Introduction

So the first type of service that interests me, and hopefully you too, are Really Simple Syndication (RSS) Readers or News Aggregators. My understanding of these types of services is that they can be either Software on your computer, WebPages, or add-ons to your Email. RSS Readers can save you time by automatically pulling together feeds from sites that interest you; such as Blogs or news sites or any other site for that matter that has RSS feeds. RSS Readers are kind of like a butler or an assistant, who goes out in real time and finds the most up to date information for you based on the information that you said you wanted to see. This is by setting up RSS Feeds. Then they bring it all back to you and put it in front of your face by populating it into their, easy to use, user interface.

A quick Google search yields a huge number of these services, such as bloglines, netvibes and newsgator to name a few. So the question is which is the best one? Well it depends on your personal preferences. Each one has its own unique layout and personality. So whichever one you like, that is the best one for you. However my purpose is to give you more information to assist you in your choice. If you are like me you like to try things out but you do not want to have to download a bunch of programs to find out what you like. You also may not want to have a bunch of internet logins, with passwords that you have to remember. That is where I come in. So check back to see which reader I am reviewing.

So what will the criteria be? For me I want things that are easy to setup and easy to use. I want them to do what they promise and work every time. Since there are literally millions of feeds out there, for simplicity sake, here is a list of the ones that I will be using to test each service:

1. ESPN - http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/rss/news
2. MSNBC - http://feeds.feedburner.com/msntop
3. BBC - http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/world/rss.xml
4. Wired - http://feeds.wired.com/wired/index
5. Discovery - http://dsc.discovery.com/news/xml/top-stories.xml
6. Dilbert - http://feeds.feedburner.com/DilbertDailyStrip
7. NY Times - http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml
8. Engadget - http://feeds.engadget.com/weblogsinc/engadget

I am not endorsing any of these, I am simply utilizing feeds from different sources in order to gauge how well a reader works. Let the testing begin!