Bloglines.com
If you want to stay plugged into the world of politics, technology, show business or any other area of professional or personal interest, you have to read Web logs, a.k.a. blogs, regularly-updated personal or collaborative online journals. The best ones are in some ways more relevant and more influential than mainstream media outlets. To keep up, let Bloglines track your favorites and deliver their latest posts in one neat package. Other good blog-aggregator services include Kinja.com, a similar though somewhat shaky service (it just launched a few months ago) that shows promise as a tour guide for those entering the blogosphere for the first time, and Blogdex.net, MIT Media Lab's study in "contagious media" that lists the fastest-spreading ideas and news items based on how many blogs are buzzing about them.