Well, there's seems to be a fair bit of discussion lately about various approaches to making XML less of a bloated sack of protoplasm. Technically speaking there's a Sun article on talking about the Fast InfoSet draft specification. More generically speaking, here's a CNet article asking: How do we make XML faster?

• If binary XML is the answer, what exactly is the question?
• If XML is the answer, what is the question?
• Why are people using XML for so many things that it's horrible for?

IMHO, all of this stems from the fact that people have been mislead by XML's name into believing that XML is a language when XML is really just a data format. Very sad.