The Online Journalism Review has a mostly-accurate article (e.g. XML is not a souped-up version of HTML) on news aggregators. I don't use them (yet) for four main reasons:

• I like to view stories in the context that the author wanted. That means on the page where they originally appeared, with the proper style, layout, images, comments, etc.
• It's really not that hard to view and then scan through a bunch of sites, especially with tabbed browsing. Since not everyone uses RSS, I'll have to do a lot of this anyway.
• Lots of sites that do use RSS keep breaking the XML by using incorrect characters, for example.
• I use Linux at work and Windows at home. I don't want to bother maintaining two clients' lists of feeds. The ability to export a list and FTP it back and forth is still a pain in the arse. Something stored centrally, like my My Yahoo information, would be more user-friendly.

I may take the middle ground and use a web-based RSS aggregator that someone else has written once I get my site up. I'm hoping for something like Meerkat, but with a better UI and the ability to add feeds that aren't already listed.

This blog is no longer active, and comments have been disabled.