Chapter 1. Gotta Get My RSS

It's morning and you're checking your email. Your in-box is stuffed, with both real email and spam. Your stomach tightens. How are you ever going to wade through all that mail before the morning meeting?

Now it's afternoon, and it's time to do some research on the Internet. You're supposed to be keeping track of the latest developments in your field, and the task has proven far harder than you thought. When you search the Internet for the latest news, you get 17 million pages, some dating back years. How can you possibly sort through all those pages to get just this month's news?

Let's face it, it's great that the Internet has made finding information simpler and quicker than ever. But it's also a problem: People are drowning in piles of information to work through. By some estimates, it takes a worker two hours a day just to respond to emails.

Much of the trouble is that until recently it has been difficult to choose where your information comes from. When you use a search engine to find information, you're searching more than 3 billion World Wide Web resources at once. When you open your email program, anyone (and sometimes it feels like everyone) is dumping email on you.

That's where RSS comes in. And this book is your guided tour to all the secrets of RSS.