As an Internet addict news junkie, every few hours I sit in front of a computer and click my way through my web favorites to see which of them might have added something new.

I like to keep up on the news in the world, my industry and stay informed about my personal hobbies and interests.

Sharp Reader presents headlines in a three-pane interface similar to e-mail programs This is the list of subscribed feeds in Sharp Reader SharpReader stays in the System Tray. When it encounters a new story, one of these boxes will pop up on your screen for a few seconds, time enough to click on them if you'd like.

The Internet is a great tool for doing this, but somehow it seems like there might be a more efficient way to go through this process. Why click on the Washington Post web site four times a day just to see if something new happened since the last time you checked? Wouldn’t it be great if somehow you could know that something new had been added to a site you often visit? That way if your time was limited you could hone in on the sites with new content, rather than clicking all over looking for it.

Then there are all those sites down near the bottom of your favorites list that you liked when you visited, but haven’t had time to get back to. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to scan the headlines there as well without visiting twenty websites every day?

Welcome to the world of RSS, XML, and news aggregators. This may indeed be the “next big thing” to come out of the Internet. Without getting too technical, RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” or “Rich Site Summary” or something like that depending on who you believe. Basically web sites create “feeds” or “streams” of XML, which is just code people put on their web site ready to be mechanically read and formatted into an application, which can be a program on your computer, cell phone or other device. It can even be another web page.

This technology has been growing in tandem with Internet “blogs.” A blog, short for “web log,” is essentially an open diary compiled by an Internet user about any subject you can imagine. Some of the most popular and influential blogs concern politics, but there are people blogging about pretty much everything. Many blogging tools automatically produce RSS feeds. A news aggregator is an excellent way to keep up with your favorite blogs, because they all update with different frequencies at different times.

News aggregators are software applications that reach out and get the RSS/XML feeds. Like your e-mail program, they can remember what pieces you’ve read and what you haven’t, so if anything is new it can be highlighted and listed with new items from other streams from other websites. Refresh at any time, and you’ll be presented with a list of headlines for stories that have been added to the websites you selected since the last time you used the application. If you're interested in the headline presented, click on it and you’ll go directly to the article on the web site. If you’re not interested, just mark it read and move on. The information may also be searched and filtered in other ways, so if you want to choose everything from the last half hour or the last hour you can do that.

There are some web-based aggregators out there that will let you log in to see your list of content assembled in a web site. One aggregator shareware program will actually add aggregator functionality to some versions of Microsoft Outlook. Another will integrate with Microsoft's Internet Explorer, There are several other stand alone programs with different features, different looks, different ways of accomplishing the same tasks.

The software I’ve been using is called SharpReader, which is free, though the gentleman who created it will accept donations through his website. It’s simple to use, but it’s a bit more complicated to install than most commercial software. You need to make sure you have the .Net Framework from Microsoft installed from Windows Update, then you download and unzip files into a directory you create. If you want it in your start menu or on your desktop you’re going to have to create a shortcut and put it there yourself. If you’re comfortable with that, installation is a breeze.

RSS Links Finding news feeds Feedster CompleteRSS Syndic8 RSS Aggregator Software SharpReader Awasu Newsgator Pluck for Mac: Shrook Selected RSS Feeds Feedster's Top 100 Feeds Wired News New York Times: Technology CNET News.com MTV News

You can set up your feeds and configure Sharp Reader to go check them as often as every 15 minutes. When you close the program, it will continue to run in the system tray if you desire. When it locates something new, it will pop up a little box for a few seconds with the new headlines for you to click on if you wish. As I was typing this the feed from Yahoo Business let me know the Dow was up this afternoon.

Subscribing to new feeds is as easy as locating the XML/RSS on the web and copying the address of the page into the address bar of SharpReader. A list of headlines will appear and if it is indeed something to which you wish to subscribe, just click the subscribe button. Sometimes you can just paste the URL or the main page of the site into SharpReader and it will automatically find the associated XML/RSS. Sometimes it will be indicated on the page by a little orange box that looks like this. You can find more feeds using special search engines like Feedster, CompleteRSS, and Syndic8.

Right now, RSS has been embraced by those on the front edge of the Internet's technology wave. One look at Feedster's list of top 100 feeds shows that many of them are for sites that deal primarily with issues of interest to the technology community, but as more and more sites become available via RSS and news aggregator applications become ever easier to use, This technology is ready to burst into general use.

The Internet has made it possible for us to have the world at our fingertips 24 hours a day. Unfortunately dealing with the world can keep you pretty busy, so it’s a small wonder that RSS and news aggregators, which help us arrange this vast resource to be most effective and efficient, could be the next big change in the way we use the Internet.