Tech Per

Often, I find the DZone Popular links feed a bit flooded. I subscribe to it, to follow interesting developer discussions, but sometimes I find, that a post gets to be considered “popular” a bit too easily. More likely, what makes a post “popular” is a quite individual matter, which calls for a more personalized way to get the dzone feed. Yahoo Pipes to the rescue! I have used it, to create a mashup of the feed, where I apply filtering on the number of votes, comments and clicks. And you can use it too.

Using The Feed

For those who just wanna go directly to the feed, you can go here: The DZone Really Popular Feed. When you get there, use the form input to control the thresholds for how many up and down votes, comments and clicks that, in your opinion, makes a really popular post, and then subscribe to that feed. As easy as that

How I Made The Feed

Here’s how easy I did the pipe with Yahoo Pipes (see pic).

I took a “Fetch Feed” component as input, and configured it to get the DZone front page feed. I then piped it into a “Filter” component, which in turn was setup to filter on votes, comments and clicks (properties of the feed). I then added 4 number input components, and connected them as input filter configuration to the filter component. These are the 4 input fields, that my DZone Really Popular pipe feed shows, and what makes it configurable to your taste.

Some Numbers

In the last 2 or 3 days, I have been running both the “old” DZone frontpage feed and my own feed, configured to show those with more than 10 ups and less than 3 downs, and it has been holding up about a 1:4 ratio (as in, whenever there are one post in “my” feed, there are four in the dzone frontpage feed)

Comparing it to the DZone queued links feed (where all the new dzone posts comes in), “my” feed configuration holds up about a 1:11 ratio.

What About Voting Then?

One might argue, that this is a bit selfish, as I only get to see the popular entries, if someone takes the time, to vote on them. If I only see the popular ones, I will never get to vote the newcomers up. I am hoping, that reading a more filtered feed will give me some extra time, to have a look at the newcomers instead. Time will tell.

If you find the piped feed useful, or have other good advice on reading dzone effectively, consider leaving a note here!