I just just wanted to share a perfect example of using the sed command...
I am a multimedia and web-designer and often have to change multiple items throughout websites. Long story short, one of my clients needed their e-mail address's changed throughout their ENTIRE site. The site is fairly large, with roughly 50 pages or so (greenhouse with a page for all varieties of plant

.
By using the sed command, I was able to search the ENTIRE site and replace the old e-mail address's with the new one. If I were to have to opened each .html file in nano I would have shot myself...This turned a lengthy job into a 2 min project.
FYI.
If you are planning on using any of the illegal characters in the sed command, make sure to use the '\' prior to the character itself.
ie. #: sed 's/info@youroldaddress\.com/info@yournewservice\.st\.com/g' .html
Hope this sheds some light on ONE of it's MANY, MANY uses...and hopefully if your in the same situation, helps you out!
Enjoy,
Jimmi
jarhed