Consequentia Mirabilis

In last few weeks i studied some RSS, GoogleReader and FriendFeed protocols and built yahoo Pipes “for fun and profit”. Here the list and the description, take it with some assumptions:

Every pipe you want to “use into a pipe” (by dropping it from left-menu) has as input a feed or a webpage, you can’t use it “in the middle” of an item feed analysis redirecting stream of item into it. This behaviour limits construction of “pipes as module”, then CLONE IT or TAKE IT AS INSPIRATION for your pipe.

List of my “public” pipes (consider this as freezed, if I’ll update it I’ll clone a 0.2 version and so on ..):

• CJFPM – Rss4FriendFeed – 0.1 : prepare an Rss feed to be more “appetible” from FriendFeed: remove “[feedly]” from title, build a better item.comment to post it as a plain comment on FF.

• CJFPM – Google Reader Posts Time normalizer by Share – 0.1 : this component normalize date/time of “share” for order items in date/time on rss.

• CJFPM – GoogleReader Badge to RSS – 0.1 : retrieves a Google Reader Badge OPML file, re-maps the item names and then downloads items for each feed. Use “CJFPM – Feed Attribution on Title” to add at every item attribution “from” incoming feed.

• CJFPM – Feed Attribution on Title – 0.1 : write an attribution mark on item.title of feed items.

• CJFPM – Feed-Buster – 0.1 : construct appropriate feeds and return feed elements using Feed-Buster that is “MediaInjection which injects media enclosure links into feed posts based on media present in the item description and content” and have a lot of other cool features (see Docs on Feed-Buster website).

If you have improvements / suggestions / requests: comment there or send me a direct message on FriendFeed!!

After few weeks on FriendFeed and few days gaming on Yahoo Pipes i made a Pipe that use OPML link generate from a GoogleReader Badge to extract RSS items, and enrich it (By Feed-Buster & co).

Waoaaaa!!!

You can find it here:

http://pipes.yahoo.com/cantorjf/publicopmltoff

In simple three steps:
1) Gererate Badge on Google Reader and take OPML Url.

2) Put it in the field and tune length of comment field to import on FriendFeed, then “Run Pipe”. Now you can take the link of rss feeds that is an aggregation of items of feeds in OPML.

3) Create a group, or a private room, import as “Custom/RSS Atom”.. et voilà

PS: if you use Goorle Reader in Https your badge link is in https, just use the same link in http

PS2: Comments and suggestions appreciated .. on FriendFeed!!

Friendfeed is a portmanteau of “user” and “network”, is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system.

Pwned!! The line above is the frst line of definition on Wikipedia for USENET.

Ok i know it don’t fit entirely, but from 1979 is quite good. Then we transit from MailingLists to Usenet, Usenet to Forums, Forums to Chat, Chat to Twitter, and then again on .. FriendFeed.

This tought make me tink.. and understand why the evolution of Social Networks after the disgregation of Usenet and Web 2.0 revolution  have for destiny reaggregation and reconstruction. Twitter is doomed? Nope! We only need again our personal Usenet.

There was a time when Google Reader saved us. In the world of web 2.0 it took my bookmarks, rss feeds and tag it , order it and last (but non at least) saved me from “local” rss client. Our life became simpler on reading news, blogs and sharing some of our favorites using tags and outgoing rss feeds. We had also with GReader,  Delicious, Twitter, Facebook … and a rid of Greasemonkey script that help us to sign tag manage and share around big G Reader.

Then something changed.

Social network’s people want to change the paradigm of web 2.0 “create, read, share”.. we want to comment, elaborate, share thoughts.. people want to have a “tumble” to sign what they like and follow the discussion about it .. want to be part of the wave, of the discussion between friends, experts and amateurs around the feeds.

Twitter is the mess of chat on news and sharing , FriendFeed exploit the concept of “like and discussion” taking the order on twitter “pseudo thread”, Facebook copied it and try to have his version of “like” and commenting threads.

But, wait a moment, Google Reader already thought about the feature of adding friends, share, have public and private feeds. It imagined the willing of people to discuss, “share & comment”, mail, blog.. but miss at the point of create a community! And that’s  what FriendFeed is trying to build right now.

Friendfeed is the live feeds visualization and twitter integration, personal rss and services subscription, “virtual feed” aggregation and filtering, grouping and (like all Social Media) definitively is a small “Big Brother” where the lurker has his own pure satisfaction just following a large number of “blogstar”.

I think Google (with his services) is really missing a big opportunity, because the integration of platforms like Google Reader, Google Groups, Google Docs, Google Mail and finally Google FriendConnect can really kick ass of any existing Social Media. I think that they have tech and ideas to build the new FriendFeed-Twitter-Facebook without the need of buying nor of three.

But, will Google take the challenge?

(Free to comment on FriendFeed http://ff.im/26BrJ)