| Using Yahoo Pipes to Keep Professionals Informed About Their Profession Richard Torian July 13, 2011 1. Introduction. Yahoo Pipes can be used to fetch feeds from several sources on the Internet. The sources of these feeds include: RSS outputs from individual websites Podcasts Blogs Feeds from YouTube Feeds generated from the Yahoo search engine when a search is conducted Feeds from the Bing News system Feeds from Google Alerts With Yahoo Pipes, a feed can be fetched from each of these feed sources. The feeds fetched are based on keyword terms of interest. Then, the fetched feed from each of these feed sources can be directed down a single pipe. Once directed down this single pipe, the cumulative feeds from the seven feed sources can be filtered based on more specific keywords than the initial keyword used to retrieve the feeds. The result from using Yahoo Pipes, as just described, is to obtain an output where the information from these seven sources deals with the terms being searched. The seven information sources contain enormous amounts of information, from which feeds are being generated. To be able to pull feeds, from the information in these seven sources, with very specific and relevant information to a topic of interest, I believe, is very useful. 2. Using Yahoo Pipes to Provide Professionals Information. One use of this Yahoo Pipes capability is to help professionals stay up to date on information related to their profession. This information is found in these seven Internet information sources. More efficient and effective ways of staying up to date in his (her) field would be useful to the professional. Using Yahoo Pipes, as described in this article, should increase the efficiency and effectiveness of staying up to date in a professional field. 3. An Example – Using Yahoo Pipes to Provide Information to the HVAC Professional. A Yahoo Pipe using the seven information sources described has been created. Click here to go to this Yahoo Pipes product. The Yahoo Pipe includes the capability for users to search for information flowing down the pipe by adding a search term in the "Search Box" and then clicking “Run Pipe”. The search results will be links to the websites where feeds originate from. Click the “List” tab for these links and descriptions of what is at the site. The results may also contain images contained in the feeds. Click the image tab to see these images. This Yahoo Pipes product uses a default search term in the search box. Simply insert a new search term (or terms) for searching on a topic related to HVAC that is of interest. To create this Yahoo Pipes product for HVAC professionals, several searches, using a search engine, were made to find relevant websites to the HVAC professional, which provide RSS, podcast, and/or blog feeds. The feeds’ URLs found at these websites were then selected and added to the Yahoo Pipes product. Feeds with the term HVAC coming from Yahoo's search engine, from YouTube, and from Bing News are pulled into the Yahoo Pipes product. Once all these feeds are pulled down the pipe then they can be further searched (filtered) on a term (or terms) entered in the search box by the user. The output seen by the user should be what HVAC-relevant websites are “broadcasting” about HVAC topics, through RSS, podcast, and blog feeds. The user will also have, in the output, feeds being released into the Bing News system, into YouTube, and from the sources that are used by Google Alerts. Finally, the output contains up to 20 websites (hits) found by the Yahoo search engine on using the term HVAC plus the inserted term (s) in the Search Box. 4. An Evaluation. So, how might using this Yahoo Pipes product for providing information to the HVAC professional compare to simply running a search using a search engine such as Google or Bing? Well, I did a comparison. I used the Yahoo Pipes product to search on various topics of interest to the HVAC professional (topics: HVAC problems; HVAC equipment; HVAC noise; HVAC troubleshooting; and HVAC training). Using these topics as search terms in the Yahoo Pipes product, I found 68 links. A subjective evaluation (i.e. my opinion) of the quality (value) of the information at these 68 sites led to this conclusion: 28% of the sites have poor quality information; 19% fair quality information; 41% OK quality information; and 12% good quality information. I then ran the same search terms using Google and evaluated the first 68 sites provided by Google using the same subjective evaluation (my opinion). I found: 59% of the sites have poor quality information; 19% fair quality information; 16% OK information; and 6% good information. I also found that in the 68 sites evaluated for each (68 – Yahoo Pipes and 68 – Google), 9 Yahoo Pipes sites were YouTube videos and 15 were blogs versus 3 YouTube videos and 1 blog for Google. I judge YouTube videos and blogs to usually be more useful to the professional than the usual website. On the basis of this subjective evaluation, my conclusion is that the Yahoo Pipes product provides a noticeable better return of information. However, a search engine does return much more information (more links to websites), although most of these websites are probably of poor quality for providing what the search is intended to provide. And, it will take more time to filter through the lower quality information when a search engine is used. 5. Yahoo Pipes Products for Other Professionals. A similar Yahoo Pipes product can be created for other professionals. As a professional, you may be interested in having access to a Yahoo Pipes product focused on your profession, which is similar to the HVAC product you can access from the link in Section 3 above. For a small fee ($20), I can create this product for you and then provide you the link to the product.. If you are interested in having a Yahoo Pipes product created like the HVAC product described in this article, please email me by clicking here. |