There is so much information available on the internet, newspapers, television, radio, podcasts, books and more…that it’s really, really hard to stay on top of it all!

I’ve used NewsGator in the past (which I prefer visually to Bloglines) but Bloglines allows me to expose my bookmarks to the public and NewsGator doesn’t. Pretty cool and useful since I have my list o’ links that I view every day (some times multiple times per day). It allows me — at a glance — to snag hundreds of headlines and blog posts (though interestingly it’s much faster to scan formulaic news sites vs. blogs).

I get many requests each month from people that I send some relevant piece of information to that is started off with, “How the
hell did you find that!?!” and viewing these sites are one way I do. Like I’ve talked about here on my blog in the past, the amount of information I’m being exposed to and am consuming is like drinking from a firehose (right now I have 21 hours worth of unlistened podcasts sitting on my iPod!). There are days when I just want to pull the covers over my head and shut it down, but mostly I’m delighted it’s so incredibly simple to skim dozens and dozens sites and blogs through a single interface.

Oh yeah…all of this is brought to you by a simple XML specification called RSS (flavors are Rich Site Summary or RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) which allows a “feed” of what is posted to be delivered to a “subscriber” of that feed with no muss or fuss. At some point in the near future, expect to have “feed clearing houses” that allow you to select feeds that are customized just for you.