The idea began as RSS flashcards. Not memory cards but the pieces of paper that have a question on one side and the answer on the other.

I see lots of virtual and physical word flash card programs available on the Internet. One thing most of em have in common is that the flashcards are in a closed format. You generally cannot import a dataset from one program to the next.

What if you like the way the program works but you want to have the data printed onto physical cards. Too bad.

Wouldn’t it be better if the data was stored in a common format that all programs could use. There could be a database of information that people want to learn. They can then just pick the program that presents that data in the way they want. (Now you have to find a program that has the data you want, that comes close to working the way you want)

So the simplest version of this in XML would be:
<?xml ?>
<cards>
<card>
<front>Question?</front>
<back>Answer</back>
</card>
</cards>

Any programmer could use this. You can get fancy and have the <front/> contain an image. Like: <front><img src=”http://www.host.com/image.gif”></front> and the back could be what the image is.

Another possibility would be RSS. Everything has got RSS in it. Think how easy it would be to convert the above example to the typical RSS…
…
<item>
<title>Question?</title>
<link>http:///</link>
<description>Answer.</description>
</item>

With RSS you could send lessons on vocabulary to everyone in a class. They could check it in the morning. Look at the title and expand the description, see then answer and learn the new words.

So my goal right now is simple. Make some test XML data files. Create a few interfaces to it.

1. XML -> PDF so you can print out physical cards.
2. XML -> CSV so you can import the data into a word processing program for printing.
3. XML -> HTML interactive quiz based on the data.
4. XML -> RSS so you can subscribe and learn something new every day.