XML & RSS

What is XML and RSS you might ask, well im going to tell you. XML or eXtensible Markup Language is a general purpose markup language and is primarily used to facilitate the sharing of data across different information systems. It is a simplified subset of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), and is designed to be fairly human-legible. By adding semantic constraints, application languages can be implemented in XML. Also, XML is sometimes used as the specification language for such application languages. XML is recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium. It is a fee-free open standard. The W3C recommendation specifies both the lexical grammar, and the requirements for parsing. For more information on XML click here .
RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts.
Users of RSS content use software programs called "feed readers" or "feed aggregators". The user subscribes to a feed by entering a link of the feed into the reader program. The reader can then check the user's subscribed feeds to see if any of those feeds have new content since the last time it checked, and if so, retrieve that content and present it to the user. RSS formats are specified in XML (a generic specification for data formats). RSS delivers its information as an XML file called an "RSS feed," "webfeed," "RSS stream," or "RSS channel". For more information on RSS click here .
You might also be asking why RSS is important, well, its important because it keeps you up to date with things that may interest you or may be important to you such as the news or sports scores. If that still isnt enough information for you then go to XML.com and/or whatisrss.com .
All this talking about XML and RSS has lead me to set up an RSS reader account. I have chosen to sign up with google reader instead of bloglines for a few reasons. The first is i didnt want to to search for any other RSS reader sites so it was a choice between google reader and bloglines. I first decided to check out both sites first before i made a decision. I looked at google reader first and found out because of my gmail account i already had a google reader account which became my second reason. I also had a look at bloglines to see if it was any different but it looked pretty much the same. Also, google reader is under my gmail account so i dont have to remember any new user names and passwords which is much more convenient to me. These are my reasons for choosing google reader as my RSS reader.