Yahoo! Pipes

If you've read about Yahoo! Pipes already chances are your interest has at least been piqued, the concept is definitely interesting.  Take a look at the official description:

Pipes is a free online service that lets you remix popular feed types and create data mashups using a visual editor. You can use Pipes to run your own web projects, or publish and share your own web services without ever having to write a line of code.

While Pipes certainly sounds powerful it's safe to say that the service is still in a beta-ish state. There's plenty of functionality, don't get me wrong, but every time I've had a stroke of inspiration I've found the service woefully lacking. It's not really enough to mash a couple feeds together, you really want the ability to quantify and label your results - right now Pipes really only lets you list them.

Despite being in its infancy, though, Pipes has a great deal of potential. In its current form Pipes can be used to combine multiple feeds, search multiple sites, and even filter your results. Earlier today I setup a 'pipe' that combines a couple of my favorite video game comic feeds, filters out any "news" items, and shows only the new comics (or their permalinks.) It may not seem like a lot but because I almost never read the "News" posts it certainly cuts down on clutter in my Feed Reader - it also combined three seperate RSS feeds into one.

Over the next couple of days I'm going to share some very basic uses for Pipes that I've found.  The goal, really, is just to show off some of the things you can do while using Yahoo!'s new service.  If you're at all interested in Yahoo! Pipes please feel free to share your questions or insights.