This post is a link to my uncles business, my uncle deals in Recubent Cycles. For anyone who doesn't know what a Recumbent Cycle is:

A recumbent bicycle is a variety of bicycle which places the rider in a seated or supine position (rarely, in a prone position). Recumbents hold the world speed record. The back of the rider is supported, and the rider's legs are extended forward to pedals that are about the same height as the seat. Steering is either above seat steering (ASS), which uses a handlebar that is located in front of the rider, or under seat steering (USS), which uses a handlebar located under the seat. The wheels are often smaller and/or further apart than on an ordinary bicycle.

To quote my uncle.

"My name is Andrew Kinlan and I love bicycles. I'm pretty much interested in just about every aspect of cycling from its history to its future, but have a particular and faithful interest in recumbent bikes. I have owned a few and ridden many different types of recumbent cycle over the years."

"I consider myself lucky that my brother and his wife live in Holland. Regular family visits and excursions to Ligfiets winkels (recumbent cycle shops) and the annual Cyclevision event has indulged and expanded my passion for recumbents."
"The Dutch and Germans admittedly have a talent for making good quality recumbent cycles and trikes."

"My ultimate goal in starting my business would be to have a largest collection of the finest recumbent cycles people can try and ultimately buy. I must confess that I'm not an expert or professional in the cycle trade but perhaps a professional enthusiast."

"It is as an enthusiast that I have chosen the Dutch manufacturer Rainbow. They are one of a group of Dutch recumbent manufacturers that provide a supreme quality product. Riding their machines and seeing at first hand who makes them and how, has lead me to wanting to introduce Rainbow recumbents to England. It's as an enthusiast that I would like to introduce people to the experience of riding a recumbent cycles and ultimately making the right choice from a selection of quality products."

"If you have any questions concerning the recumbents or would like to test ride a Rainbow please contact me to make an appointment."
Kind regards
Andrew Kinlan

If you are interested in Cycling and would like to see some of my uncles selection please visit his site [http://rainbow-recumbents.co.uk]. I would much appreciate it.

Technorati Tags

Recumbent Bicycle [feed], Recumbent Bikes [feed], Recumbent Cycle [feed], Recumbents [feed], Enthusiast [feed], Rainbow [feed], Quality [feed]

Just thought I would say that I have removed Google Desktop Search Beta 2 from my machine. (But I kept the index - just in case)

My machine now runs back at normal speed, yeeehaaa!

Ah well, you live and learn.

Technorati Tags

Google Desktop Search [feed], Google [feed], Beta [feed], Index [feed], Search [feed], Desktop Search [feed]

This is the first of my entries about the failures of my first AJAX based web application.

I have been talking about the positive successes that I achieved out of doing the little mini project. I must state though, that this has nowhere near been a complete failure, and that for each of the failures that I will talk about over the next week or so, I have still learnt from them and most of what I have learnt will go into the next project that I embark on.

Anyway, back on track now.

This entry is sub titled: It didn't help me provide search facilities to related topics.

A while ago, I thought that it would be a very good asset to provide value added data to each post that I create I need people to come to my site, but I also need people to be able to find related information about what I am talking about. Mainly for the purpose of providing further education to the readers. After all I cannot provide all the information a reader needs; only the start, or maybe an informed opinion.

This Value added information and resource citing leads me to a comment by Robert Scoble. Robert gives a nod towards Kevin Burton who is talking about an article about some big Web News Publishers not liking linking [citing] to Blogs where they got their article from. Robert pushes the attitude (and a correct one I think, but not what I believe Kevin was getting at) that people still think that the best way to get traffic to their site is that once you have a person in keep them in, provide everything that they need. I personally don't like this, the idea of a monolithic site scares me a little, just look at about.com [personal opinion, and not completely related to this entry]; okay they direct people to other sites, but man can you get lost in that site; is it very useful? I don't know really. But Robert seems to point out that some of the highest trafficed sites are ones that give the user some information and then point them off in the right direction for some more information.

Whilst I would like my readers to look at a couple of more entries and to email me more, I would also like my readers to use me as a moderator of opinion, a person who doesn't know everything but will help them learn a bit more by directing them to the information that they need to get where they are going. Other people can provide the information a lot better than I can, so why should I not let my reader know about it.

Really there are two threads, which when intertwined make a rope: one being a company not liking to show their sources and appearing to have obtained the information all themselves, which is probably classed as theft in some countries; and the other being one of trying to give their users all the information that they can to increase advert revenues. Ultimately, if you twist the two together they become the same thing. After all, I suppose they have the same goals.

Again I have gone a bit off track, but you will see why.

