RSS Feed Tools

These days it's not easy being an infowarrior. As the number of blogs and niche news sites continue to soar, how do you keep on top of everything?While most Netizens still surf to Web sites to catch the latest postings, more users have found that to be a laborious, time-consuming way to browse. Instead they are installing "newsreader" software that constantly plucks feeds from Weblogs and news outlets and pulls them together onto a single screen.That, in a nutshell, is RSS (short for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication). It's a Web tool that lets you create a personalized news experience by building an ad hoc online network of friends, experts and news sources. Minutes after they post a new story or blog entry, it arrives on your screen as a headline and short summary or in its entirety. Call it "news that comes to you."After a couple of hours of subscribing to favorite feeds, your news grazing habits will be changed forever. Just as TiVo lets you watch TV more efficiently, RSS readers do the same by letting you scan your favorite blogs and news sites faster or letting you cast your net over a wider range of material.RSS readers, first introduced in 1999, are still fairly new and need some time to mature. What would the perfect RSS newsreader of the future look like? I'd like to see my newsreader offer far more flexibility in letting me prioritize and rank feeds from different sources, perhaps giving more weight to The New York Times than blogger Glenn Reynolds -- or vice versa. I'd like RSS feeds assigned to different reporters and columnists, so I could read their writings almost instantly. I want relevant graphics and images in my RSS feeds. I'd like a better interface between my RSS reader and Weblog software so I can comment on the news faster and easier.Some or all of that may be coming in future generations of the tools. For now, current RSS readers still help me manage my time better. To help you get productive, we've listed the RSS feeds of some popular blogs and sites at the end of this article. (Some RSS programs come loaded with dozens of pre-installed channels.)Speedreading the Net is just the first step. How do you archive, access and creatively use the news you come across? We've checked out a handful of other productivity tools you'll likely find useful.