There are many kinds of RSS readers out there. Depending on your platform and whether or not you use the same computer all the time, you will probably choose between web based RSS services or application driven tools that you install on your computer.

As Google fans we'll start with Google's RSS tools

Google Desktop (desktop.google.com) - We've written about Google Desktop in the past, and if you've download Google Desktop you can extend it's capabilities with an add-on extension called gdRSS Reader. It sits among the other desktop widgets and displays your RSS feeds as they come in. This is a simple tool and I use it as my default reader. It lacks the more sophisticated controls of a full blown reader such as grouping, organizing feeds and keeping track of read versus unread items. But I like the fact that it's always visible and I can quickly see whenever something new shows up.

Google Personalized Homepage (www.google.com - click "Personalized Home" in the upper right corner) - The Google Personalized homepage is itself an RSS reader. It can display a lot of other personalized information too, but by clicking on the "Add Content" box in the upper left corner of the screen you can choose from some RSS presets, or add your own by coping and pasting the RSS link into the "Create a Section" box. The only downside I can see to the Google Desktop RSS reader is that it does not allow you to preview an item's abstract. It simply links over to the publisher's site when clicked. There is also limited screen real estate on the Google Desktop. So if you subscribe to a lot of feeds you'll quickly run out of room to display them all.

Google Reader (www.google.com/reader) - Google also has a feature-rich web-based RSS reader. It is more robust than either of the other Google options. It allows you to manage which items you've read, save them, organize them and add tags (labels) to items for future reference. It's a very clean and quick interface (what else would you expect from Google?). It even has keyboard shortcuts for power readers.

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