The AJAX application was supposed to allow me to provide the user (the blog author) with related searches for the main Search Engines, which would direct the reader of the article being written to more information. The only thing the application provided was Technorati Tag creation. If you compare one of my older entries, with this one, I do believe that the value that the extra "outward" information is a benefit over and above the Technorati tags that this entry will link to.

You can email me: paul.kinlan@gmail.com to let me know which you prefer.

The next version of the application, must include related search information. Related search information is very hard to create, hence why I have not done it in a while. But I do belief that if it did include it, my site would be a bit more useful to the readers that subscribe to my feed.

I have some plans to provide related searches [All via Yahoo, because no other search engine provides similar API's], but also some "quick links" that are related to the context of the entry.

Technorati Tags

Search Engine [feed], Technorati [feed], Search [feed], Ie7 [feed], Ajax [feed], Api [feed], Feed [feed], Beta [feed], Blog [feed], Tag [feed], Robert Scoble [feed], Kevin Burton [feed], Weblogs [feed], Blogs [feed], Monolithic [feed], Value Added Data [feed], Web Application [feed]

Finally after making the decision to remove Google Desktop Beta 2 from my machine, I decided that I would try and explore just a little more. Low and Behold! I find a feature that I think that I might not now be able to live with out.

Desktop Timeline!


It shows you everything you have been working on for a given day, to a stupidly amazing amount of detail. It shows, when I looked at a page, when I opened a document etc.



It is a really good feature if you were to say "I was reading a page at about 12pm on Tuesday, now what was the address" or, "I was looking at a document in the evening, now what was the name of it". And it all accessed via a little date picker.



I must say. It is darned SWEET!!!!

I am going to toss a coin now to see if I keep it or not: Heads, Google Wins; Tails, Google Loses.

Flick....
Catch.....
.....
Tails.

Sorry Google, I am removing it. I don't think I will try it again. I feel like I am giving away too much of myself to you! And my PC was really, really, really slow.

Sorry!

Technorati Tags

Google [feed], Google Desktop [feed], Beta [feed]

There are several Websites that I really respect on the Internet, one of them is Channel 9.

Channel 9 is a Microsoft website that is run by some of the developer/evangelist (Robert Scoble, Jeff Sands et Al [sorry if I missed anyone else out]) guys over there to let the Developer Community know what is going on in Microsoft. Over the past year, I have been watching their videos (Most of them are excellent), just to see what happens there and what runs through their heads.

I must say, Microsoft seems like an excellent place to work, a lot of creativity and some great minds work there.

Anyway, to get back on track; Channel 9 has had a major overhaul to the UI and I must say that it looks sweet. They have removed their Blog style vertical list of entries and replaced it with a much nicer "Most Recent" section, therefore a lot of the important content is on one screens worth of space, rather than about 9 screens worth of vertical real-estate. I have been touting with this idea on my site, but the feedback I have had is that most people like the "traditional" blog style.

The comment section, looks pretty funky. There is a lot going on on the page, but the design is a design that I like. One of the things I think is pretty cool, is the box with something popping out of it. [see the pics]. I don't know why I like it, maybe it appears they are not constrained by HTML tables and stuff, they are breaking out of it or something. I don't know what it is but I have always thought it looks pretty darn cool! [NOTE: I think this is an artifact from the fact that my screen is so small and the content of IE7 gets squashed]





They have also included a Tagging section, which list the most popular Topics that people are talking about. Ala Technorati (Which still doesn't consistently index my site). I really like this, even though it harks back to the old Yahoo style directory of topics system. It's an Idea that I think if used correctly can be a really cool and extra value added feature. I can see what people are talking about and what topics interest people. It kind of helps me, because, I know that I can determine if something I talk about will be interesting to people.

My General opinion of the new design is a BIG THUMBS UP. I really like what they have done. Well done guys.

Even if you don't like the design, I would still recommend the content of the site, it is truly amazing!

Technorati Tags

Robert Scoble [feed], Channel 9 [feed], Microsoft [feed], Technorati [feed], Blog [feed], Ie7 [feed], Yahoo [feed]

I have been using Google Desktop Beta 2 for a couple of days, I have not really needed to use the searching functionality, but I can tell you this, it really slows my machine down.

Browsing the Web is so slow now, each page can take an absolute age to render.

I have also noticed Tabbed Browsing in IE7 (Internet Explorer 7) is pretty much useless on my machine now, if I go to one tab, type the address in that I want to go to, then move to another tab, the content will be displayed in the window I have just moved too. Arghh! I am pretty darn sure that this has to do with.

