What is XML?

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If you are a blogger, you probably came across the term XML before. It is all over the place. But what is XML after all? And more importantly, should you care about it?
XML stands for Extensible Markup Language. Basically, it is a markup language created to transport structured data across different systems and platforms. There is an article over W3C titled “XML in 10 Points,” which gives an introduction to this language. The 10 points are:

XML is for structuring data
XML looks a bit like HTML
XML is text, but isn’t meant to be read
XML is verbose by design
XML is a family of technologies
XML is new, but not that new
XML leads HTML to XHTML
XML is modular
XML is the basis for RDF and the Semantic Web
XML is license-free, platform-independent and well-supported

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Bloglines Launches Top 1000

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Bloglines has launched the Top 1000 list, which ranks the most popular feeds within their system. The interesting thing is that, apart from the ranking itself, it also includes a direct link to the RSS feed and some information about the trends for each feed.

It reports, for instance, if the feed is moving up or down, how many positions it gained or lost, and what feeds are the top movers.
The ranking system is not completely clear. I manually checked the latest positions and the numbers were not perfectly ordered. It looks like you would need around 600 RSS subscribers to enter into the list.
Daily Blog Tips is in position 860 and has a very positive trend. Hooray!
Via: Search Engine Land

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