A big (but often over-looked) part of blogging is RSS feeds, firstly i will start of by saying that RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is used as a way of publishing frequently updated content. (note: RSS feeds are not just limited to blogs).
As a blogger i want to make it as easy as possible for you to stay updated about new stuff that is posted to this blog, however not all the time is it possible for you to visit the site, find out whats happened since your last visit and read whats been posted, thankfully RSS feeds can make it a whole lot easier and quicker to stay updated.
note: a lot of website owners tend to be against RSS feeds as they think that it drives traffic away from them, however i disagree, if your posting good quality content then regardless of how people find it (either via RSS or via the site itself) they will read it.
How To Use RSS Feeds
Most of the time blogs that offer RSS feeds will display a link to there feed, 99% of the time that link will also be accompanied by an image that looks similar to this one 
(may come in a slightly different size or variation but should be easy to spot).
If you click on the icon it will take you to a page that will look similar to this 
As you can see it shows the title and post summary of the most recently made posts, now just by browsing the page you can instantly see if there is anything that would be valuable to you and worth reading, if theres not you can then carry onto the next feed (or whatever else it was you was doing).
Wasn't that a whole lot quicker than browsing and searching the site for new posts? Also if there is anything interesting that you wanna read, you just click the link and you will be taken to the blog post within the site.
Note: some sites (including mine) use a 3rd party (such as feed burner) to aggregate their feeds, the page that you go to when you click the RSS link will likely vary from site to site.
Making RSS Feeds Even Easier With A Feed Reader
You have just seen how much quicker RSS feeds can make it when searching for new and updated posts, now would you believe me if i said that it can be made even quicker?
There are many feed readers available, some can be used whilst browsing the Internet, some you can download.
Online Readers
Sites such as google, live and yahoo all now let you have your own personalised homepage, all of which also allow you to add RSS feeds too.
- Windows live - Go 2 live.com, login, click add stuff, advanced, copy and paste the feed URL into the second box and then click subscribe.
- Google - Go 2 google.co.uk (or .com etc), login, click on accounts, then reader, then add subscription, copy and paste the feed URL and then click add.
- Yahoo - Go to yahoo.co.uk (or .com etc), login, click on my yahoo, click personalise this page, click add RSS feed, paste the feed URL and then click add.
- There are a lot other online feed readers including Firefox's live bookmarks, however if i listed them all i would never get this posted :)
Downloadable Feed Readers
These are feed readers that you can download and install onto your computer (download at own risk!), the advantage of this is that you can instantly check whats news directly from your desktop.
- Feedreader - The most robust, highly-functional personal aggregation solution on the market today.
- RSSReader - Free RSS reader is able to display any RSS and Atom news feed (XML).
- Awasu Personal Edition -<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span> For casual RSS users, this edition is fully-functional and completely free!