There are lots RSS reader applications available for iPhone and Android phones, but, unfortunately, most feeds contain only summary instead of complete news story. If you want to read complete story, you need to open a page using a link provided. Usually these links point to desktop version of the article, even when website has a mobile-optimized version which looks much better on small mobile phone screen and loads much faster.

You can convert original RSS using Yahoo Pipes into a mobile version by replacing original article links to mobile optimized version using some regular expression text replacements.

As an example, I will take RSS feed provided my APC magazine.

Go to Yahoo Piples website, enter your Yahoo account ID or create one, and click on “Create a pipe” link located on top of the page

A pipe editor window will load. Open “Sources” tab on left hand side menu and drag item “Fetch feed” into main editing area located in the centre of the screen.

A new window will be added to pipe editing area. Now paste RSS feed URL http://feeds.feedburner.com/apc-all into text field

After fetching feed from you need to replace its article link URL to optimized version. As mentioned above, not all sites have a mobile version available, so you can use Google Mobilizer service to convert any page into mobile version.

• Open “Operators” tab on left hand side menu and drag item “Regex” into main editing area.
• Put it under the “Fetch feed” item.
• Select “item.link” entry from “In” selection list. Put “^” (caret) character into “replace” textbox (caret charachter is located on button with digit “6″).
• Put string “http://www.google.com/gwt/x?u=” into “with” text box. Regex operation will put Google Mobilizer URL in front of original URL address.

Connect two boxes with “pipe” by dragging a mouse from connector at the bottom of “Fetch feed” box into top connector of “Regex” box. You should get the following:

• Drag “Create RSS” from “Operators” tab and place it under “Regex”. Connect “Regex” and “Create RSS” with pipe.
• Select values for title, description, link, PubDate and Author fields using corresponding item fields available in select box. Leave GUID, media:content and media:thumbnail empty.

Connect “Create RSS” with “Pipe output” box which is already located in editor area.

As a result you should get follwing diagram on your screen

Now click on “Refresh” link located at the bottom of editor area. RSS feed should be processed and output is displayed at the bottom of the screen

As you can see, original link was prefixed with Google Mobilizer, so RSS readers will open this page instead of original one.

Now save a new pipe using “Save” button at top right corner using some descriptive title like “APC Magazine Mobile Edition”. After that you can open your pipe in new browser window by clicking on “Run Pipe…” link on top of the screen.

Now you should get a screen with similar contents:

Click on “Get as RSS” link located on top of the article list. RSS list will be displayed with subscribtion options displayed (I’m using Firefox)

Now you can add this RSS to your favourite RSS reader by copying its URL. URL shortening service will simplify URL entry on mobile phone screen keyboard. You can also share created pipe with other users by clicking on “Publish” link.

Pipe could be customized for use with any other RSS feed by changing feed URL and Regex settings.

Resources:

• Yahoo Pipe page – http://pipes.yahoo.com/maxim/apcmobile
• RSS feed - http://goo.gl/ZOsN