RSS and Atom Newsreaders

RSS is a family of XML file formats for web syndication used by news websites and weblogs. The abbreviation stands for one of the following standards:

Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91)
RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9, 1.0 and 1.1)
Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)

The RSS formats provide web content or summaries of web content together with links to the full versions of the content, and other meta-data. This information is delivered as an XML file called RSS feed, webfeed, RSS stream, or RSS channel. In addition to facilitating syndication, RSS allows a website's frequent readers to track updates on the site using a news aggregator.

RSS aggregators, also known as newsreaders, feed readers, feed aggregators, and news aggregators, are dedicated programs, webpages or online services that collect syndicated content from disparate sources and provide a consolidated view.

One of the most popular online aggregators is Bloglines.

Aggregator programs that run on your computer may be standalone software or applications that integrate into a program that you already use, such as Microsoft Outlook and the Mozilla browser.

There are many RSS aggregators programs, and three comprehensive lists of them can be found at Abbe Normal’s Weblog/Wiki, News Aggregators Directory, and Lockergnome’s RSS Resources.

The one that I have started using is Newzie. Newzie is much more than an RSS and Atom feed news aggregater, it transfers content from OPML, downloads podcasts, browses the web, searches the web using all search engines from one box, and manages your bookmarks.

It has a very nice interface allowing it to run a News Bar at the top of your screen, and a Popup Notifier from the system tray.