About RSS
Modern websites are capable of "broadcasting" the information they contain to interested users through a protocol called RSS. It provides a quick and easy method of retrieving information that does not rely on email.
It's much like the difference between receiving mail vs hearing a radio broadcast. In this case, a News Reader acts as the radio receiver. Some browsers have a built in ability to read news feeds such as Firefox (Live Bookmarks) and Safari. Internet Explorer 7 (Windows) also has an RSS reader built-in to the browser.
If you would like more information about RSS feeds see this wikipedia article.
To find a News Reader to download, try this list for Windows, Mac and other platforms: