Filter for Online Information

N the World Wide Web, people can track political polemics, movie star malapropisms and financial fiascoes. The trouble is, hopping from site to site in search of the latest Mel Gibson can waste hours. Now there's a tool that promises to automatically capture just the information you want, when you want, from the Web.

Called R.S.S. (the initials are variously said to stand for Rich Site Summary, Really Simple Syndication and more obscure formulations), this increasingly popular online tool turns a morass of disparate information sources into an automatically generated and neatly organized index of the latest articles and postings.

Based on a programming language (XML, or extensible Markup Language) already used to create many Web sites, R.S.S. enables Internet developers to post short site summaries describing recently added or updated items and links. Those postings are then scanned automatically by programs called R.S.S. readers to deliver specialized news-wire-style "feeds" to interested readers. These feeds, or news channels, are like personally tailored executive summaries containing dozens or even hundreds of headlines on a specific topic.

R.S.S. may sound suspiciously like the derided Pointcast service of the mid-1990's. Point cast was a "push" application that broadcast a programmed and seemingly endless stream of headlines and advertising over the Internet. It tied up corporate networks and slowed personal computers. So it wasn't long before users got tired of being pushed around and dropped the service. Read this full article:

Fine-Tuning Your Filter for Online Information