Following a suggestion by Guillaume Riflet, we implemented a Geocoder connector and also added a tags input field to the existing Flickr connector.

The geocoder connector uses the Google Maps API Geocoding Service and, after you feed it with a location text, it will output different pieces of information:

• geoTags: geo:lat and geo:lon machine tags ready to be used by flickr;
• latitude;
• longitude;
• address: the complete address of the location you provided;
• locality: usually a city or a neighbourhood;
• postalCode;
• countryCode: a ccTLD two letter country code;
• country.

We hope you can take advantage of this new connector by geotagging your photos.

Summer is here and you might want to go to the beach or to the park. Why not take pictures of your outdoors experience and share them with the people that are following your activities?

Here’s a quick guide to setup a workflow that will publish a picture on flickr and announce it on twitter.

Open the accounts tab:

Insert your twitter credentials:

Give tarpipe permission to upload pictures to your flickr account:

Open the workflows tab:

Create a new workflow:

Give it a title and optionally a description:

Click on the MailDecoder connector:

Click on the Flickr connector:

Click on the TwitterUpdater connector:

Arrange the connectors around the canvas:

Connect the MailDecoder’s subject to the Flickr’s title:

Connect the MailDecoder’s imageAttachment to the Flickr’s picture:

Connect the MailDecoder’s subject to the TwitterUpdater’s title:

Connect the Flickr’s pictureUrl to the TwitterUpdater’s url:

Save the workflow:

Notice the email address that appeared above the “save workflow” button:

Now, simply take a picture with your cell phone and send it to this email address. Your subject line will be used as the picture’s title and also as the text posted to twitter:

That’s it. It might be a good idea to save the workflow email address as a contact on your cell phone. Now you can show everybody what you’re up to!

Oh, and don’t forget the sun blocker. Have fun!

We’ve been trying the new XMPP-to-tarpipe gateway created by Pedro Melo, and we must say that we’re impressed with its ease of use and added value.

The XMPP gateway lets you publish content through any REST based workflow. Simply subscribe to <REST_token>@tarpipe.simplicidade.org and you can start publishing right away. More information can be found at Pedro Melo’s original blog post.

Expect more related developments on the near future.

We’ve just launched the friendfeed connector, letting you share items directly from your workflows. You can share text only items or images.

This workflow creates a gateway from email to friendfeed. You can use it as it’s shown here or add other connectors to spread your information to different services. Give it a try and let us know what you think!

We’ve just added the Tumblr service to our growing list of connectors. You can start using this connector on your workflows. For now, you’ll be able to post text articles on Tumblr, as we’re adding support for other media types soon.

You can, for instance, post an article on Tumblr, announce it on twitter and bookmark it on del.icio.us. All this by sending an email message or using our API to contact your workflow.

This week was mostly devoted to bug fixing, UI prototyping and improving the workflow management system.

Here’s a list of activities:

• The new workflow management system was launched, having numerous improvements over the previous version, including parallel execution;
• The TinyURL connector was launched.

Regarding the possibility of opening the connector development, we’ve listened to your suggestions and have decided on a model to follow, inspired by github’s services integration.

To avoid facing potential security issues, third-party connectors will only be able to communicate with OAuth capable services. More on this subject next week.

We’ve also been testing on variations of the workflow editing interface. With the growing number of connectors, the interface needs to be simplified.

Thanks for all the feedback.

Hello again. This week we finally deployed our OAuth library, making possible the development of OAuth based connectors.

Here’s the activity list:

• Ruben Fonseca and Tiago Pinto joined forces and launched the TarPipe API for Ruby;
• Alcides Fonseca launched Dropipe, the first tarpipe desktop application;
• The Jaiku connector was launched;
• The Pownce connector was launched, being our first OAuth based connector.

We’ve been getting a lot of requests to let outside developers implement and deploy their own connectors. We’re currently studying a possible solution and will come back with news about this next week.

Thanks for all your suggestions and bug hunting.

Dropipe is the first desktop application that uses tarpipe’s API to upload pictures to the Web. It was written by Alcides Fonseca using the TarPipe Python API and is being shared with the AWL license.

It’s very easy to use:

1. Install it by dragging it into the Applications folder;
2. Optionally drag it to your dock;
3. Drag and drop any picture into it;
4. The first time it will ask you to enter your API key;
5. Just copy the API key from one of your workflows and you’re done.

For more information, and download instructions, please visit the Dropipe project page.

Do you have ideas for more applications or ways of using tarpipe on the desktop?

Hello everybody, it’s time for a wrap-up of what we’ve been doing lately. Besides small bug fixes and interface tweaks we used your suggestions about new services when choosing which connectors to launch.

So, here’s a list of activities for the passing week:

• The flickr connector was launched;
• The del.icio.us connector was launched;
• José Silva launched the Tarpipe.com PHP API, adding it to the previously launched Perl and Python implementations;
• We’ve created the tarpipe workflows flickr pool dedicated to workflow screenshots;
• We’ve created the tarpipe Google Group, a place to discuss and share thoughts about tarpipe.

Next week we’re moving into OAuth based services and adding more improvements to the user interface.

As before, if you have any suggestions, please let us know. Thanks!

We just released the flickr connector. From now on you can use it inside your workflows.

I’m sure you have plenty of workflow ideas, but here are two suggestions:

1. Send a picture from mail to flickr and announce it on twitter;
2. Send a picture to flickr and photobucket in one step.

To start using it, you need to give tarpipe permissions to upload pictures to your flickr account. As before, you can do that on the accounts tab.