and expects a JSON or RSS formatted response. Here's an example JSON response:

{
  "items" : [
  {
    "title" : "My title",
    "link" : "http://example.com",
    "description" : "My Description"
  }
  ]
}

The compatibility means that you can use any existing Web Service that already worked with Yahoo! Pipes. OpenCalais offers a service with those characteristics and we decided to give it a try with our new REST connector.

This example workflow uses the REST connector to talk directly to the Calais Yahoo! Pipes Web Service. The OpenCalais URL (including the API key) is specified using the TextInput connector.

Creating your own external Web service is also very easy. All you have to do is wait for a POST, process the incoming JSON information and output a JSON formatted response. Here's an example written in PHP:

<?php
//
// Obtain the input from the POST "data" field
//
$input = json_decode($_POST['data']);
 
if ($input) {
    //
    // As an example, the output is copied from the input
    //
    $output = array();
    $output['title'] = $input->items[0]->title;
    $output['link'] = $input->items[0]->link;
    $output['description'] = $input->items[0]->description;
 
    //
    // Output JSON encoded response
    //
    echo json_encode(array('items' => array($output)));
}
?>

We hope this new REST connector will create new possibilities and expand what you can already do with your workflow. Please let us know how you'll use it with your Web services.

To start using the bookmarklet, please visit the tarpipe tools page and drag the "share with tarpipe" link to your bookmarks toolbar. Then, whenever you want to share what you're reading, just click on the bookmarklet and a window will appear. Type your thoughts, choose any destinations, click on the "share" button, and you're done!

As an added bonus, the bookmarklet will use any text that you might have selected on the page.

To make it all work we created a specific workflow accepting pictures sent to a custom e-mail address. Pictures were then published on the Web and presented on the screens at the venue almost immediately.

DJ Adams uses this workflow to snap a picture of the beer he's drinking, publish the picture on flickr along with its rating and announce it on identi.ca. Quoting his blog post:

• post the picture on Flickr with the beer name as the title and the rating words as tags, including a statically added ‘beerrating‘;
• have a short URL constructed via TinyURL for the new Flickr picture page;
• dent the rating, with the short picture URL, on identi.ca (which in turn, re-dents to Twitter too);
• reply to the original email confirming that the beer was successfully rated.

What about you? How are you using tarpipe? Would you like to be featured as tarpipe of the week? Just send a direct message to @tarpipe!

How does it work? Simply go to http://tarpipe.com/workflow/sxsw09/ and click on the "Start sharing!" link. Follow the instructions and you can start sharing by sending MMS or email messages to the generated email address. The generated workflow will perform the following actions on your behalf:

• publish your pictures on Flickr;
• add SXSW tags to your pictures;
• associate them with the SXSW event on upcoming;
• announce your pictures on twitter;
• add the #sxsw hashtag to your tweets.

You can even change the created workflow if you want to publish information to social media destinations other than the featured Flickr and twitter.

What are you waiting for? Start using this workflow, enjoy your time at SXSW and share what you're doing with your friends!

DISCLAIMER: The SXSW logo is © 1995 - 2009 SXSW, Inc. All other logos, mentions or names are considered trademarks of their respective owners. tarpipe is not affiliate with the SXSW Festival nor is this workflow generator considered an official SXSW tool.

How does it work? Simple: any text that you insert can be used as an input to other connectors. There are so many different uses for the TextInput connector, so let me give you some suggestions:

• adding fixed tags to your pictures;
• sending an email message to a fixed destination;
• adding specific text to all your tweets (for instance, hashtags).

Here's an example workflow that uses the TextInput connector to automatically tag the picture and also add a hashtag to the tweet (click on the screenshot for a larger version):

What do you think? Let us know how you're using the TextInput connector.