Additionally, trying to type in to the WYSIWYG editor on Blogger is a harrowing experience; 8 times so far, whilst writing this Entry has the Browser inexplicably locked up.

GoogleDesktopCrawl.exe seems to constantly take 99% of the processor utilazation up, with no sign of my Personal index being increased.

Outlook Integration is pretty darn slow on my machine too. If an email comes in, it appears google desktop will index it, however if you try to move the email to another folder it will lock Outlook up for a short while. And don't get me started about IMAP. For one reason or another, I have IMAP set up in Outlook, with GoogleDesktop tied in, I am pretty sure it downloads all the contents of my IMAP account each time an email comes in.

Additionally all the News is USA Biased, whilst I have nothing against this, I would like to see some UK news please.

The Whats Hot Widget is pretty nice, and for all my complaining it is quite handy to have the Email Tab integrate in to Gmail. However, the Email Widget doesn't seem to have any decent ordering on the email list.

Google Desktop; No Thanks! I am going to remove it in a couple of days.

Technorati Tags

Internet Explorer 7 [feed], Googledesktop [feed], Gmail [feed], Google [feed], Ie7 [feed], Outlook [feed], Desktop [feed], Uk News [feed], Blogger [feed], Widget [feed], Internet Explorer [feed]

One of the other features that my AJAX application had was Related Searches. This API connected to the Yahoo API and performed a query. The query is a single search term; the results are searches that a User could perform to get similar results.

For instance if you were to put the keyword "Kinlan" into the API, it might bring back searches that would related to "Kinlan", so "Funky Person, Cool Dude and Amazing Geeza" might be some of the searhes that would also relate to the topic of Kinlan.

This is quite a handy little thing, because you can link it in with my previous entry to bring back all the related searches to all the keywords are provided.

The idea was to allow me to specify some searches that would allow the reader to target related topics and subjects through a search engine such as MSN, Google or Yahoo

Anyway, here is the code.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use LWP;
use CGI qw(:standard);
$CGI::POST_MAX=1024 * 100;  # max 100K posts

my($qCGI) = new CGI();
my($YahooAppID) = "APPIDHERE";
my($baseUrl) = "http://api.search.yahoo.com/
WebSearchService/V1/relatedSuggestion";

my($query) = $qCGI->param('query');
my($finalUrl) = $baseUrl

$ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
$ua->agent("YahooPassThrough/0.1 ");

# Create a request
my $req = HTTP::Request->new(POST => $finalUrl);
$req->content(
"appid=$YahooAppID&query=$query&results=50");

# Pass request to the user agent
 and get a response back
my $res = $ua->request($req);

print "Content-type: text/xml\n\n";
print $res->content;

Technorati Tags

Cgi [feed], Related Searches [feed], Proxy Script [feed], Lwp [feed], Api [feed], Google [feed], Search Term [feed], Search Engine [feed], Msn [feed], Ajax [feed], Keywords [feed]

Finally, here it is after a busy week.

What follows is a listing of the code I created to create a proxy that would allow me to access the Yahoo API from any browser with out having to worry about Cross Site Scripting.

This works in Internet Explorer (IE6, IE7) and firefox, and is used in my AJAX example.

Bascially, it retrieves a POST request from the browser and forwards the result inside another POST request to Yahoo, once I recieve the response, I pass back the XML to the web browser.

And thats it really.

Do you have any Questions, email me: Paul Kinlan [paul.kinlan@gmail.com]

#!/usr/bin/perl
use LWP;
use CGI qw(:standard);
$CGI::POST_MAX=1024 * 100; # max 100K posts
my($qCGI) = new CGI();
my($YahooAppID) = "APPIDHERE";

my($baseUrl) = "http://api.search.yahoo.com/
ContentAnalysisService/V1/termExtraction";

my($context)= $qCGI->param('context');
my($query) = $qCGI->param('query');
my($finalUrl) = $baseUrl ;

$ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
$ua->agent("YahooPassThrough/0.1 ");

# Create a request
my $req = HTTP::Request->new(POST => $finalUrl);
$req->content("appid=".$YahooAppID."&context=".$context."&query".$query);
$req->content_type('application/x-www-form-urlencoded');

# Pass request to the user agent and get a response back
my $res = $ua->request($req);
print "Content-type: text/xml\n\n";
print $res->content;

Technorati Tags

Cross Site Scripting [feed], Web Browser [feed], Internet Explorer [feed], Perl [feed], Api [feed], Ie7 [feed], Firefox [feed], Yahoo [feed], Ie6 [feed], Ajax [feed], Proxy [feed], Xml [feed]

I have talked about it in the past, but there is an Image Filter Library for .Net available.

