Yahoo! Pipes looks like a product that could change the way web designers and developers consume and user RSS. Pipes are a familiar terminology if you have ever done any Unix command line work. Pipes in Unix-land allow you to route the output of one tool into the input of another tool. The pipe character | is used as a separator between each command. So what makes Yahoo Pipes revolutionary? Well to start it provides a drag-and-drop interface that allows you to connect RSS feeds from multiple sources and perform operations like sorting, counting, and grouping. And it does this without requiring the developer or designer to write a single line of code.

There is some really good discussion and analysis of this new service from the likes of Tim O’Reilly, Jeremy Zawodny, Niall Kennedy, Richard MacManus, and even Google’s Matt Cutts.

Pin in the map is an interesting yet simple mashup that allows you to annotate a position on a map then send a link to that point to your friends. For example, if you went to a great restaurant, you could locate it on the map, add a description, then send the resulting page to your friends and family.

The most recent short book release by Pragmatic Programmers is titled - Google Maps and Ajax. It outlines and explains how to hookup Google Maps, Geo Coding and AJAX to create a simple mashup.