WHAT'S RSS?

I take it from your question that you're still browsing the web the OLD FASHIONED way! RSS is a kind of XML that allows you to distribute and aggregate web content. Using an RSS aggregating client (like the aformentioned RssReader), you can poll RSS-enabled web sites (many news sites, including BBC and Yahoo! News, and most blogs, including ours, support RSS in one form or another).

Check out this BBC article on why you might want to use RSS.

There are lots of RSS aggregating clients. Some are standalone apps (like RssReader), some are integreted into IM aggregation applications (like Trillian), some are Outlook or IE plug-ins. Within a year, I'm betting, RSS readers will be integrated into most new browsers and email applications (the Mozilla Project's FireFox already has it.

I set my RssReader to receive updates of Eisentgeist, Today's Tomorrow's Headlines, Bagpiper's Road, and Yahoo! News Top Stories every 10 minutes. (Oh, be carefull -- Slashdot gets mad if you poll them more than once every 30 minutes, the luddites.)