RSS

NewsGator is a "news aggregator" that runs in Microsoft Outlook. It allows you to subscribe to various syndicated news feeds (such as weblogs, news sites, etc.) and have news from these sites be delivered right into your Outlook folders. There are thousands of sites which syndicate their content in RSS format, and many more being added every day. You can even read NNTP newsgroups with NewsGator.

With upcoming features in Yahoo! Mail beta (like the AJAX interface and RSS feed reader) gaining alot of hype, another new Yahoo! service has gone largely overlooked. In what has to be considered one of the most important net developments in recent years, Yahoo! has begun offering SMS Alerts for RSS feeds. Yes, that's right, every time a feed is updated, you will be notified via your mobile phone. You probably don't want to add every feed you subscribe to, but for mission crucial instant updates, this is big. Every blog and news service is now available to 2 billion+ mobile phone users world wide. RSS-to-SMS service was only previously available through a company called Feedbeep, but required a $2.95 (10-30 SMS) or $14.95 (100-200 SMS) monthly fee. Before you go adding every RSS feed you can think of, just remember that while Yahoo! Feed Alerts are free, standard text messaging fees do apply.