Hey Geeks! RSS help needed, please

A friend told me about RSS yesterday, so I thought I'd give it a go. I downloaded RSSReader and set it up. It seems to work fine, but there are a few things that I hope some knowledgeable people can help me with.

1. I have the type set to new headlines and date filter last hour, but it keeps importing the same stories after I clear the history and press 'get'. Hence, I receive about 150 things that I've already read. I've tried 'mark as read' to see if that would help, but it doesn't. How can I prevent that?

2. I know that if someone's blog is hosted by Blogger, I can enter http://blognamehere.blogspot.com/atom.xml to get the feed, but how do I set up a feed for other blogs, for example http://myboyfriendisatwat.com ? I've tried putting /atom.xml after it, but it hasn't worked.

I'll probably be back with a few more RSS questions later.

Cheers