Since working on a social media plan for my group here at Cisco, I’ve been exploring all the options for searching and aggregating key words into a single place.  Tools such as google alerts, technorati, alltop, and the old fasioned rss feeds are all great tools and I use them frequently, but I love yahoo pipes.  For those of you who don’t know what yahoo pipes is, it is a web app that aggregates information from accross the web into one place.  For example I have created a pipe that searches accross Q&A type forums such as yahoo answers and linkedIn answers for specific key words.  It then brings in all questions and dicussions according to my filters.  There is really so much you can do with this excellent app, and I’m only really at the tip of the ice berg.  One thing I love about pipes is the potential for customization.  There is a bit of a learning curve and at first glance, it may look very intimidating and I think this is the reason why it hasn’t really taken off.  I found it best to look at other people’s saved pipes and make changes best fit for your purposes.