So, what's going to happen? Here's the official party description:

Want to have your cake and eat it too? Well, with the magic of Austin's newest culinary trend, and the help of our finest performers, now you can! Come to Emo's to celebrate the cutest confections that amateur and professional cupcakers have to offer. And, while you're wiping that icing off your 'stache, watch some of the finest tassel-twirling you've ever seen! Also, featuring stars from Kitty Kitty Bang Bang, Jigglewatts, and Big Star Burlesque! Free to SXSW badgeholders.

The burlesque performers include:

• Kitty Kitty Bang Bang
• Jigglewatts
• Big Star Burlesque
• Schave and Reilly

Here's a partial list of the Featured Pro Cupcakeries:

• Mad Cakes
• Polkadots
• Toot Sweet
• Fiddler's Hearth

Don't forget to RSVP. Let's meet there and have a great time!

Luís is using this workflow to share images to almost everwhere:

I use this workflow to share images (via email or MMS) to the various social networks that I use regularly and my tumble log.

The subject holds a quick/smaller comment about the image.

The body contains a longer text about or related to the image.
The imageAttachment gets uploads to various photo hosting services, just for redundancy.
The two TextFormaters join the picture url with the text. One for the small comment, the other for whole tumble log post.


This way the image is posted to 23hq, flickr, TwitPic, FriendFeed,
Facebook. Its address and the smaller comment get posted to Twitter,
Identica, Plurk, Jaiku. The longer post goes into Rejaw, Tumblr,
FriendFeed and Facebook.

It's kind of complex, but it works great and gives me a big help in
getting in touch with all my contacts spread over so many social
networks.

What about you? How are you using tarpipe? Would you like to be featured as tarpipe of the week? Just send a direct message to @tarpipe!

The SXSW Web Awards are divided into 18 categories, covering all possible areas of Web creation. While the winners of each of these categories are chosen by a jury, there's also the People's Choice Award where you can participate by voting on your favorite finalist.

So, thank you all for making tarpipe evolve from a proof-of-concept into a valuable application. If you're going to SXSW this year let us know your whereabouts and we'll be more than happy to meet you and listen to your ideas.

Instead of sending an email message (as shown last week) Yann chose to use a bookmarklet and the RestDecoder:

You always find interesting stuff on the web you want to share quickly with everyone. With this workflow and the tarpipe bookmarklet from Guillaume Riflet, I found a really convenient way to do it easily with two clicks.

When I'm on a web page I want to share, I just click on the bookmark, type the message to describe the URL and then pipe it and it soon appears on my Facebook status, my Twitter, Plurk and Plaxo accounts. And with a few add-ons, you could also save the URL on Delicious.

Would you like to be featured as tarpipe of the week? Just send a direct message to @tarpipe!

Christian is using this workflow just by sending an email each time he wants to update his status:

With this pipe you can update all the status on different websites at once. You don't need to log on to every page to keep all your friends update who are following you on different networks.

You don't even need any Facebook app any more to integrate other activities: just update Facebook itself directly with the same text.

Would you like to be featured as tarpipe of the week? Just send a direct message to @tarpipe!

Felipe is using this workflow to send pictures by MMS from his cell phone. Here's how he's using it, from his own words:

The MMS is divided in 3 parts: sender, subject and body.

The sender (the number of my phone) is used to tag the picture attached in the MMS. The picture goes to Flickr and Photobucket and the Photobucket URL is sent to TinyURL.

The subject is used to title the pictures on both sites. The body contains the message (up to 110 characters - after the TinyURL address will be added).

The message and the Photobucket URL of the picture are then sent to Twitter as a new post.

So I use a simple MMS (almost all phone devices have) to create a new post at Twitter with a link to a picture.

Do you think this is useful? Create a similar workflow and start publishing directly from your cell phone in no time.

Would you like to be featured as tarpipe of the week? Just send a direct message to @tarpipe!

This workflow will publish a picture on Flickr and Facebook using the email subject as its title. It will then tweet the flickr's shortened URL using is.gd. Here's Shawn's description of his workflow:

Immediately after I take a picture on my iPhone I email this picture to tarpipe. Tarpipe conveniently and quickly pushes the photo to Facebook and Flickr and then tweets about it.

