Brian:
Joe can answer what it is and how it works, but I can tell you what it does... Your question showed up in my mailbox because this is a topic I'm directly involved with, which means I don't have to sort through the website to see if anyone responded to Joe's post.
It certainly makes things easier.
My question is, do we have to click on the RSS button of every topic, or does it automatically know which topics we've responded to?
Bruce