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Nov 26, 2007

WordieFeed+

I realized a few weeks ago that Wordie’s RSS feed stopped including links to look up each particular word on a variety of dictionaries and thesauruses, and I’ve been passively dwelling ever since on what I could do to spice it back up a bit.  I threw this Yahoo pipe together in about 30 minutes to add in icons and links to display each feed item identically as it appears on the wordie.org page.

I’ve tested so far in Outlook 2007 and imported the feed into my own blog (see previous post) with no problems.  Please try it out in other feed readers and feel free to offer suggestions on how I can improve the feed even more.

http://pipes.yahoo.com/adora/wordiefeedplus

EDIT: Oh yeah, did I mention that it looks great in Tumblr, too? =]

6 Comments, Comment or Ping

  1. Personalife

    Yay, well done! I never use Wordie, but if you can instruct me on how to import it into Outlook, I can help test it for you.

    Nov 27th, 2007

  2. Adora

    1. Open the word list you want to push through the pipe. Wordie’s had some bad links lately, but I found you can get to your lists via wordie.org > you > your lists. Here’s a link to one of mine to use as an example: http://wordie.org/people/adora?wl=6957

    2. Copy the “Feed” link underneath the title of the list. Again, here’s mine: http://wordie.org/people/feed/adora?wl=6957

    3. Open the WordieFeed+ page, paste the feed URL into the text box, and click Run Pipe. The List section of the screen will populate with your list.

    4. Yahoo can automatically add the feed to tons of services just by clicking the appropriate buttons, but Outlook just wants the RSS feed. You can find it by clicking More Options > Get as RSS. Here is mine.

    5. RSS feeds are managed in Outlook 2007 by navigating to Tools > Account Settings > RSS Feeds. Click New and paste in the RSS link you just copied from Yahoo. After you click Add, you’ll see a screen that will let you change the name of the feed and the folder items will be stored in. The defaults should be ok, so click OK.

    That’s it! Items from your feed will appear in the RSS Feeds folder in less than a minute.

    Nov 27th, 2007

  3. Personalife

    Okay, it works. However, does wordie also have the definition in the RSS? It’s kind of annoying to have to click the various links to see a definition.

    Nov 27th, 2007

  4. Adora

    It doesn’t, actually. The definitions are nowhere on the site. I *might* be able to work out including them in the feed, but that could easily get pretty complicated.

    Nov 27th, 2007

  5. John

    This is John, the guy who built Wordie. Adora, thanks so much for doing this, it’s great. One thing, though: as of a few weeks ago, most dictionary words do have a definition on the site. It’s kind of subtle: check the grey text to the right of the word:
    http://wordie.org/words/pipe

    Nov 28th, 2007

  6. Adora

    Ahh, ok…I had only checked “experimentalize” from my test post when he asked about it since it was a handy link. Glad to see that feature added!

    Are there any plans to make the definition part of the feed as well?

    Nov 29th, 2007

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