RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a format for syndicating news and news-like sites like Slashdot and personal web logs.  By using an RSS reader and subscribing to different RSS feeds, you can have the contents of your favorite web logs or news sites presented to you whenever new content is added.  It’s like a clipping service for web logs.  Except it’s more.  Much more.  And perhaps the nicest thing about it is there’s an open standard (7 of them, actually—things are still quite fluid in this space), and anybody can write a program to subscribe to whatever feeds they like.  I really need to look into this more closely, and perhaps set up an RSS feed for my Random Notes.