Awasu

According to Awasu Personal Edition 2.0's About screen, the name of this product is Japanese for "to join together." If so, this standalone free newsreader is aptly named: it deftly aggregates content from dozens of RSS-compatible sites, combining a variety of feeds into a slick, highly configurable interface that's a breeze to navigate.

Awasu's multipane interface offers a bird's-eye view of your RSS feeds. The left-side Control Center column lists the channels that you've subscribed to, such as Yahoo Business News, New York Times, and Salon.com. The item pane, upper right, shows the latest headlines from a specific channel. Directly below it is the browser pane, which functions as a standard Web browser and displays articles in their full HTML glory, complete with banner ads and pop-ups.

Awasu's 4.15MB setup file takes just a few minutes to download and install, after which the program displays a page of suggested channels to get you started. Whenever you click the orange XML newsfeed icon on any Web page, Awasu's Channel Wizard loads and leads you through the subscription process. The new channel is then added to the left-hand Control Center pane. It's all quite slick and easy to use.