Yahoo Pipes is feed aggregator that lets you mix and match RSS feeds. According to the early reviews, the big advance is that Yahoo Pipes has a user interface that even novices--that would be me--can follow. The first screen looks easy enough. Maybe I'll become Mr. RSS-mixer too. Here's a walkthrough.
After a few clicks--and a few errors--Yahoo Pipes asks me if I want to create a Pipe. Sure why not?
So now what? Things are a bit slow. I want instant gratification.
Ah an little helper appears. Lovely.
Now I'm on my way. Little pop-up helpers walk me through.
Ok, now I have my components (still not completely sure what I'm doing though).
The general idea is I want to search for all tech news and monitor Techmeme and ZDNet's blogs.
Well I thought I was on the right path (all I really wanted to do is draw the pipes together anyway). Error time.
So I swap a few URLs. This time of RSS feeds. Still can't get these pipes to connect. Again that's all I want to do anyway.
Back to the drawing board. I try some of the basic sources. Google Base and Yahoo Search for instance. The good news: I did connect a pipe. Communication failures abound.
I give up. Maybe I should have read the directions (that mistake again).
I click Ok and this is what I get. In summary: I don't know what I'm doing because I'm a novice or idiot. (I prefer the former.) I'll leave the Web revolution to someone else.