Also, because of all the spam filtering that goes on, sometimes you may not receive information you've signed up to receive.

One simple solution to both of these problems is RSS. RSS is the abbreviation for Really Simple Syndication, also called Rich Site Summary. Its function is to distribute content from various web sites to other web sites quickly and frequently.

Sites providing an RSS feed (file) show a symbol that designates a file is available.

RSS allows you to keep up with the content you are interested in without having to visit the actual web site or receive an email notification of an update.

RSS is particularly useful for sites that update frequently. That's why almost all news organizations and blogs have an RSS feed. Feeds are also becoming more popular on web sites that add content on a regular basis.

News organizations aren't the only ones that use RSS. Craigslist uses RSS to keep customers up to date with their content. Amazon uses RSS to help their readers keep track of new releases; several software companies make their new downloads available via RSS.

You can also receive audio and video via RSS.

RSS content is delivered through RSS files known as feeds. You read the feeds with a tool called an RSS aggregator or reader. Because RSS data is small and fast loading it works well with PDAs as well as computers.

There are a many different RSS readers and they work with Macs, PCs and PDAs. There are file formats other than RSS, such as Atom, but RSS is currently most widely used,

One of the most popular readers is Google's tool. Take the tour of the reader by following this link: http://www.google.com/intl/en/googlereader/tour.html

You can find other readers at http://www.newsgatoronline.com/Individuals/Default.aspx, http://www.rssreader.com and http://www.feeddemon.com/.

Once you have a reader, you can subscribe to a feed to receive content. You can read your content when it's convenient for you. You can categorize your feeds to make it easy to find the content you want. For example, you may want to set up and categorize feeds that deliver content about marketing, entrepreneurs or your various hobbies.

The other advantage to receiving content this way is it is easy to scan. You can see the first few sentences in the article without opening the entire document. If it's not something that captures your attention, you can move on to the next piece.

There is no standard on how to subscribe to an RSS feed. The easiest way, and it's becoming more common, is to follow a subscribe link from a web page. Most sites want you to subscribe so they try to make it clear and easy to set up the feed.

Try signing up for feeds and watch your inbox mail decrease significantly, as you unsubscribe from those sites that offer feeds.