Any RSS Reader, when you get it loaded up with all of your web forums that have RSS feeds, will be great at reducing your time chasing around different web forums... but, what makes Google Reader especially great is that it's centralized. You don't have to keep the same RSS client on all of your devices -- anything with a web browser will do (though, obviously, some browsers do better than others -- the lowest level browser has a rather bland experience with Google Reader, the G1 will do most things except let you edit tags, and the full blown desktop browser version lets you do anything -- on my G1, I typically will "keep as unread" any message that I want to tag, and then I'll do all of my tagging when I get back to one of my desktop machines).
But, yeah, do look into Google Reader. It has done wonders at making my web forum, blogging, and news reading much more consistent and less of a time sink.