Recently Published Lens List

❶Go to the Squidoo Lens Builder Link

This link will take you to a Yahoo Pipe page but don't be frightened. In the middle you will see an input area like the image above this section.

❷Enter your Lensmaster Name

Enter your Squidoo lensmaster name instead of mine (Kate-Phizackerley). By default the feed will return all the lenses you have published in the past month but you can change the Publication Period from "1 month ago" to "1 week ago" or "10 days ago" or whatever you fancy if you don't want 1 month.

It's easiest just to leave it and it should give a reasonable number of lenses - remember you don't have to show them all.

❸Click on "Run Pipe"

That will run the pipe and create your own customised newsfeed.

❹Click on "Get as RSS"

The browser window will change to show your new newsfeed - check it has your items. If it hasn't then you probably mispelt your lensmsaster name, so go back and try it again, making sure you include any dashes. When correct, copy the address from your browser's address bar - this is your own personal newsfeed.

❺Add to Squidoo

Finally, add it to your Squidoo lens using an "RSS: Add your blog" module. The URL address of your special newsfeed goes in the "What URL would you like to pull RSS from?" box. I also prefer to change the option to display everything available rather than just the title, but that is up to you.

If you prefer, you could add it to your blog.

If you just want to use it, you don't need to know how this works, but for the techies who wish to understand, and perhaps customise it, this is how it works.

It relies on a Yahoo Pipe. Firslty that uses YQL to pull in the feed of lenses, using a String Builder to build the YQL string. Next some regex converts the full text date to a YYYYMMDD format which is compared with a input date (with a default of "1 month ago") in the same format, discarding anything older than that. It's also worth noting that I use YQL rather than the easier Feed component as the pre-packaged feed is limited to 50 items. I obviously want my tool to work for Giant Squids so I have used YQL which avoids this limitation.

Finally the remaining list of lenses is sorted to show the most recent first.