RSS: The NYT is very parsimonious about what it gives out on those feeds -- five or six stories, and an annoying amount of crossover (between Arts and Books for instance you might get 12 links to the same 9 stories).

Scrapers: that framework seems designed for search engines only. Although I suppose it might address many of the same ideas.

Good points about find_all_links and the O'Reilly thing, thanks.