I highly recomend it for anyone who wants to learn about Programatic Image Manipulation.

The article is at CodeProject and it is by Andrew Krillov. The article is easy to follow and so is the code.

Here are the two links to the articles [CodeProject]

• Image_Processing_Lab.asp
• Motion_Detection.asp

I have made a fish eye filter for the API

• http://www.kinlan.co.uk/2005/05/fisheye-example-code-that-integrates.html

Technorati Tags

Image Processing Lab [feed], Image Filter [feed], Image Manipulation [feed], Codeproject [feed], Fish Eye [feed], Fisheye [feed], Api [feed], Image Processing [feed]

I am coming up to one hundred posts on my site now. Yay!

Anyway, I have noticed that I said I would post my Perl request forwarding on my website and then I realised that I haven't done it yet.

So my task for tonight is to put my Perl scripts up online, and start talking about all the things wrong with my first AJAX application.

Technorati Tags

Perl [feed],Perl Scripts [feed], Ajax [feed]

There is an article over on the Search Engine Journal about MSN bot hammering peoples bandwidth. I noticed this too on my Atom.xml file, it is one of the reasons that my most prominent RSS syndication link is on Feedburner.

MSN Bot, was hitting my Atom XML file once every minute or so from what I could tell, and it had used about 100 MB of my transfere limit. Not much really, but this was only 15 days into the month. My traffic this month has gone through the roof in comparison to previous months. I thouhgt I had more readers, turns out it might have been MSN bot.

Supposedly MSN Bot is a syndication search engine, (the artcile only mentions RSS, but it was getting my ATOM feed). It is searching for new data all the time, thus it hits your feed to see if it has changed. There is information here, and also at MSN about how to slow it down. Basically it involves creating a Robots.txt file in the your directory, which tells the MSN bot to come back in x minutes time.

I created a Robots.txt file, and it reduced the problem substantially.

Technorati Tags

Msn Bot [feed], Search Engine [feed], Atom [feed], Syndication [feed], Feed [feed], Rss [feed], Search [feed], Bandwidth [feed]

I was playing aroung with my server the other day, and on the off chance I noticed that www.kinlan.co.uk/AjaxExperiments/AjaxTag and www.kinlan.co.uk/AjaxExperiments/AjaxTag.html go to the same place. (These are some of my Ajax experiments)

Since when did Apache no longer worry about the file extension? it complains about the case of the file all the time.

I am not too sure if Apache is re-writing the URL's because I don't have root access or anything. It is just a Virtual Host.

This is good news for me because I can post URL's in Technorati Tag Form.

Technorati Tags

Virtual Host [feed], Apache [feed], Ajax [feed], Host [feed], Tag [feed], Url [feed], Technorati [feed]

I was just searching on Technorati, and one of the Top Searches was for http://www.alistapart.org

They are using Ruby on Rails, I am not too sure what that is but it seems to be something based around the langauge Ruby. Why is Ruby good for developing Websites?

What is special about Ruby?

I have to admit it, their site looks pretty darn cool. I like the colour scheme, it is quite neutral. I like their articles too!

I wonder if they used Colour Theory? :)

Technorati Tags

Color Theory [feed], Colour Theory [feed], Ruby [feed], Technorati [feed], Color Scheme [feed],Colour Scheme [feed], Top Searches [feed]

I have just downloaded the Google Desktop Search 2.0 Beta, I quite like it. I would like to be able to force it to index when not Idle, but thats the only complaint so far.

I am looking forward to being able to search for things amazingly quickly, I have held off from using others because they took up lots of resources on my pitifully weak machine. This one seems to be pretty good though.

I have installed an Adsense plugin to see how much revenue I don't get from this blog. ;)

I like the Gmail plugin that comes as standard, and the feed detection is really really good. It beats Internet Explorer (IE7 Beta 1) hands down. It shows a very simple outline of all the blog entries that I am interested in. It doesn't allow any aggregation of any sort, so it is more of a news bulletin system. Its pretty cool though.

I will post more opinions once I have played with it a bit more.

Technorati Tags

Google Desktop Search [feed], Beta [feed], Blog [feed], Internet Explorer [feed], Gmail [feed], Google [feed], Ie7 [feed], Aggregation [feed], Feed [feed], Desktop Search [feed]

I have been reading a bit recently been reading about OPML. I have the following questions:

How can I use it?
What can I use it for?
What is it good for?

People who are talking about OPML
Robert Scoble :

• /0001011/2005/08/21.html#a10930
• /0001011/2005/07/25.html#a10752
• /0001011/2004/08/14.html#a8077

To Quote Robert:

OPML is the glue that COULD bring all these things together.

