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).