How to use YahooPipes...
Franticindustries just posted five intriguing ways to use YahooPipes. (HT: Lifehacker)
For example, number three:
News in English
What is it and how it’s done? Reddit, Netscape, and Digg are not enough for you? Aching to read what the Europeans are voting on, but you just don’t have the language skills? No worries. In this pipe, I’ve taken the top 10 items from Spanish site Meneame.net, as well as German and French versions of Wikio, and created a single feed in English.
How useful is it? Well, it’s not bad. I’ve taken a silly example, but being able to take feeds in many different languages and turn them into one feed in a language of your choice will surely be very useful for many users.
Link: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/2E8akQO62xGrchCW0kqv4w
RSS: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/2E8akQO62xGrchCW0kqv4w/run?_render=rss
I'd love to see newspapers harness a technology like this so that their online readers can have access to rich context surrounding a single subject. Here's one user-generated pipe aggregating blogs relating to 2008 presidential candidates. (You'll have to login with a Yahoo password to get access to YahooPipes.)
One problem would be that newspapers would have to allow multiple inbound strings of information outside of their own brand, wire service or media partnership...
...course, I don't see that as an impediment.
(Also see related Yahoo story in MyDigimedia)