I subscribe(d) to a number of security mailing lists to stay up to date with vulnerabilities with the software and web applications that I use. However, with so many messages coming through, and many of them unrelated to the stuff I actually use, I started to get bogged down with all the email. In an effort to move some of this communication over to Google Reader (which I've fallen in love with all over again), I decided it was time to try Yahoo! Pipes.

Pipes is something that I remember getting excited about when I heard Rasmus Lerdorf talk about it during his keynote at the Vancouver PHP Conference last year. I thought it would be fun to create a web application to aggregate and filter RSS feeds that I would distribute as open source, and got as far as designing the architecture for the app using CodeIgniter. I have a lot of projects on the go however and haven't yet found the time to complete this project.

Then I came across a great Pipes tutorial via Performancing that helped me get my Pipe up and running in less than 10 minutes. I've got two feeds in there:  

• http://www.securityfocus.com/rss/vulnerabilities.xml
• http://www.webappsec.org/rss/websecurity.rss

I tried to add Secunia.com's feed but Pipes choked on this one (not sure why, it validates.) I'd also like to subscribe to SecurityTracker via RSS, but it doesn't look like they have a feed running. 

I have almost a dozen applications that I am filtering the feeds for (and I'll surely be adding more):

• Mozilla
• Drupal
• WordPress
• WebCalendar
• PHPlist
• ZenCart
• SendCard
• OpenAds
• Plogger
• Pligg
• OpenOffice

I am subscribed to the resulting Pipes feed in Google Reader and have said adios to those mailing lists. Yippee!