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Xpenser is a perfect illustration of a data flow service. It simplifies the recording of business expenses, producing simple reports and recording the various stages of reimbursement.

Xpenser – Tour via kwout

The applications strengths are in its convenience and simplicity. Once an account is set up expenses can be logged by:

• email
• SMS
• instant messaging
• voice
• web site
• browser toolbars

In all cases, the message takes a simple standard form

e.g. “lunch $35 with Fred, Ginger”

Xpenser then parses your message extracting a category, price and notes to add to a fresh entry in your current report. When you’re ready to process your expenses you can export your data in Excel, Quicken, MS Money or Freshbooks format.

You can also export your data as a secure RSS feed for display or transformation. With an API in the pipeline Xpenser will be capable of tighter integration with other business systems.

People like to be able to choose how they’re kept up to date. While the use of RSS and ATOM feeds are becoming an essential part of any web presence, an opt-in email newsletter remains an important marketing and communications tool. Integral Impressions release of Nourish helps streamline the production and delivery of a newsletter based on RSS feeds.

Nourish – RSS to Email Service – Blog Powered Newsletters via kwout

The service takes a single RSS feed, or an aggregation of several feeds, formats the posts articles and emails the resulting newsletter to subscribers. With flexible scheduling options, subscriber management and the ability to apply custom templates, Nourish produces professional results with minimal additional work.

Nourish – RSS to Email Service – Blog Powered Newsletters via kwout

Once set up, the process runs itself allowing you to focus on content without the distraction of needing to rework the text for different formats.

xFruits offer a range of services for transforming information to and from RSS feeds. A popular example is their RSS to Mobile web service.

xFruits – Compose your information system via kwout

This takes an RSS feed and formats its content for ease of reading and navigation on small screen mobile devices.

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To see the difference this makes take a look at these Opera Mini emulations:

• original website

• xFruits RSS to Mobile version

Information is the lifeblood of any business, but our arteries are clogged with data. Yahoo Pipes gives us a way of turning the data into information and letting it flow.

Yahoo Pipes via kwout

Pipes is a drag and drop programming environment through which you can channel data feeds from public sources like Flickr, YouTube, Google Base, Google News, Yahoo Search or any other source that provides XML or CSV output. Feeds can be automatically analyzed, combined, processed, formatted, sorted and tagged. The output from a feed can be delivered as a list on a web page, a map, an email message or an RSS feed that you can read in your favorite aggregator.

Pipes – Source Modules via kwout

An good example of a practical, business-like Pipe is Jyotirmaya Nanda’s “Financial Headline News by using Company Ticker Symbol”.

Pipes: Financial Headline News by using Company Ticker Symbol (Finance) via kwout

When fed a stock ticker symbol this pipe gathers, filters and sorts related news from Yahoo, Technorati, Vox and others to give a condensed list of the most recent relevant headlines. While useful in its own right, Jyotirmaya’s Pipe is also a good starting point from which to develop a filtered feed of your own selected news sources.

Google Base is not one of the most talked about web applications, but it is quietly becoming an important element in many e-commerce systems. Using the application you can store and share an unlimited volume of structured information of various types including personal ads., event listings, recipes and real estate listing. And, of course, there are products for sale; 1.5 billion products. Product information from Google Base is displayed to consumers through Google Product Search, but in true Web 2.0 style it can also be included in mashups, gadgets, widgets and aggregators using the Google Base API, rss feeds etc.

Loading and storing records is free and can be accomplished in a number of ways. Individual records can be entered by hand, batches can be uploaded from spreadsheets or using tools like Site All’s Base Feeder, while those with Amazon, Ebay or osCommerce stores can upload listings automatically using a store connector.

Matthias Zenger’s presentation at Google Developer’s day in Hamburg gives a comprehensive description of structure of Google Base, and also of its programming interfaces.

One of the most significant characteristics of Google Base is it’s flexibility. Simply through working with RSS feeds customers are able to monitor product prices from multiple stores conveniently in their favorite reader, on Netvibes, in iGoogle or on their cellphone. Meanwhile businesses can use similar feeds to display their latest offerings on websites, in widgets, on web pages or in social network applications.