My first Yahoo! Pipes feed: Matthom's Stuff

February 18, 2007 / Filed under: Flickr, Pipes, RSS, Yahoo

I've just created my first Yahoo! Pipes feed, using the following sources:

What Pipes does is mash all of the RSS feeds into one, large, "master feed." You can include as many sources as you'd like, and add a bunch of different filtering, sorting, or other options to narrow down exactly the content you want to see.

Screenshot of Yahoo! Pipes

I call this feed Matthom's Stuff, and it pulls all recent posts and sorts it in descending order (most recent to least recent). If you want, you can subscribe to this feed instead of each individual feed from the sources listed above.

I didn't get too fancy with it just yet. I am still learning how to use the Pipes interface.

Distinct Flickr photo titles

I did add one cool thing, though. (Well, I think it's cool.)

For my Flickr photo updates, it only pulls unique titles, meaning if there are two or more Flickr photos with the same title, it only pulls one of those photos.

This is to help limit the clutter in your RSS inbox.

I often take photos in "groups," with the same title. For example, if I decide to photograph the snow outside my house - instead of taking just one photo, I tend to take a bunch of photos, ie: different angles, etc. And then I'll title each photo identically, for the sake of brevity.

In your feed reader, you probably don't need to see every single photo that I took of the snow. As long as you see one, you know there could be more, and you can follow the feed link to the Flickr site to view the rest.

This goes back to my initial belief that an RSS reader is best used a notification tool - rather than the main source for the content. In the case of my Flickr photo updates - your RSS reader just notifies you that "photos from this topic" (snow, being the topic) have been posted.

So, in a sense, it pulls distinct photo titles, which is the effect I was after.

I'd also like to include...

I'd like to include more content into this Pipes feed, but I am hesitant at the moment. I do have other sources of content that could be included in the feed, such as my YouTube videos, my Google Reader shared items (linklog), and much more.

I'd also like to only includes Pain in the Tech posts from me, rather than all authors. (For the sake of it being Matthom's stuff.)

I'll experiment with adding these items later.

Comments/Mentions