I wouldn't bother using Socket unless you have a real good reason. I've done a bit of Socket development myself. It really forces you to learn what the protocol is *really* doing. Once you are done understanding it, or no-longer care to, just use LWP:

 # Create a user agent object
 use LWP::UserAgent;
 $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
 $ua->agent("MyApp/0.1 ");

 # Create a request
 my $req = HTTP::Request->new(POST => 'http://www.perl.com/cgi-bin/Bug
+Glimpse');
 $req->content_type('application/x-www-form-urlencoded');
 $req->content('match=www&errors=0');

 # Pass request to the user agent and get a response back
 my $res = $ua->request($req);
[download]

--Good Luck ;)