RSS is a technology for reading quick Web site summaries, and it’s taken the Net by storm. RSS returns the Internet to real utility, free from pop-up ads and the other annoyances of Web life.

To take advantage of RSS, however, you need a program to subscribe to Web sites that support RSS—and then to display the resulting summaries. On Windows, you might use a program like RssReader, or a Web site like www.pluck.com. On the Mac, you can download any number of great, free RSS readers from the Mac App Store—or use a Web-based RSS reader like feedly.com.