I love RSS feeds, but sometimes one site will cover way too many things and post way too often, clogging up Google Reader with stuff I know ahead of time I don’t want. Lifehacker is a good example of this and there are lots of posts about Linux, Macs and iPhones that I would normally just filter through the titles and skip 80% of the posts (even filtered I only read 14%). I managed to filter my Lifehacker using a hand crafted RSS url:
Most sites aren’t capable of filtering out content based on tags or categories so that’s where Yahoo Pipes comes in. You add a source feed and then filter it like so:
That filters a bunch of stuff out of the feed that I don’t care about and as things show up I don’t like I can filter out that specific tag. It’s a shame that most sites don’t offer an easy way to customize RSS feeds. I created a feed customization system for CSUSB’s news site at my old job and it let’s you pick exactly what you want. Something like this would be great on a WordPress blog. But check out my filtered Engadget HD feed:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=EK_rxZG53RG32mxg6ycw5g&_render=rss
I don’t subscribe to very many sites like slashdot where you get a TON of updates….but if I ever do this is a great way to control what you see. Actually, maybe I’ll use it for realclearpolitics and set it to only show me Thomas Sowell. I haven’t found a way to get his posts in RSS because townhall doesn’t support it.
For being such a big geek, I actually have very few technology RSS feeds. I’ll read 100% of Dan’s Data, but I hardly read anything on Slashdot now. I’ll probably just drop it. Even Engadget HD hasn’t been posting much that I like.
I have a bunch of Personal Finance subscriptions, but now that I’ve been learning about it for over 2 years there aren’t many posts I find worth reading. You can only read about debt snowballing and investing in index funds so many times before the content becomes cursory.