From what I have read, the article I quoted infers that in the future OPML will bring together pod casts, screen casts, photo-sharing and screen casts. I personally just can't see how it could; I don't get how it is supposed to work; I don't know who supports it or if they do support it, what they do with it.

Dave Winer

• http://support.opml.org/

Toms OPML

• 2005/08/17#gettingAbceAboutThisThing

If you have any links or references that you think might help me can you email me: paul.kinlan@gmail.com

Technorati Tags

Pod Casts [feed], Scoble [feed], Photo Sharing [feed], Dave Winer [feed], Html [feed], Weblogs [feed], Radio [feed], Opml [feed], Blogs [feed], Glue [feed]

This post is subtitled: It got me thinking about how I use Blogger.com

I am not too sure why I put this down as a success. There are too many things that I want to do with my blog that Blogger's Interface and features does not allow. The "Blogger For Microsoft Word" is not amazingly useful, the Posting WYSIWYG doesn’t work consistently. The tags that are available don’t seem to have been improved for ages.

I would like to see a bit more innovation by Blogger, I am positive they could do loads with their software. They don't offer more than one feed per blog. I would like to extend the RSS feeds and ATOM feeds (well I am not too sure about the ATOM feed). I can’t do this with Blogger. You can't configure the PING's that you would like Blogger to do for you on your behalf. You can't provide more that one link in the blog Post.

Saying that AudioBlogging.com looks pretty cool, not sure I would use it though. Seeing that I live in the UK and I would have to get down all that I want in one quick call. I tend to talk in circles.

I am not really too sure what I want, I would like more control. I would like tags that are configurable (such as the number of previous posts you want displayed) and some other tags, maybe the number of posts etc.

I can’t really complain, and now that I have started writing this entry I feel that I don’t have any ideas to put forward to them. It is a free service, and as free services go in comparison to paid services it is very, very good..

Anyway, the next set of post is about the failures of the application

Technorati Tags

Blogger [feed], Rss [feed], Blog [feed], Atom [feed], Feed [feed], Microsoft Word [feed], Wysiwyg [feed], Ping [feed]

This post is subtitled: It got me thinking about how I use Blogger.com

I am not too sure why I put this down as a success. There are too many things that I want to do with my blog that Blogger's Interface and features does not allow. The "Blogger For Microsoft Word" is not amazingly useful, the Posting WYSIWYG doesn't work consistently. The tags that are available don’t seem to have been improved for ages.

I would like to see a bit more innovation by Blogger, I am positive they could do loads with their software. They don't offer more than one feed per blog. I would like to extend the RSS feeds and ATOM feeds (well I am not too sure about the ATOM feed). I can't do this with Blogger. You can't configure the PING's that you would like Blogger to do for you on your behalf. You can't provide more that one link in the blog Post.

Saying that AudioBlogging.com looks pretty cool, not sure I would use it though. Seeing that I live in the UK and I would have to get down all that I want in one quick call. I tend to talk in circles.

I am not really too sure what I want, I would like more control. I would like tags that are configurable (such as the number of previous posts you want displayed) and some other tags, maybe the number of posts etc.

I can't really complain, and now that I have started writing this entry I feel that I don't have any ideas to put forward to them. It is a free service, and as free services go in comparison to paid services it is very, very good.

Technorati Tags

Blogger [feed], Rss [feed], Blog [feed], Atom [feed], Feed [feed], Microsoft Word [feed], Wysiwyg [feed], Ping [feed]

It seems that if you want to make money blogging, you have to blog about making money blogging. The more you blog about making money the more money you make! Or so it seems.

A case in point is made here, http://www.problogger.net/ . Darren Rowse reported that he has made a Six Figure salary a month off Blogging, and what does he do (It is actually more than a blog about making money blogging) he seems to eat, sleep, dream and talk about blogging. I think the site is quite interesting, but I don't ever intend on competing with him that much.

He does have some good pointers about site design, content and the like. And a neat comment

I am sorry that you are offended by me earning money from blogging. A guy has to
support his family somehow and I figure it might as well be by helping people on
the net by providing them with the information that they are searching for.

Lucky Man! I think I should stick to my day job though.

Technorati Tags

Earning Money [feed], Blogging [feed], Make Money [feed], Blog [feed], Helping People [feed], Rowse [feed], Pointers [feed], Sleep [feed], Dream [feed]

Speaking about Perl in my Previous post, I forgot to mention that I will need to start doing some XML processing, before I start going off and investigating the wrong XML Parsers does anyone know of a good lightweight Perl XML Parser.

