It takes effort to explain the significance of a new product when the immediate benefit to consumers may not be so obvious, and the awkwardly named “pipes” from Yahoo! is no exception. The product name is taken from the world of UNIX where a pipe is a conduit for the transfer of data between applications, while with the Yahoo product it is a conduit for data between web services. In a basic form Yahoo! Pipes allows you to take data from one or more sources and to bring it together, for example – to aggregate a group of feeds.

But Yahoo! Pipes goes beyond what just pipes are and what pipes do though as the application provides functions (or as they are called in the app – modules) that will perform a variety of different actions. There are modules available to prompt the user for input (a variety of input types), different operators to count, loop, cut, count, sort and merge data along with a variety of string and date functions. Because of this already broad base of available functions, Yahoo! Pipes is more akin to a shell scripting environment for the web rather than just a simple conduit between applications. It works like a visual procedural programming language with the output of the process dropping out at the bottom, in the form of text output, RSS, SMS alerts of even JSON. You can use feeds, user input or other pipes as input.

The beauty of the application is with its simplicity – a user can take any sources, user input requests or the above mentioned module and drag+drop them into place and then connect the pipes. Within minutes I had built an application (also known as a pipe, they should probably change the name as not everything can be a pipe) that would search for ‘Techcrunch’ in a variety of feeds, bring that data together, sort it and filter it for unique results. I saved the application and published it, from where I can now execute it at any time and receive the output in a variety of formats. I can take a copy of an existing pipe (application, argggh) and use it as a base template for my own pipe and I can browse an existing library of pipes.

Pipes can take any feed as input, and combined with the already available list of functions proves to be very powerful – my mind is still buzzing thinking about all that can be done with Pipes. I think some of the terminology needs to be cleared up, there needs to be a better introduction on the main page – but besides that this product is fantastic. It was inevitable that such a product would be released, and it is very good for Yahoo! that they managed to be the first of the big web companies to release such a product. The fact that they include Google Base as a default source in Pipes shows that the web is much more about interoperability than the desktop ever was or ever will be.

See Anil Dash, Tim O’Reilly and Jeremey Zawodny for more.

Facebook released an API last year and new startup Mosoto is putting it to good use. Mosoto is a Flex 2.0 application that sits on top of your Facebook account via the API and allows you to share files, chat with friends, and discover new ones. The app has a desktop layout, where you control different mini applications for sharing files, chatting, discovering friends, and sharing music.

The chat client controls most of the action, listing which of your Facebook friends, friends of friends, and Facebook networks you’ve joined. By hovering over the names, Mosoto alerts you to the similarities between your profiles. If you find someone that looks interesting, you can befriend and poke them right through the chat window. Chatting is one on one, with groups of friends, or even all of your friends within a network.

From within the chat roster, you can share files with your friends using a free 1GB Box.net account. You can share and open files like pictures, songs, and videos using their in-browser file list and file viewers. The most interesting type of file sharing Mosoto does is with music. Mosoto lets you upload songs into your Box account and string them together in play lists your friends can play through and remix. The music player lists all the music and lists your friends have, and lets you mix songs from your friends accounts into your own play lists.

Mosoto is looking to release in the middle of March, but is still taking beta testers through their Facebook group. The project is self funded and was created by a of a team of five recent University of Arizona graduates: Girard Kelly, Seth Lesky, Louis Tran, Srinivasan Chandrasekharan, and Paul Chung.

See the video below for a great overview of the product, with the cheesiest background music ever.

Monster.com is a fat target. It has a market cap of nearly $7 billion and generates over $1 billion per year in revenue. All that revenue is largely generated on paid job listings, starting off at $475 for a single listing. Hotjobs and a bunch of other services provide similar services, all for a fee. Even Craigslist charges for job listings in many markets.

Seattle-based Jobster, which has raised nearly $50 million in venture capital, previously had a similar model – charging employers a lot of money to help them find qualified candidates. But late last year they made a decision to try something different. They went through a round of layoffs earlier this year and are making a dramatic business model shift starting tonight, by making all job listings free (and much more).

Their goal is to do what PlentyOfFish is doing to Match.com. PlentyOfFish is a dating site very much like Match, but doesn’t charge its users to hook them up. The company is doing quite well based solely on advertising revenue, and has been a serious thorn in the side of the for-pay dating sites. By reducing the cost of a job listing to zero, Jobster hopes to make a large dent in Monster’s billion dollar a year revenue stream.

