Some time ago I created a "Top Commenters" widget for Blogger using Yahoo Pipes. Unfortunately my efforts to use the resulting RSS directly failed. The problem was that Blogger was displaying older entries, even though I tried a bunch of different things to convince it that the element were new (like setting the date, adding random characters to the name and/or the link). Even after extensive discussions on the Blogger Help Group I couldn’t figure it out.

So I give it up and embed directly the Blogger widget offered by Yahoo. I didn’t want to go this way for two reasons: I didn’t want my readers to have to load an other javascript. Also from a security stand point, it is better not to load Javascript / Flash from third party sources (not that I don’t trust Yahoo, but better safe than sorry).

PS. I checked out some alternative RSS manipulation services, but none of them could deliver HTML in a sinkable enough format. So until Yahoo offers HTML out or I figure out the mysteries of the Blogger RSS fetcher, I’m stuck with this solution.

Image taken from Tomas Caspers’ photostream with permission.