UPDATE (20-3-2013) - Google has announced that Google Reader will be discontinued. Feedly has promised to provide a seamless transfer.
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, but I am under the impression that not everybody is using feedreaders yet (myself being one of these ignorant people not long ago). Are you one of them? Read on! You are missing something. And if you are a scientist, you are missing out on a great way of keeping up to date with the relevant new papers in your field. So, if you happen to read this, I strongly suggest to install Google Reader (UPDATE: Google Reader has been discontinued, FEEDLY is among the best alternatives) or some other reader, and subscribe to an RSS feed.
For starters, subscribe to the online newspaper you read. Or your favorite journal. Any news will now start appearing in your reader. Most newspapers/journals have links to their RSS feeds. And what is in these feeds, normally simply the latest articles published (constantly updated!) in a format readible by your RSS reader.
Want to check something out further? Just click on the title and you will be linked through to the article in question. It is simple, intuitive, and fast. I have not come across disadvantages yet. Just give it a try...
For an excellent instruction how to get started quickly: click here (thanks Joseph for pointing out this link).
