Give me an R! Give me an S! Give me another S!

If you consider yourself a techie or a computer geek, then please stop reading this post immediately, as I'm guessing you've already mastered RSS. For everyone else, read on. Your life is about to get a little less complicated.

RSS is a content search engine that lets you "subscribe" to various websites and web searches. Once you subscribe, you receive feeds from the website/web search every time the site is updated.

This means, for instance, that if you're looking on Craigslist for a no-fee studio apartment in Dumbo, that instead of checking back in with with Craig every 5 minutes to see if any new apartments have been added, you can rest easy. Any updates that meet your search criteria will automatically be sent to you.

You can use RSS to get weather alerts, travel deals, music info, and more, but I'm particularly obsessed with the search feeds. Looking for an apartment? You need a search feed. Want to buy a specific type of couch for your living room? Search feed. Jonesing for a new boyfriend between the ages of 18 and 39? Search feed.

Here's how to do it:

1. Set up an RSS Reader. I signed up for Google Reader, and it's incredibly easy to use. You can subscribe to feeds in packets ("food blogs," for instance), or you can add your own sites.

2. Go to Craigslist (or eBay or some site along those lines) and do a search for whatever it is you're looking for (a Three Musketeers salt shaker, a lover, etc.). Copy the URL for that search.

3. In your RSS Reader, add a new feed, and paste in the Craigslist URL.

Then you're set! Instead of compulsively searching and researching on Craigslist, you can just take an occasional look at your RSS reader. Easy, this.

Bottom Line: Technology rocks.