How to add rss feed to application?

So... I tried this code snippet and came across some odd behavior - I think this tutorial needs some further explaining...

1. If any of the RSS feed items are missing any Elements (had this frequently occur when <description> is missing), the reader seems to lock up - nothing is displayed and had to stop the app to recover. Wrote a temporary workaround that bypasses the description if it doesn't exist. Works now, but I'm not sure why I should have to do this.

2. Clicking on a link in the resultant RSS feed causes the app to crash - failed Navigation from the Hyperlinkbutton. I suspected that the URI was coded incorrectly (the 'Link' has the following appended text '?syndication=rss'). I even tried launching a hardcoded URI (including the 'syndication' text) from my WP7 and it also failed. Hmm... it works in IE9 (on PC) but not in IE7 (WP7). Am I doing something wrong?

3. Not all RSS feeds are created equal. Sad to say, if I want to use this code in my app, I'm going to have to learn PERL and continually parse the RSS data to meet my needs (I'm developing an app to read MANY different RSS feed sources). Any clues how to accomplish this without PERL?