Off the hip morning coffee commentary on two freshest hypes.
Powerset: It is difficult to figure out why behind questions. And people often make mistakes in forming their questions. In the end, I think Powerset search results will disappoint and Powerset users will end up typing in keywords. If their target market is occasional computer users, they have to be the default search engine on new computers, but I doubt they have the financial means to make that happen.
Pipes: I had a similar idea awhile back for which got the feedcrew.com domain. I stopped working on it when I realized the core problem which FeedCrew, Pipes, and Ning shares: success will lead to failure, meaning popular pipes will be cloned elsewhere with better tailor-fitted user experience and hand-coded performance. In the end, pipes will become too much of a resource drain to continue and Yahoo will have to shut the service down. Another case of reality tormenting geeky ideals.