I haven’t been a big fan of RSS in the past, but I find myself using it more and more nowadays, due to exactly one new development: Google Reader.
It solves the two major problems I had before: 1) missing articles because of feeds with a small history, since Google does the aggregation frequently and keeps a longer list of articles, and 2) it remains synchronized when used from multiple locations, not tying it to a particular program install on a specific machine, so I can use it from home, work, and while traveling without any redundancy.
Edit: Though to be fair, Google probably wasn’t really the first, as there have been other web-based aggregators. Google’s interface and integration into the rest of your account certainly makes it a lot easier to use, though.
Wow… So I’m *not* the only one on earth who thinks RSS is all gimmick and no substance? Er, I *wasn’t*, I mean… Guess I am, now. :-)
I find it useful for two things, mainly: sites with very low activity, that I would otherwise forget to visit on a regular basis, and sites with extremely high activity, so that I can rapidly skim over a large number of summaries without having to dig through multiple pages on the site itself.
It was mainly usability problems that prevented me from making a habit of using feeds, and this helps solve a lot of them.