Jobster is also a social network, and is more like Facebook or LinkedIn than Monster.com or other job sites. Like LinkedIn, it’s a place people can keep their resume up to date at all times, even when they aren’t looking for a job. Users also tag themselves (your top five tags are called “supertags”), and Jobster will notify you of jobs that may fit your profile. See CEO Jason Goldberg’s profile page for an example. All of this tag-based matching comes from Jobby, a company Jobster acquired last year. Tags also help users match with other users, and additional information.

Employers can start listing jobs immediately and for free. The form (see image below) has just five fields (Company, Title, Location, Description, Tags). The employer will immediately be alerted to potential candidates based on the tags, and candidates will also see the opportunity appear within their profile. Jobster is also syndicating these listings out via RSS and other methods, so job search engines like Simply Hired and Indeed will be able to add these to other listings from around the web. Edgeio (a company I co-founded) will be one of the first partners to integrate Jobster data into their listings.

Given that Jobster already has a large footprint in the job listing space, this is more than an experiment. It’s a full frontal assault on Monster’s business model. This can also hit LinkedIn indirectly if people start focusing on Jobster as a more interesting place to keep their resumes and contacts. Monster will probably be keeping an alert eye on how Jobster is doing, and this may also force them to update their aging platform and pricing models to more modern standards. For employers and job seekers, this is nothing but good news.

In the same press release announcing the new product, Jobster also confirms the rumor that they have become Facebook’s exclusive partner for job listings (beating out Monster.com and others). The new functionality will be available this Spring.

The folks over at eSnips have created a simple website for tracking “Web 2.0″ traffic trends. The website uses Alexa data. I’d love to see someone create a similar website that ranks these Web 2.0 websites (or rather, these ones) by using various other measurements, such as # of backlinks in Technorati and # of mentions on blogs indexed by Technorati.

Editor’s Note: This post was written by guest contributor Steve Poland, whose blog Techquila Shots brainstorms web start-up ideas.

Facebook is testing virtual gifts – small icons that you can give to other Facebook members to be displayed on their pages in the “wall” section as well as a new gift area. The test is running with members from just a couple of select schools at this time.

The gifts icons were designed by Susan Kare, the designer of the original Mac icons. Gifts can be sent publicly or privately (public gifts will show everyone the name of the giver, private gifts only show the icon). Each virtual gift costs $1, although right now they are free.

In a brilliant marketing move to kick this off, Facebook is donating the February net proceeds from the virtual gifts to charity. After that, they’re keeping the money. I would expect this to be a significant revenue generator for them by year-end.

The reason I say this is because “poking” is already such a big activity on Facebook, where you reach out to other users. When you pay money to do the same thing, it will mean more, and people will be sucked into doing it. If and when Facebook launches premium gifts, people will be buying those, too. I’d also expect them to sell really high end “limited edition” icons as well in limited supplies.

Recent jobs at Crunchboard:

• PR/Sales pros at Lewis PR in SF, SD and Boston
• Web Developer/ Web Design at Addesso Systems in Boston, MA
• Senior Web Developer at Sony in San Diego, CA
• Director, Digital Product Development at NBC Universal in New York, NY
• Manager, Digital Product Development at NBC in New York, NY
• Online Graphic Artist at San Jose Mercury News in San Jose, CA
• Software Development Engineer at Amazon in Detroit, MI
• Lead Quality Assurance Engineer at New York Times in New York, NY
• Senior or Lead Java Developers at Travelocity in Manhattan, NY
• Lead Software Engineer at a stealth startup in San Francisco, CA
• Retail Producer/Project Manager, Signs and Collateral at Apple in Cupertino, CA
• Director of Business Development at eBuddy in San Francisco / Palo Alto

Tomorrow, Scrapblog, a hybrid media-sharing and online journal site, will be demoing the new version of their Flash-based online scrapbook application at the We Media Conference in Miami. The public version of the new product will be out in March. Co-founder Carlos Garcia let me in for a quick look around at the redesign, though, and I liked what I saw. Scrapblog was already a great product. The new version runs more smoothly, has the look and feel of a proper desktop application, and has incorporated more types of media and editing tools.

The new version has the same drag and drop functionality of the original, but more closely mimics a desktop application by following the same menu bar metaphors along with a full screen option. They have also beefed up the editing features a bit without making it too intensive for the web. Users will be able to use “edit” and “properties” toolboxes to control transformations on photo and layers, effects, as well as photo cropping. Transitions between frames have also been added (various types of fades and wipes).

