RSS feeds help me get through a lot more content online in much less time. If you are unclear about the whole rss concept, to summarize websites (blogs mostly) can choose to have their content formatted into a machine readable rss or feed format (almost every blog, podcast, video cast ect do nowadays). How much content is made available this way can range from entire articles to just headlines with links leading to their site.
There are many utilities (the new ie 7 has one built in I think) that are rss readers. What this means to you is that when content (blog posts) are posted online it will automatically get pulled for you as soon as it is available. Here are some of the feeds I subscribe to
http://feeds.gawker.com/lifehacker/full Lifehacker is dedicated to trying to get you to get more utility out of your computer and life. If you try entering that url into your browser it may or may not be readable because the information is cut up and formatted to make sense to a machine.
What is useful about RSS is that you can delve through a lot more content, updated automatically, and decide if you want to go deeper. For instance, you would still have to go to the site to leave comments ect but Rss feeds can cure your of the 'I gotta see if a site has updated' itch and help you get through your favorite websites in a hurry.
However, by giving you so much content from one central location it can get... overwhelming. As with the rest of the internet, it is important to know when to say 'no' and not feel bad for not reading everything you are interested in. There is no way you can.
Interestingly enough, we're now seeing what will undoubtadly be dubbed 'rss 2.0.' Yahoo Pipes is a great example of this. Pipes on its most basic level is just a RSSI use reader from yahoo, but now what you can do is pair rss feeds with searches/other rss feeds/or other filters/parameters. For instance, there is one 'pipe' (they are user generated like more and more of the web) takes the feed for newyork times headlines and grabs photos related to the stories. Another takes a list of top music (say, apple itune's top sellers) and pulls the music videos off of youtube. Not terribly impresive, but more complicated pipes could be insanely useful tools for gathering and formatting information off the cuff.
I use Google Reader as my RSS reader. It is fast, easy to use with some more advanced options once you get more comfortable. Also, because it is online I can access my feeds from anywhere, regardless of webfilters (like the ones at school) because nobody blocks google.
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