It’s not often (especially lately) we thank Yahoo for making the internet cooler but I’d like to today.  Introducing Yahoo Pipes (beta), fyi..without the beta it wouldn’t be considered cutting edge. Yahoo Pipes may be the coolest way to actually manage and create your own information stream and useful tool for getting information you really want from a variety of sources.  Here’s the video that describes what it is and how it works:

Yahoo Pipes Video

The great thing about it is you can share your Pipes, meaning after you’ve created a great filter and data pipe others can use it or clone it to make it there own and/or tweak it to do what they need it to do.  It’s worth doing a search for SEO or your own industry and seeing all the ways others are starting to use Yahoo Pipes.

A typical business could use this (especially the cloning) to stay on top of their industry and get ideas about future products, where people are talking about their product etc. and it would much more powerful than Google News Alerts (but they are great too).  If you have other uses for Yahoo Pipes, please share.