Yahoo! Pipes – a meshup of feeds

I know I am fairly late with this, but this is absolutely astounding! Yahoo! Pipes let’s users create their own feeds based on any information on the web. Here is an example of a meta-search-feed:

The pipe you’re looking at demonstrates how to use a few of the more powerful modules. In this example a variety of sources are queried with the same term. The results are merged into one feed. Next, all the items are sorted by what was most recently published. Finally any items with identical titles are removed and a new RSS feed is born.

This is how it looks like:

pipes.jpg

Once you have created a pipe, you can subscribe to the feed via the usual suspects – bloglines in my case.

Apparently you can meshup all sorts of types of information. A popular one for example is a mixture of appartments for rent and google maps.

A fascinating example of how „plattforms“ and „programming“ become less important, because users only meshup what is of interest to them any way. Question is: how can marketers make sure that users still receive marketing messages? (And like receiving them, at the same time – that will be even more important!)

A good article about twitter

a good article about twitter you can read at the wall street journal.

It is, by all means a very polarising service, some hate it, some use it, and most of those using it, seem to be addicted…

These services elicit mixed feelings in the technology-savvy people who have been their early adopters. Fans say they are a good way to keep in touch with busy friends. But some users are starting to feel „too“ connected, as they grapple with check-in messages at odd hours, higher cellphone bills and the need to tell acquaintances to stop announcing what they’re having for dinner.

Defend your reputation

Interesting – someone launched a start up that takes care of your online reputation, called reputation defender.

Or so they claim. A good Idea, I think, since many people will most likely have been careless with what they do online, before they found out that this data will always be visible…

I do it, headhunters do it, journalists do it. Once you get to know a new person, you ask Google about the digital trail of this person. So it would be embarrassing, if there were videos or photos of that person being utterly wasted at some college party…

Reputation defender apparently helps in this situation by „cleaning“ the web from your embarrassing videos, photos, etc. All against a small fee, of course.

He charges $9.95 per month to $15.95 per month, depending on how long a customer signs up for the service. The company will then crawl the Web looking for comments or material that refelect negatively on you, and charge an extra $29.95 for each attempt to get the material removed, whether or not is successful.

I just wonder, how helpful this really will be, since

Presumably, only comments considered “libelous, slanderous, defamatory or invasive can” legally be forced off the Web.

And there isn’t even any guarantee attached to it!