Shawn wrote:

> I am still not very clear about the concept "RSS feed" and what it is for.

Try using a more commonplace RSS reader rather than Live Bookmakers.
It's very convenient at what it's good for, but it's not the "standard"
way to use RSS feeds.



> My questions is: what is the advantage of RSS feeds? Even a static HTML
> web page, I can re-write/update it everytime I need to. For the people
> who are interested in reading my web page, they can always come to my
> web page, open it and read "new" stuff.

How would they _know_ that it was time to go and read it again?


> My guess is that, the advantage of new technology RSS feeds is such
> that, if I changed something in my web page, then the people who are
> interested/"subscribed" my web page will see the new thing. If I didn't
> change my web page, they will not be notified. Correct?

Assuming that you're writing your "pages" through some sort of blog,
then yes.
Here's one of mine
http://quercus.livejournal.com/data/rss

(ignore the next para unless you really care)
The simplest way to do this is for the RSS reader to poll the server at
timed intervals. Most feeds will list a suggested polling interval to
revisit at. There's also a "cloud" interface which allows the server to
"push" the reader when the content actually is updated, thus notifying
it it's time to poll again.



> BTW, is there possible such a way that I can "subscribe" this newsgroup
> into my Google Reader?

Probably   Go to http://groups.google.co.uk/group/comp.text.xml and see
if it gives you a link to any RSS feed (it probably does)

> Is there a way to setup that if somebody posted a dishwasher for sale,

Possibly. That would depend on the site. It's quite common for sites to
implement _lots_ of RSS feeds, including feeds on each small category.
A few sites also allow users to store pre-defined search queries, and
if they do this much it's quite easy to make them visible as RSS too.