More of a fun experiment than anything else, but the Pig Shell is worth playing with:
For a proper "Web UNIX" we need:
- websites talking in structured data (not just plain text)
- less propertiary bullshit (hint: keep sales & marketing people away from APIs)
- ability to conveniently pipe them together anywhere (not on a third-party, complexity-hiding, feature-limiting site like IFTTT)
When I can start typing things like these in my own, local shell:
@twitter.com/me/tweets/latest | sort > tweets.log
echo tweets.log | @facebook.com/me/post/new --activity "Feeling: Happy" --photo /tmp/HN.jpg
(where @ is a somewhat general web communication utility)then we'll have a web UNIX.