> How do these work?

The RSS feeds listed here are designed to be used with one of the many news aggregator programs and sites -- essentially automatic clipping services -- available online.

Aggregators reduce the time and effort needed to regularly check websites of interest for updates, creating a unique information space or "personal newspaper." An aggregator is able to subscribe to a feed, check for new content at user-determined intervals, and retrieve the content. The content is sometimes described as being "pulled" to the subscriber, as opposed to "pushed" with e-mail. Unlike recipients of some "pushed" information, the aggregator user can easily unsubscribe from a feed. The aggregator provides a consolidated view of the content in a single browser display or desktop application.

Aggregator features are gradually being built into portal sites such as My Yahoo! and Google Reader; Web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Opera; e-mail programs like Mozilla Thunderbird; and other applications, including Apple's iTunes, which serves as a podcast aggregator. Internet Explorer Version 7, currently available as a beta release, also will feature an RSS aggregator.