Add functions to your mashups with Utility Mill

Utility Mill – Makes Utilities

Utility Mill looks like a kick ass hosted service for mashup development. It lets you create hosted web services that run your custom Python code, handling input and output in an easy way. This service fills a hole in the “mashup stack” by adding custom scripting functionality without the need for a server side scripting language. So, if you need to perform any kind of filtering or munging of your mashed up data, and you aren’t exactly a Javascript guru, you can still keep everything client side by passing your data through Utility Mill first.

Other really nice features include commentary, revision control,  and mandatory GPL licensing. It’s also not a bad way to pick up some Python knowledge–especially when you see contributors named “guido.” Here are a couple fun/interesting/useful ones I found:

• Markov_Chain_Parody_Text_Generator Give it a body of text and get some random yet sensical text back
• Porter_Stemming_Algorithm Strip endings of words to get to their root e.g., running -> run
• Create_Thumbnail Create a Thumbnail from an Image File
• Google_Chart_API_URL_Generator GUI for Google Chart API to create simple charts

and of course:

• MetaUtility Enter some Python. Run it. See the output.

I was able to register on the site and write a silly little UUID Generator in about three minutes 🙂

I’d really like to see this done for PHP or Ruby too.