Instant pictures is no new concept to twitter users, especially twitter users with iPhones, but putting pictures on Facebook and Flickr immediately after taking the picture keeps even more friends and family in the loop about what you're up to. Tarpipe makes all of this easy by just sending one email!

Do you find this useful? Try creating a similar workflow and start publishing pictures from your iPhone easily.

Would you like to be featured as tarpipe of the week? Just send a direct message to @tarpipe!

The Facebook connector lets you publish status updates and upload photos directly from a tarpipe workflow. The status update is also available through the share form, where all you have to do is enter your status on the Body field, check the Facebook destination and click on the share button.

However, the usability problem has engineers and design experts scratching their heads. While the typical internet user probably already has an OpenID account tied to their Google account, AOL name or Yahoo ID, they still don’t know how to use it.

Poor usability seems to be one of the main obstacles to the wide adoption of OpenID on the consumer side, leaving users clueless about how it really works. Quoting the article "What is this OpenID Everyone Speaks Of?" on Pixel Bits:

Well. I don’t know about you, but to me? OpenID is nothing but a bunch of gibberish.

Well, is it? This article generated a good discussion on FriendFeed, because it directly questions OpenID usefulness and why users should abandon the username and password model that has been around for so long. Let's try to answer some of the questions.

Is OpenID hard to use?

The argument against OpenID is that URLs are too hard to remember, and using one to identify yourself is worse than using plain old usernames and passwords.

I believe this can be easily solved by exposing a friendlier user interface. Instead of simply asking for an OpenID, applications should start using solutions similar to JanRain's ID Selector where several OpenID providers can be chosen from a single interface.

What are the benefits of OpenID?

The major benefit of OpenID is the ability to sign in to multiple applications using the same identifier. Instead of remembering multiple usernames and passwords you just need to enter your OpenID and you're in.

Another benefit is that it's an open protocol upon which anyone can contribute. There are multiple Open Source libraries in many different programming languages, making it easy to implement your own consumer application solution.

Are there any good alternatives to OpenID?

Sure, there are alternatives, but they're all proprietary and they're not decentralizing the Single Sign-On solution. Also, they could be interoperable with OpenID, expanding their reach to a broader audience of consumer applications.

So, what next?

Much needs to be done about OpenID usability and how users react to it. OpenID should transmit the idea of a secure, easy to use and always available authentication solution.

Chris Messina is proposing some innovation on this area after he is elected as community representative to the OpenID Foundation board. If you care about OpenID and its future, I think you should cast your vote now.

You can use it directly from the share form or by adding it to any new or existing workflow. It works in much the same way as the already supported Plurk connector, having a required shout input.

If you're on Rejaw you can follow us there also.

The first one is about using tarpipe to automatically tag screenshots using Evernote's recognition feature. Quoting the article "Evernote Integration Spotlight: Tarpipe":

The Tarpipe/Evernote integration allows you to add content into your Evernote account, as well as automatically extract content, such as recognition data and URLs to public notes, which can then be shared with other supported services.

Watch the original screencast on YouTube

The second one was created by Benjamin Mestrallet and it's about integrating eXo Platform WebOS with tarpipe, letting you share pictures automatically on services like flickr and twitter. Quoting the article "Mashups: Publish from eXo ECM to the consumer web with TarPipe":

More and more eXo customers want to leverage consumer sites like Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, SlidesShare, FriendFeed to promote new products or corporate messages.

Watch the original screencast on YouTube

I hope you enjoyed watching! Do you have any ideas for other screencasts?

You can use it directly from the share form or by adding it to any new or existing workflow. It works in much the same way as the already supported twitter connector, having a required title input and an optional url input which is added to the message being posted. We'll be also supporting publishing to any identi.ca federated service anytime soon.

So, what other connectors would you like to use? Let us know by leaving a comment.