RSS feeds and news aggregators

Other day I was asked about how I get exposed to certain information. My answer, RSS feeds and a good news aggregator.

NY Times, BBC, Fast Company are examples of companies publishing information accessible using RSS feeds. Besides media companies another use for RSS feeds is to keep track of individual blog entries.

Google "RSS feeds" for an "official" definition, but to quickly sum up, instead of using a browser and needing to visit the NY times, BBC, and Fast Company Web sites to view content, simply subscribe to those sites' RSS feeds and view their content using software called a "news aggregator" (sometimes just aggregrator). There are plenty of free aggregators available. The one I'm currently using is feedreader.