Yahoo Pipes and reducing information overload

2008-02-28T00:00:00-08:00

I've been suffering from some information overload. I subscribed to Engadget and Gizmodo because I wanted to keep up with some home based network devices like homeplug/powerline and wireless routers. But Engadget and Gizmodo are overwhelming.

Finally I decided... to write a pipe. If you're not familiar with Yahoo's Pipes it is the best thing to come out of Yahoo! (Flickr and del.icio.us are acquisitions originally). Pipes is what Yahoo! should be doing:

It's niche oriented: It appeals highly to geeks who understand pipes, yet it's very learnable, so you don't need to know how to program to use it.
It's got a great UI. The user interface is great, you drag and drop inputs and outputs - again very learnable.
It's very useful. As I'll show you, below.
It harnesses the technology that a large company that Yahoo! can provide that might otherwise be difficult: Pipes has to store a lot of data from RSS feeds, to screen scrapes, to anything that you feed it. Using Yahoo! technology it's trivial to obtain and process all that.
It's not a clone or a "me too" of other products: This is completely original, and very appealing.

So my pipes take a regexp filter (e.g. "delicious" or if your clever "delicious|Yahoo|Google") and give me items that match in a selection of RSS feeds. So it aggregates things like Engadget and Gizmodo and gives you just what you want to see:

Take a look: Gadget Filter

I also made a copy called Technology Filter which aggregates the SF Chronicle and TechCrunch.

Try them out, remember you can customize the filters... not everyone likes what I like ;)

Dave Dash

Yahoo Pipes and reducing information overload