What is RSS/XML/Atom/Syndication?

“The little orange buttons that are starting to litter the web have no doubt caused mass confusion. What are they good for? Why are they there? And why donít they work? While I and others are starting to look into suggestions for developers to alleviate this design flaw, I thought Iíd take a minute to talk about what this technology potentially means to you, the user. (If you already know what RSS stands for, this article wonít tell you anything new, but feel free to reference when you need to explain syndication.)”