A news feed (also known as an RSS feed) is a listing of a website's content. It is updated whenever new content is published to the site. News readers "subscribe" to news feeds, which means they download lists of stories at an interval that you specify (every 30 minutes, for example), and present them to you in your news reader. A news feed might contain a list of story headlines, a list of excerpts from the stories, or a list containing each story from the website (SpyderHost.net's news feeds contain news excerpts). All news feeds will have a link back to the website, so if you see a headline / excerpt / story you like, you can click on the link for that piece of content and will be taken to the website to read it.
How do I Subscribe to SpyderHost.net's News Feeds? 
Point your news reader to http://spyderhost.net/feed.xml
Should I use a news reader?
The short answer: it depends.
The longer answer: if you visit a lot of websites on daily basis, or read a lot of weblogs (or "blogs"), a news reader can save you a lot of time. Sites like ABCNews.com and the New York Times both have syndicated feeds.
Using a news reader to consume your web media means that you only need to visit a website when you read a story in your news reader that is of interest to you. You won't have to visit many sites multiple times every day to see if there are updates; your news reader will do that for you and will let you know when there is a new story to be read!
So if you visit a lot of websites regularly, or want to be alerted automatically when your websites publishes a new story, using a news reader might make sense.
Some commonly used news readers are:
- Feed Demon - (Windows)
- Sharp Reader - (Windows)
- NewsGator - (Windows)
- Safari RSS - (Macintosh OS X)
- NetNewsWire - (Macintosh OS X)
- Shrook - (Macintosh OS X)
- Bloglines.com - (Web-based)
You can find even more news readers at itopik.com .
What is RSS?
Depending on whom you ask, the acronym RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication", "Rich Site Summary", or any of a handful of others.
The meaning of the acronym is not terribly important, however. An RSS feed (also known as a news feed) is a site's syndicated news feed that you subscribe to using your news reader.
What is syndication?
Syndication refers to the process that occurs when a publisher provides content in a form that can be consumed by software (like a news reader).
Where can I find more about syndication?
There is a thorough explanation of syndication at Dynamic Objects .
