It?s easy to find news on the Web. Whether you?re looking for national, international, technology, or just plain fun news, there?s no shortage of Web sites. The difficulty lies in finding enough time to scan all those sites to find the articles you want to spend time reading. A Windows Mobile powered device and a handy utility from Ilium Software make it easy to stay up-to-date.

NewsBreak--available for Smartphones and Pocket PCs--allows you to quickly scan through any Web site, blog, or other source of news that offers an RSS or Atom newsfeed. RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication and Rich Site Summary, and Atom are special file formats that contain summaries of selected information from a Web site. Programs like NewsBreak can collect those summaries and show you what?s new from several different Web sites on just one screen.

You don?t need to visit the sites to see if there?s anything interesting or new. Just find sites you?re interested in and subscribe to their newsfeed. From then on, NewsBreak can visit those sites for you and report back with summaries of what?s new. You don?t need to type in a Web address, select from a favorites menu, or even click on a link.

Getting started is easy. NewsBreak comes pre-loaded with a variety of newsfeeds in a wide range of well-organized categories. And if a lunch hour discussion piques an interest in a topic not already by those categories, there?s a useful search feature that can find related feeds. Over time, you?re likely to stumble across other feeds you would like to receive and adding them is easy as well. You can manually enter the Web address or use a free OPML Editor to create a list.

Once you?ve subscribed to newsfeeds that interest you, NewsBreak does the rest. It can retrieves summaries from multiple sites while you are doing something else, allowing you to read them at your leisure. You don?t have to wait for them to be retrieved one at a time over the Web. And the content is automatically formatted for your device?s screen. It?s a tremendous timesaver. You don?t have to go hunting for interesting news; stories you?re interested in find you.

?Todd Ogasawara