instant history

A few summers ago, I was guest editing a blog that covered a few topics I had only loosely tracked before. Since my job was to find and post the most interesting overlooked bits, I gave Yahoo! Pipes a look as a way to create a “news scanner,” and I was really happy with the result, dubbed IvyTrack ... when it worked.

Unfortunately, RSS feeds had a knack for not loading, but today I’m giving it another go with a guide on how to set up your own news topic tracker, including ways to get instant alerts through AOL IM or GChat when news on your beat breaks. Today, it’s all about speed, and Yahoo! Pipes can be a great tool on getting the heads up. Read on for the full guide ...

I decided to take the numbers* of print editions and compare them to a small percentage of online "subscribers,**" in this case public Bloglines subscriptions. First time, so I might not have subscribed to the largest feeds, subscriber-wise:

*Source: Audit Bureau of Circulations as reported by USA today on 5/8/2006.
**Bloglines.com public subscribers to newspaper websites' front page rss feeds. If no feeds automatically detected, searched site for news feed.
***Could not ascertain primary rss feed. Chose most popular bloglines RSS feed.