While I love the way RSS feeds collate everything to one place, I remain a bit overwhelmed by the idea of them. Not by the way they work--I understand that--but by the amount of information I now feel obligated to read. There are too many good blogs out there, but not enough time in my day to read them all and get anything else done!
That said, I much prefer Google Reader to other RSS feeds I've tried. For awhile, I used NetVibes but found its layout and organization mystifying. Google Reader has a clean and simple layout, is easy to set up, and although I don't usually use gmail for email, if I did, it would be nice to have everything connected that way.
OH boy do I understand what you mean by feeling overwhelmed by potential blogs/sites to read. There are SO MANY! I subscribe to a LOT and I don't read them by any means every day or every week (I heart the 'mark all as read' button!) but what's nice is that when I do have the time I can sit down and read what I'm most interested in and leave the rest for another time (or never!) I think it's an organic process for sure - meaning, I subscribe to so much of what I see and hear about and then, I read, I dismiss, I star and so on. Google has this great feature where you can see your reading trends and I can see what blogs I never read (they go straight in the trash!) and what blogs haven't posted for a while (those go out too!) and what blogs are my favorites. There are only a few that rise to the top of my definitely-read list so that helps me feel less overwhelmed. Subscribe to a bunch and then see which ones really catch your attention and provide helpful, useful or entertaining stuff. There are some real duds out there - either posts that are WAAAY too long to be useful or posts that don't offer too much. It's all good and have fun with it!
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