What are those orange things? 

The symbol is an indicator that an RSS feed for a blog is available. Orange buttons with "RSS" and "XML" are also common.

What are RSS Feeds?  

RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds are a convenient, spam-free way to track new blog posts, news, or other content that is updated periodically. To read the material delivered in a feed, you need an RSS reader or news aggregator (see ‘Find an RSS Reader’ below). To subscribe to a library feed, click the orange RSS symbol or button.  Many feeds, like the ones on this site, will take you to a page of links that allow you to subscribe directly to your reader.  In some cases you will need to copy the url and paste it into your reader. The method you use depends on your browser, reader and the particular feed. See the instructions for the reader.

Find an RSS Reader

Two of the best RSS readers are web-based (and free).  Bloglines and Google Reader are two popular choices and, like all web-based readers, have the advantage of being available from any Internet-connected computer. My Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) customization features include an RSS feed reader, as does the custom Google home page  (aka iGoogle). At least two browsers, Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 allow you to subscribe directly from the browser toolbar.  Both browsers associate feeds with bookmarks or favorites.

Where can I find more blogs and feeds?

A number of places collect lists of feeds. Among the popular ones are Bloglines (www.bloglines.com) and Google Reader recommendations (http://google.com/reader/).  Also, many blogs feature "blog rolls" which are simply lists of blogs the particular blog author finds interesting or useful.

Most news sites like MSNBC, CNN.com and NYTimes.com allow you to choose feeds from many different subjects.