RSS is the way to read the news these days - with RSS aggregators you can peruse hundreds of headlines from your favorite news and blog sites much quicker than visiting the individual sights themselves. That’s the whole point, but who needs yet another application window open all the time?

Enter RSS Menu. This little applet (I hate to call it a full program) gets tucked away in your menu bar until you are ready to use it. With features like Growl notification, iTunes podcast integration, scheduled/periodic updates, new article notifications and more, this little app will soon become your main source for checking the news and RSS feeds. RSS Menu is donationware, so if you like it, you can send the developers as much or as little as you can afford.

See this quick video demo (new browser window) to watch this little gem at work.