I need advice on galleries and on rss feeds

Hi,

I’ve spent the last month learning WP and building my blog.
Please know that I have read the codex and related materials and I’ve looked at all of the plugins, but I’m still confused as to how to make a few things happen.

I could really use some advice (talk to me like I’m a newb because I am) on the topics of photo galleries and rss feeds.

This is what I’d like to do:
1. Photo Galleries
I’d like to add a photo Page (capital P) to my blog. I will take some of the pictures, but I’d like to also include photos contributed by readers. I set up a Flickr account and I figured that I would ask readers to do the same and tag their photos to my Flickr Pool. I would then like to pick-and-choose which of those photos in the pool to add to the gallery Page. I might also like to occasionally use their photos in posts. It would be nice if there could be a caption with the photos…i.e. “The staff at Joe’s Bar.”
I know there are a lot of plugins out there, but I can’t figure out which ones do this.

2.Rss Feeds
I understand the concept of rss feeds. My theme has an rss subscribe button which links allows readers to subscribe through google, yahoo, livebookmarks and bloglines. Are there others that should be include with those? Is there a one-stop shop like signing up for “FeedBurner?”
And, how do I add them to the list?

Also, I’d like to add news headlines to my sidebar. Something like the “Top Five Restaurant-related” headlines.
How do I do this?

I know I’m asking a lot of questions and that the answers are all here in the codex, but again, I’ve read so much of it it’s all starting to blur together. I could really use some suggestions so I can move on and begin blogging.

Thanks for your time