Twitter + Yahoo Pipes = Signal

In my last post about Twitter, I shared my No. 1 reason for using Twitter is for the resources shared, including blog posts, news items and cool tools people find on the web.

The challenge for me is twofold:

1. I don't want to miss anything that's shared
2. I don't have time to watch Twitter all day long (let alone some-of-the-day long)

A few days ago, Ryan Anderson (@ryananderson) posed a question about how to create a stream of only those items on Twitter with a URL. Within minutes -- literally minutes (thanks to @kaziel) -- Ryan got the answer and shared that too!  Yahoo Pipes.

Now, I can be away from the computer all day and not miss a URL shared by those I follow. Look see (click to enlarge):

That's a snapshot of what appears in my feed aggregator (I use GreatNews). I subscribed to the RSS feed of the Pipe I created at Yahoo.

Nice, huh?  What's that?  Oh yeah...how to do it.  First, you need to open a Yahoo Pipes account (it's free -- and if you use MyBlogLog, you already have a Yahoo account).

UPDATE: Via a comment on Will Richardson's site (thanks to Sue Waters), there seems to be a quicker fix on Yahoo Pipes- just input your twitter name

Here are the steps once you create your Yahoo or Pipes account:

1. Go to your Twitter home page and grab the RSS feed.  If you have trouble finding it, it's at the bottom lower left of the page and looks something like this: http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline/915051.rss
2. Go to my Yahoo Pipes page and "clone" the pipe. You'll find the "clone" button center-screen, just above RSS feed icon.
3. Click on "edit source", which gives you a screen like this:
   
4. Replace the Twitter feed in the clone with your own (see step 1). Save (upper right of the Pipes screen) and publish.
5. Grab the RSS feed and subscribe in whatever aggregator you use.

That's it. Tweet, right? Now you can be sure to catch a clear signal of resources you find on Twitter without having to read each and every item.