How to Find the Best RSS Readers

By Jim on September 6th, 2003

Tired of surfing? Want to hang up your board? Through the magic of RSS, now the internet can come to you. All you need is a good RSS newsreader.

If you’re not clear on what RSS is, don’t sweat it. It’s simply an XML-based format used to syndicate articles from blogs, news content and other data. RSS turns the e-mail newsletter model on its head. Instead of having a publisher e-mail an update to you daily, weekly or hourly, they just have to create an XML file in a mostly standard format. Then you use an RSS reader to pick those XML files off the web, and translate them into easy to view content summaries.

RSS readers are software applications that make keeping up with your favorite news fast and easy. Instead visiting a site’s home page to see if there’s any cool new content, you can simply instruct your RSS reader to go check those sites regularly for any update. The reader will automatically pull down headlines and story summaries right to your desktop – without you having to run a browser or surf the ‘net.

Thousands of sites around the web create regular RSS feeds of their content – here at Ziff Davis Media we’ve got a Technology News feed from eWeek, an ExtremeTech feed, one from Microsoft Watch and another that highlights new product reviews on PCMag.com.

Read the Rest