While our JMSC 6019 class has been having fun and getting familiar with Google Reader, Yahoo!, on the other hand has launched the beta version of Pipes which the company has described it as an “interactive feed aggregator and manipulator” and allow users to “create feeds that are more powerful, useful and relevant”.
Blogger and journalist Ryan Singel pointed out the need to have more sophisticated newsreaders among bloggers and programmers in his article Aggregators Attack Info Overload. Onlookers may wonder if the launching of Yahoo! Pipes is the kind of solutions that “herald the next big leap for life on the Internet.”
Yahoo! Pipes allows users to remix popular feed types and create data mashups using a visual editor. Popular computer book publisher, Tim O’Reilly said that its service is a milestone in the history of the internet.
“It’s a service that generalizes the idea of the mashup, providing a drag and drop editor that allows you to connect internet data sources, process them, and redirect the output. While it’s still a bit rough around the edges, it has enormous promise in turning the web into a programmable environment for everyone.” (Pipes and Filters for the Internet, 7 February 2007)
Even if you don’t want to become a programmer, the invention of all kinds of Web 2.0 tools has forced the general public to take a more active role in getting what they want. Similarly, news distribution technology has also developed in a speedy pace. First, we had the newsgroups in Outlook Express, then the personalized webpage such as My Yahoo! And now, the RSS newsreaders as introduced by J.D. Lasica.
So, on top of organizing news using the Google Reader, I went through Lasica’s list and decided to install the SharpReader, an RSS/Atom Aggregator for Windows onto my computer.
The experience of receiving wave after wave of news headlines when subscribing to the Homepage RSS of NYTIMES.COM, the latest published Stories of BBC News and the HK Standard, once again confirmed the importance of being able to write good lead in this time and age. However, even the best lead can be easily buried in the piles of incoming reports.
(Sneaking suspicion: I think the HK Standard has mistakenly included the date on its URL feed. That means users have to subscribe everyday. Shall I tell them about it? http://www.thestandard.com.hk/newsfeed/20070212/news.xml)
While I surfed through the internet and continued to subscribe to more feeds, I began to wonder to myself, how would I know that these feeds are really what I need? What can be done to avoid being fed or feeding people with junks? With so many kinds of tags out there, perhaps understanding a little bit about categorising/librarianship might also make online journalism a tidier place.
Further Reading:
- The Need for Feed(s) John Cartner discussed how online news aggregators like Google News are a blessing and a curse for the newspaper industry.
- Evolving Jobs: Tasting the “Flavors” of Web Journalism Adam Glenn explained Sreenath Sreenivasan’s description of the three models of journalistic jobs in the Internet-oriented era – the continuous news model, the editor-host model and the webified reporter model.
1 Comment
February 15, 2007 at 8:48 pm
Great stuff. Yes Pipes is a pretty amazing thing. Haven’t had much time to play with it myself yet but my geek friends wont shut up about it. Thanks also for some excellent links I hadn’t yet looked at.
You’re right The Standard’s feed is indeed borked. I just went back to my Newsreader to check it and realized it hasn’t updated in quite sometime (I confess – there are some sites I read on the web and not in my newsreader, while there are others I read only in my newsreader). By all means, might as well tell them!