The release will allow users to import photos from more sites sites, such as Webshots, Photobucket, and Yahoo!. They only supported Flickr previously. Audio and video will also be added to the product. Users will have the option of having songs play along with their Scrapblog slide show and embedding YouTube videos into their pages. You will be able to rotate and scale the videos just like photos. Scrapblog also hopes to have the slide shows import into YouTube as well. Scrapbook pages can already be exported into Flickr accounts.

Scrapblog is shaping up nicely and looks to be branching out of the scrapbook niche as it more closely resembles slide show web apps like RockYou, BubbleShare, Slide, Photobucket, and Filmloop.

Scrapblog is currently privately financed through Carlos Garcia’s previous company Nobox.

At CrunchGear this week, we have “Apple Vs. World,” an exciting match-up complete with in-depth analysis from both sides of the ring. We examine the gamut of Apple criticisms and commendations in an effort to satiate sympathizers lying in either trench. So be there this week to witness the continuation of the most epic battle in tech.

Only at CrunchGear!

Reporters at a Sydney, Australia newspaper discovered an embarrassing flaw in Google’s Map product – Google recommends a 10.4 kilometer trip, across the harbor and back, to go the thirty steps from Google’s Sydney headquarters to a hotel located across the street. The suggested route would also include a AU$3 bridge toll. Any query for driving directions from areas east, south or west of Google’s headquarters will suggest the same detour across the harbor, using a toll tunnel or bridge.

Google is blaming MapData Sciences, the Sydney-based company that supplies the mapping data to Google, for the problem. I imagine MapData is working on a fix rather urgently.

Another humorous image of this is here.

Condé Nast can’t really be called a pure magazine publishing company any longer. They acquired Digg-clone Reddit last year, adding a user generated news site to their stable of offline and online magazines. And today they launched a social networking site aimed at teen girls called Flip.

The majority of Flip is content created by users, called Flipbooks. It consists of customizable, rich media blog/journals and include text, photos, music and videos. Users can also customize their Flipbooks with stickers, templates and other decorations available on the site. Flip also has four content channels: My Life; Entertainment; Style; and The World. Each channel highlights user content and also has professional editorial, presumably grabbed from other Condé Nast publications.

One thing Flip doesn’t seem particularly concerned with at this time is security of its users. Unlike Piczo, which also caters to a young teen audience, Flip profiles are freely browsable and searchable. This allows the site to create more networks and generates extra page views, but it also allows predators to browse profiles of young teenage girls. Given that Piczo has seen tremendous growth even with these precautions in place, I’m surprised Flip didn’t copy them.

Nonprofit social networking site Change.org is launching this morning and hopes to change the way the average person or activist interacts with nonprofits. The site focuses on getting users to issues they care about – ending hunger, stopping global warming, etc. Users can sound off on issues, but the site also recommends that these users donate their time and money to the causes they support. Unlike other recent sites we’ve seen, Change.org doesn’t reek of smugness.

The site consists of social networking’s usual suspects, profiles, friends, messaging, groups, and a personal blog. Groups, in this context, are called “changes” and are meant to join together like-minded people around social changes they feel passionate about. In private beta, groups have been formed around topics such as “Stop Global Warming” and “Save Net Neutrality“. Each group gets a comment thread and blog to chat on along with a photo gallery to post pictures or videos.

The other half of the site is the nonprofits the users can organize around. They have already populated a database (powered by Guidestar) of over one million nonprofits, but I could only find 100 profiles through their search engine. Each of the profiled nonprofits has a bio, user reviews, photos, videos, and community blog. Users can befriend a nonprofit and let everyone else know by becoming a supporter of the organization.

Each nonprofit also gets a project page, where they can ask members to donate money to fund special projects or just the general fund. Donations are either taken by credit card ($10 min) on the organization’s page, or can be solicited by individual Change.org users who write up a pitch highlighting why it’s important to give. All donations are redistributed to the respective nonprofits through JustGive.org. Change.org takes 1% of every dollar donated. Change also hopes to support its operations through promotional campaigns nonprofits would launch on the site.

Members can also donate time instead of money by participating in the “Actions” page, which is a Google maps enabled classified listing of volunteer activities, resolutions, events in your zip code. Anyone, including the nonprofits can post to the list.

The site has been a project for Ben Rattray over the past two years, joined by Stanford friend Mark Dimas and a supporting team of Darren Haas, Rajiv Gupta, and Adam Cheyer. Change.org is currently funded by friends and family.