RSS Basics - Information Trapping: Real-Time Research on the Web - page 13

The Big “So What?”
If you've read Web Search Garage , my topic on general Internet searching,
you know I have a “So What” test: whenever I hear about a new technology
or trend I say, “So what?” he So What is the payof, or what it's going to do
for me as a searcher. If it's just nity technology, that's ine, but I don't want
to spend too much time playing with technologies that aren't going to make
my searching, exploring, and teaching easier. here's just too much new
technology out there!
he So What for you, in the case of RSS, is saved time. Instead of visiting
several Web sites to get their latest articles, you can have an RSS feed reader
do it for you and provide a summary or list of site updates. Furthermore,
some RSS feeds give you lists of search engine results based on the queries
you specify—these are called “keyword-based RSS feeds,” which are very
important. (You'll learn more about these later in the chapter.) So instead of
having to run the same search over and over again (on an hourly, daily, or
weekly basis), the RSS feed will automatically update itself and provide you
with updated results and new content.
Let's look at a real-life, full-blown RSS feed scenario. I use NewsGator
Online (newsgator.com) as my RSS feed reader. An RSS feed reader, like
an HTML Web browser (such as Internet Explorer or Firefox), formats
RSS feeds so that people, as well as computers, can read them. My RSS feed
reader has about 100 RSS feeds—summary information about new addi-
tions to content on about 100 Web sites.
Can you imagine how long it would take me to visit every last one of those
sites to see what new content it had? With RSS feeds and the online feed
reader, however, I can skim through these sites in an hour or so.
RSS can save you lots and lots of time by showing you only new and updated
content from Web sites.