Some options that I need are:

1. It has to be light weight
2. Potentially support XPath
3. Has to be a reader (itereates accross nodes) I think this means SAX
4. Has to also support DOM.
5. Allows Creation of XML documents, via DOM style methods or some other method which I don't know about.

If you have any suggestions, I really would appreciate hearing them.

Email me: paul.kinlan@gmail.com

Technorati Tags

Xml Parsers [feed], Xml Documents [feed], Dom [feed], Xpath [feed], Sax [feed], Xml Parser [feed], Perl [feed]

This is the 8th installment about my Successes and Failures of my first AJAX application: It got me thinking about Perl again!

I have been looking forward to this post, I don’t especially know why. When I was 16, I started a small company (which I left, but is now doing well – oh well), it was called PCBware (Paul, Chris and Ben)ware. Its name is now www.Switchmedia.co.uk (they host my Blog for me). One of the things that we did an amazing amount of was Perl. All our systems were written in Perl, it was fun. Anyway, as it transpires, other things have happened to me and I am heavily involved in C# and .Net application development now.

I stopped using Perl about 1 year ago and have not touched it since. That is until I did this AJAX application.

If you have ready some of my posts recently you will see that I was struggling with Cross Domain scripting, basically I needed to call a web service directly from the web page. Unfortunately, Firefox won’t allow this and IE will (if you are running in an unsecured manner), so the only thing that I could do was to proxy the request through a script on my server and pass the results back to the client. This had a couple of benefits, firstly it got the cross site scripting to work correctly and secondly it allowed me to hide my Developer Tokens, which for some API is key.

I will post my scripts in the next few posts. If you spot any problems let me know, because it is vital that I understand why I have made mistakes. paul.kinlan@gmail.com

Anyway, back to the subject. I really enjoyed my re-entrance into Perl, the libraries are numerous and really quite easy to use. The scripts are really simple, but they helped me no end. The scripts are based around LWP and CGI.

In the next version of my Web app, I will need to create more scripts, but I am hoping to provide more services, such as knitting differing blogs together to aggregate the data better. I also need to create one script for each different type of Web Service that I am going to allow the application to consume.

Controlling the access to the Web Service through a proxy script will allow me to do a couple of cool things, like I said earlier, I could join RSS feeds together better. I could also aggreagte multiple calls to a web service in one single call through the proxy. I have lots and lots of options.

I hit some problems with my understanding and some simple mistakes both with the client code and the server code. HINT, if you are performing a post operation, there are normally "content()" methods that allow you to pass in masses of data. Initially I was putting all this on the query string which is the wrong thing to do.

I am really looking forward to doing a bit more Perl for the next version of the application. Also the reason why I am not doing it in .Net is because I am hosted on a Linux Box.

Technorati Tags

Web Service [feed], Proxy [feed], Rss [feed], Aggregate [feed], Blogs [feed], Cross Site Scripting [feed], Perl [feed], Scripts [feed], Cross Domain [feed], Firefox [feed], Ajax [feed], Lwp [feed], Query String [feed], Tokens [feed]

This post if subtitled: "It helped me publish related topics on Technorati"

One of the reasons why I created the Technorati Tag Generator was to help me create the Topical tags at the bottom of the page. Initially I had three sections: a Technorati Tag Section, a Feedster Topical search section and an MSN search section. For each post about 10 minutes was spent creating Tags and search links, and about 10 minutes for each post thinking of Tags and related searches.

I am a big proponent of Value Added Data, but what really got my goat was the fact that I had to spend about an hour creating a post, 10 minutes of which would be creating the post, and the other 50 creating the data around the post.

With the Technorati tagger, it takes all of 1 minute to create the associated tags for a particular blog post. I am really pleased with this aspect of the program.

I am less pleased however with the fact that I have had to lose the other two boxes of Value Added Data. The next version of the application will add these back in. It really needs to because I have had feedback from people who have said they have missed those boxes. Additionally if it I can't get it in the application in the second version then I will fail at some of the goals I am setting out.

The hardest part about creating the two search boxes, was that I had to crawl the search engines trying to get the searches done correctly. The next version of my application will provide related searches and also a preview of the results so that I can quickly judge whether a particular search is any good.

Technorati Tags

Msn Search [feed], Search Engines [feed], Topical Search [feed], Technorati [feed], Feedster [feed], Tag Generator [feed], Value Added Data [feed], Related Searches [feed], Tagger [feed], AJAX [feed]

I have been looking for a way to update my Blogs image. I like what I have, but it is quite generic.

I was looking at this site http://penandthink.com/niggle/ and I really like the way it shows the Blog post.

