It has struck me that the key to understanding the value of blogs and podcasts is comfort with RSS feeds.  Unfortunately, relatively few of us have reached this point.

That doesn't, however, mean it isn't worth the effort.  As communicators, we need to be on the cutting edge of this trend.

Google has just rolled out a new feedreader that may be the best out there.  It is free, easy to use -- and it makes following feeds a pleasure.  It can handle both blog feeds and podcasts, embedding a player right into the feedreader.  It looks like this:

The important thing about feedreaders is how easy they are to read.  In the Google version (click the image above for larger view), you can enter your feed subscriptions by clicking on "Add subscription" and even organize them by folder.  If you want to look at, say, all the finance feeds, just click on the folder.  The new entries come up on the right side.

You can simply browse through them, and then move onto the next folder.  Every morning, you can read through literally dozens of blogs in a matter of minutes.

For those who don't get RSS, the feed items come to you!  You select the feeds, and then when there's a new entry, your feed titles (above, left) become boldface and list the number of new entries, ex. (2).  It's like a newspaper that talks to you and tells you what's new and where to find it.

The best way to understand this is to play around with it.  You can get the Google reader here.  If you're not comfortable with RSS yet, please, just get the reader, fill it with feeds and start using it.  You'll be an expert in no time.

FYI, if you don't like Google for some reason, there are LOTS of other feedreaders out there.  I started out with Bloglines, which is also free, Web-based and simple.