As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a Google Reader fanatic. Nothing else handles RSS as smoothly as it does.

The one gigantic failing of Google Reader is that you cannot receive password-protected feeds that request user authentication. I think that sucks. A lot.

So I created a Yahoo Pipe to work around this failing.

Just go to the appropriate pipe and run it. It will prompt you for the feed’s URL, your username and your password. Enter all that information, and you’ll get your own private URL you can use in Google Reader (or any other http:auth-challenged RSS reader).

Warning! Feeds accessed in this way are open to everybody, so if you’re using NewsGator or Bloglines or some other service that shares your feeds with the world, be sure to set the feed un-shared. Otherwise you might get your private access summarily cut off when it’s determined that your personal password is effectively being broadcast to the world. Also, your Yahoo Pipes URL will contain your login and password, so even if you’re okay with giving the world access to premium content, you may not be so pleased about sharing your password with the same unwashed masses. You have been warned. Caveat RSS reader.