I am not too sure if I can really use this as a basis for my site, because I have been posting a lot recently, so it won't stay too static...... Saying that, it might work.

A quick question for anyone out there: If you went to a Blog, do you prefer one item that is shown, or a full list?

Currently my page I show the last 30 posts. So that you can browse them if you like. Would you prefer the current entry at the top, and then a summary of entries beneath?

All emails would be greatly appreciated: paul.kinlan@gmail.com

Technorati Tags

Blog [feed], Blogs [feed]

I read a lot of people are complaining that AJAX applications are breaking the Navigation of the Web Browsers. I am sure most of these people also say that "Web Browser" Backward <-> Forward navigation is wrong anyway. I kinda like the idea that if I am in an AJAX based application I will get out of the application completly by just pressing the back button.

Its not AJAX that breaks the navigation. Its the applications that break the navigation. Its the applications that break the Bookmarking.

Google Maps seem to have sorted the bookmarking issue out. But you have to remember that some applications don't lend themselves to Web Style Navigation, some applications don't lend themselves to bookmarks.

More on this later after I have thought some more on the subject.

Have you any comments, leave me one or email me: paul.kinlan@gmail.com

Technorati Tags

Google Maps [feed], Web Browsers [feed], Navigation [feed], Google [feed], Web Browser [feed], Ajax [feed], Idea [feed]

I think that this is the most important part of the blog. There are really two sections to it. The content and the value added features.

Currently, I provide some content (whether it is interesting or not is a separate question) and some value added features (a list of topics that a reader might be able to find related information) which include the Technorati tag list and the related searches.

Okay, the related searches aren't back in yet, but they will be. It is the value added data that I think some people appreciate. It is also the value added data that got me in to this series of Blog posts (I created the AJAX application to help me create construct the value added data).

I would like to include more value added data, maybe a citation list, the related searches defiantly. However I think there is a tradeoff. Too much information looks like you are spamming. I will have to weigh up each of the value added data to see which I think is best to include.

I will have to get back in to my AJAX application because maintaining the Value Added sections is a nightmare. The Technorati tags are really easy to maintain now ;)

Do you have any suggestions for Value Added Data? Please email me paul.kinlan@gmail.com.

Technorati Tags

Value Added Data [feed], Value Added Features [feed], Technorati [feed], Related Searches [feed], Ajax [feed], Blog [feed], Spamming [feed], Tag [feed]

I will keep this chapter short. Whilst looking at many Blogs, I have noticed that nearly everyone but the most successful Blogs are either a) too short or b) too long. I feel that too shorter an entry all it really shows is that you are linking to something or don’t have too much to say. The longer Blog posts are mostly to long winded and I get bored halfway through. There is only so much I can read about a cats eating habits.

Therefore I hope to have a mixture of both, the short entries will have a bit of a critique in and the longer ones such as my "Success and failures" will be more articley, but keep on subject and hopefully be useful and interesting.

For instance, I am posting this chapter as a series of more manageable set of entries.

Technorati Tags

Blogs [feed], Manageable [feed], Blog [feed], Success [feed]

I have been thinking for a long time about what I want to include in this Blog. I have several concerns. Firstly the name of the Blog "C#, .Net Framework" I believe limits the scope of the blog. I shouldn’t really be talking about what I am now, technically. I think I might change the name of the blog into something a little more generic, but at the same time it will have a larger target area for audience attraction. The Blog will stay technical; I will try not to include personal entries into it, but I want to have a broader scope to the Blog. Over the past month or so, I have been Blogging about Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), AJAX, Firefox, XMLHttpRequest and much more. I still have plenty to talk about though including current technical news, image manipulation (I did a fisheye effect a while back)

I will, in the future, change the name of the blog. But rather than choosing it myself I might open it up to the masses to see if they can suggest a new name for the blog. This might in the long term be a publicity stunt, but I do need to get people visiting my blog and I would like to get a little more interaction in the blog.

Technorati Tags

Internet Explorer 7 [feed], Blog [feed], Ie7 [feed], Firefox [feed], Xmlhttprequest [feed], Blogging [feed], Publicity Stunt [feed], Image Manipulation [feed], Technical [feed], Net Framework [feed], Fisheye [feed], Ajax [feed], Internet Explorer [feed]

The way that I write sucks! That is all that I can say, I don't think I have a very good grasp on the English language (which is pretty poor since I live in England!!). My Vocabulary is limited and my punctuation is abysmal. I am prototyping this post in Microsoft Word so the spelling and vocabulary should be fine (synonym suggestion). I believe this blog has however, has allowed me to improve the way that I write. I need to do more though. I was thinking of getting the book “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” because from what I have heard it is a great introduction to grammar.

