Thing 3:RSS

Really Simple Syndication or RSS is a huge shift and one of the guiding principles of Web 2.0-"Make the information come to you!" I used to go to news sites and others that had information I was interested in, and read, often finding that there had been no updates. Now, I use Netvibes as my aggregator, and organize the sites I read by topic-tabs so I can get right to the information I'm interested in. If there is an update, I roll my mouse over the topic, and view the first few lines of the post. If it interests me, I can click on the post to view it within Netvibes, or click to view the Web site. Another nice feature of Netvibes is that the comments actually show up in the aggregator, unlike other readers where you only see the original post.

For this project, I decided to try Google Reader, as I have not used that aggregator as yet.
My initial response is that it is not as pretty to look at compared to Netvibes.
One nice feature is Google Gears, a browser enhancement that allows you to view up to 2000 posts, while you're offline!