RSS Basics - Information Trapping: Real-Time Research on the Web - page 8

To do static, one-time searches on the Web, you use one type of tool—a Web
browser. (You may not think of your copy of Firefox as a tool, but it is!) To
do information trapping, you need a whole other set of tools. Your browser
will still come in handy, but its main function is to help you set your traps.
You also need to know about a technology called RSS, which stands for
either Rich Site Summary or RDF Site Summary, depending on who you
ask. And it helps to know a little bit about page monitors, for those occa-
sions when RSS won't do.
his chapter and the next take a close look at what these tools are and how
they work. Before diving into the creation of information traps, which you'll
do in Chapter 5, take some time to explore the resources presented in this
chapter and Chapter 3, and try some experimenting on your own. When
you're inished, you'll be fully prepared for integrating the tools into a set of
basic information traps in Chapter 5.
For now, let's focus on RSS and what you can do with it—including even
the weird things!
What Is RSS?
RSS is a type of XML. hat's the short answer. But unfortunately, the short
answer is not always the most useful one. he long answer is more helpful—
it's important to understand a little about XML in order to fully appreciate
the value of RSS.
XML holds the key
Web pages are oten written in HyperText Markup Language, or HTML. he
“markups” are computer code that looks <like this> and speciies how cer-
tain characters, words, and sections of a page should look. An HTML ile is
simply a text ile formatted so that your browser displays it in a certain way.
HTML is just one way to format a text ile. Another method is to use eXtensible
Markup Language, or XML. Like HTML, an XML ile looks like a text ile that's
formatted a certain way, but it speciies a lot more than plain, old HTML.
In HTML, the markup tells you what the title of the page is, and there are
ways to tell what the keywords and description of the page are. And that's