Enjoy reading news and blogs without the clutter of a browser.

Does anyone remember Pointcast? This free program was all the rage in 1996. People used it to build their own newspapers by downloading content from different online sources. At many companies Pointcast was so popular, Internet access ground to a halt at 9:05 every morning as everyone simultaneously powered on their PC and tried to download Dave Barry's latest column.

Fast-forward to the 21st century. People are once again aggregating their news, this time with RSS, a new, lightweight technology. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary (depending on who you're talking to). Either way, it's an XML standard for syndicating content via the Internet. A site with an RSS URL is offering its content in XML so programs other than Web browsers can fetch and format it.

Without RSS there wouldn't be newsreaders such as NetNewsWire for Mac OS X and Wildgrape's truly wonderful NewsDesk for Windows. These programs let you read news, blog entries, and the like without being cluttered by a general-purpose browser. I use them all the time to check news headlines. They do much the same thing as Pointcast did, but with many more content choices and without clogging the network.

If you want to create your own newspaper with just the content you want, download an RSS reader. And if you run a site with content you want other folks to read, make sure you support RSS.