Wired has an article about RSS and news aggregators.
Maniacally wired netizens who read a hundred blogs a day and just as many news sources are turning to a new breed of software, called newsreaders or aggregators, to help them manage information overload.
Many now say that their news aggregator is as indispensable as their e-mail client.
Aggregators, such as NewsGator and AmphetaDesk, allow users to subscribe to feeds from sources as diverse as the BBC, Sci-Fi Today, Slashdot and thousands of bloggers across the world. The services work by checking an Internet address at a regular interval, usually once an hour, to see if new content has been added.
I don’t read 200 blogs and 200 news sources a day. At some point, I believe our culture has an information fetish which is unhealthy. And many news sources suck. Finding a few entertaining and informative feeds is enough, and this is one way I keep up on hobbies such as web site design and development. Many prominent bloggers and designers run feeds which I keep track of to know when they have new content.
SharpReader runs on Microsoft’s .NET framework and is the aggregator I prefer to use since it’s interface is similar to that of an email program with three panes and allows you to group feeds into categories.
I have full post and excerpts RSS 2.0 feeds and a full post RSS 1.0 feed.
I hope this article and some of these links help you get started with RSS and news aggregators. Unless of course you’re not interested, but you’re simply glad to understand 2 phrases more that I utter on ocassion (pokes Cora).
Update: I’ve got my regular post feed and a comments feed (both of which redirect to Feedburner).
You’re so funny. You know what else is funny? Prank calls. You know what’s even funnier than that? Explaining to your mom why I’m calling her cell number to get a date with Mark. hee hee