Mar 21, 2007
Chemical pipe works
Mitch Garcia of UC Berkeley seems to be far more expert with the latest web 2.0 tool that lets you produce your own search algorithms than I, so I asked him to look into creating a Yahoo Pipe to allow anyone to search as many chemistry journals as possible that offer ASAP and in press papers online. And, much kudos to him, he has done just that. Here’s chemistry journals search pipe. He explains the process and the limitations in a little more detail on his own blog.
Give it a try and let us know what you think. What makes this tool totally tubular is that once you’ve run a search using a pipe, the results are their own RSS feed, which means you can subscribe to the results with your news reader (My Yahoo, Bloglines, Google Reader etc). Even more intriguing is the idea that you could presumably then use that feed as the basis for creating an even more sophisticated Pipe of your own.
For instance, this feed displays the results from Mitch’s Pipe searching all those chemistry journals for the word greenhouse. It’s quite unlikely that there will be any gardening papers in the ACS, RSC or Wiley chemistry journals, so you can be fairly sure that this feed will bring you the latest papers on greenhouse gases and their effects. Combine that with a feed for global warming, and one for climate change, and you should have the niche covered.
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Andrew Sun said,
March 22, 2007 at 4:53 pm
It has a nice Web 2.0 interface, but how is it different from Google RSS Alert and Personalize Search, no offense?
Mark C R UK said,
March 22, 2007 at 5:07 pm
I’m currently having a play around with it. I use Google Reader plus my (BT) Yahoo! home page currently. The “filtration” aid sounds promising.
It’s complex - but like any tool it takes time to get to grips with - it was similar to Google Reader in that regard. I suspect that they will be complementary to each other!
The “CLONE” command is useful. I’m experimenting with personalising Mitch’s version a little more … for myself. I thank Mitch for making it available.
It’s much like Google Reader’s importing of an OPML file with all the feeds to begin with… I suppose I could have made the effort to use that - import it into Yahoo! pipes then play around. But using the scaffold made by Mitch is quicker.
The “semantic filter” - that which allows filtering of articles with specific keywords in - is something I have suggested to the Google Reader developers earlier on their groups system.
Either way I looks like it could be useful!
David Bradley said,
March 22, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Yes, it’s definitely complicated, but Mitch has done a lot of the leg work that can then be cloned to tailor his pipe to your own personal needs. As far as I can tell, the big difference between Pipes and GAlerts is that you can pull in a whole range of feeds and search threads, filter on different atributes and then output a single rss results page. As I understand it a straight GAlert is just a dynamic search result output is it not? Mitch can probably explain the advantages better than I.