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The Evernote Blog

Evernote Integration Spotlight: Tarpipe

Partners, Video | By Andrew Sinkov
 

tarpipe

We recently launched the Evernote API, which allows third party developers to integrate Evernote functionality into their applications and services. In this series, we will highlight some of the most exciting integrations.

What’s Tarpipe

Tarpipe simplifies the process of adding, sharing, and moving content among the web services you use, by allowing you to define a repeatable, automatic workflow. 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.

Example workflow: Searchable Twitter archive in Evernote

For example, you can create a workflow, in which an email subject becomes a Twitter message, that is then automatically sent into Evernote to create an archive of your tweets. Here’s a screenshot of what that workflow looks like in Tarpipe.

tarpipe2

Getting started

Using Tarpipe is relatively simple, and surprisingly fun.

  1. Create an account, then start a new a workflow.
  2. Decide how content will enter the workflow, either via email or a Mac desktop app called Dropipe. If you will be emailing, select “Mail drop box” from the receptor drop down and choose MailDecoder from the Connector list. If you will be using the Dropipe app, select REST API from the receptor drop down and choose RestDecoder from the Connector list.
  3. Select all the web services that you want your content to go to, and connect them to one another however you like. When you’re finished, hit Save.
  4. Now, email content to the generated email address, or use Dropipe.

The video below, narrated by Tarpipe’s Bruno Pedro, shows the creation and execution of a workflow that starts with Bruno dropping a screenshot onto the desktop application, and ends with the content in Evernote; Flickr, with tags populated with Evernote’s recognition data; and Twitter, with a link back to Flickr. To make all that happen, all Bruno did was drop an image onto the Dropipe app.


Use case: automatically tag a screenshot using Evernote.

Why this is cool

Tarpipe has created a very user friendly way to interact with Evernote, and other web services, on a level that’s usually reserved for programmers. For the less technical among us, like myself, it feels somewhat empowering to customize how data is published across the web. As a bonus, it adds new ways to add and share Evernote content. We like that.

The Evernote API

Learn more about the Evernote API on our developer page, and join over a hundred developers working with the Evernote API to create new and exciting integrations.

  • http://timlauer.org Tim Lauer

    I got this to work except for the tagging. The image on Flickr does not have any other tags except tarpipe… Any suggestions??

    Thanks

  • http://www.thegeniusfiles.com thegeniusfiles

    Wow, somehow I missed this announcement until today, but it looks very exciting! I can’t wait to try it out.

  • Sessoms

    @Tim Lauer
    @elpicha
    @Joe

    and hopefully @Bruno Pedro

    In my testing, tags for Flickr had to be added using the text_input connector. But that will only allow you the ability to add the same tag to each upload.

    It seems the weak link is in the Tarpipe connectors. The RestDecoder doesn’t have an input for tags. I suppose with the MailDecoder, you could use the Subject or Body inputs for tags.

    For the MailDecoder, it seems a nice-to-have feature would be to have the body tags parsed for code like “tag:yourtagname1, tag:yourtagname2″ to get tag information from the Body tag.

    As for getting tags into Evernote, since there is no input, I’m not sure how this will be done.

    But the example in the video is a bit misleading. The tarpipe tag is a generic tag given to all uploads to Flickr. But all the other tags are based on the recognitionData output from Evernote. In other words, whatever Evernotes’ OCR picks up from your image.

    It’s not the best way to add tags to your Flickr pics, IMHO. Who really tags their photos based on the words in the image? While that output might be good for other stuff, it doesn’t really make sense for tagging.

  • snuckit

    Does anyone else have problems with Dropipe and Mac OS X Snow Leopard? I try and open dropipe and it hangs. Might look at Pixelpipe instead.

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