I don’t want my blog to be a palace of grammatical correctness, I still want it to be personal, but I would like it to read well.

So here goes. Learn where to put commas correctly; learn about Semi-colons (Was the previous one correct?); learn how to structure sentences and learn how to structure sentences and paragraphs.

Technorati Tags

Eats Shoots And Leaves [feed], Vocabulary [feed], Blog [feed], Microsoft Word [feed], Synonym [feed], Prototyping [feed], English Language [feed], England [feed]

This is the sixth installment of my "Success and Failures of my First AJAX application". If you would like to talk to me about AJAX or anything else email me: paul.kinlan@gmail.com

This entry is titled: "It got me thinking about how I communicate over my blog". This focuses on several areas from who I am trying to improve my grammar; the things I talk about; the length of the entries and what I include in my Blogs.

I will try to deal with each individual point, but the general gist of this post is really about how I have and I am trying to constantly evolve my blog.

• Improving My Grammar
• The Things I talk about
• The Lenght of the Entries
• What I include in my Blogs

Technorati Tags

Ajax [feed], Blog [feed], Blogs [feed], Success [feed]

I have just seen this tagger (http://www.ultraseeker.com/tagbuilder). It is okay, all it does though is take tags that you generate and create some XHTML out of it. It has half of what I want in my next AJAX application, but that half is the easy half :)

Technorati Tags

Tagger [feed], Ajax [feed], Api [feed], Technorati [feed], Tag [feed], XHTML [feed]

This is just a quick entry, Technorati have come up with a Cool REST API. http://developers.technorati.com/wiki/BlogPostTags

The API, lets a developer display all the tags that a particular site has created. It is pretty cool because it lets me see that some of the issues I have been having have been resolved.

Check out http://www.kinlan.co.uk/cgi-bin/SiteInfo.pl if you want to see all the tags I have used. It is a really simple API to use, and includes some basic stats about the tag (the number of times they been used). I can see how I can use this already in my next application, I am made up.

It is simple little API's like this that I like! Keep up the good work Technorati!

Technorati Tags

Api [feed], Technorati [feed], Tag [feed]

I am just over half way through talking about some of the success of my AJAX application. The fourth part is about external API's. This actually has some relation to an earlier post that I made: Retail Web Service Therapy

The Subtitle for this entry is: It got me thinking about all the other API's that I want to see.

What I mean by this really is that I want to see more feed/blog companies exposing more about the statistics. I want to see more retail companies exposing their catalogues. I want to see more News Corporations expose their news as feeds. I want to see search companies expose their results as feeds. I want to see search companies offer more interesting API's (Yahoo is about the most interesting in my opinion).

I just want to see more, I want a central list of companies that offer their services. After all, I am a consumer to them, maybe not always directly of products, but of their data.

It also got me thinking, that I don't really know of all the API's REST or SOAP that are out there. I would love to start taking advantage of them.

I would like to add a bit more dynamism to my apps. For instance, a particular blog entry that I do I might like to see the all the important keywords, for each keyword see its relative popularity, see other keywords that might help me get a better spread of the potential search results, see the relative ranking of keywords on advert revenue (so I can work out revenue potential if needs be). From this, I would like to query other sources so that I can cross reference and provide more feedback to my viewers, this information might contain the importance of a related blog, it might contain how many people link to it, who else that blog links to. It could provide a further level of service, for each keyword that might be a product I could query the retailer and provide best buy information or maybe localised product information based on where the user resides or even information about second hand items that are only 10 miles away.

Just little things like that. I am pretty sure all of what I have talked about is not revolutionary.

What I need (and I really need help from the readers) is lists of companies that offer Web API's to their software. Companies who offer RSS feeds that provide useful information.

Technorati Tags

Api [feed], Rss Feeds [feed], Soap [feed], Blog Entry [feed], Web Service [feed], Api [feed], Search Companies [feed], Keywords [feed], Keyword [feed], Search [feed]

I have been playing with the Blogger Tool for Windows, and there are some features that I would like to see go into future versions:

1. The ability to edit the HTML before uploading to the Blogger.
2. The ability to add Images
3. The ability to add Tables
4. The ability to add Select styles to text that is based on a style that I define
5. Correctly create Ordered Lists and Unordered list. Currently all lists are un-ordered
6. If I provide a shading for an element, I would like it be applied to the element in the HTML

This tool is way off from being "feature" complete, but it is a good start. I probably won't be using it too much because I like having the control over what goes into a post. I might use it to "Save as Draft" and then edit it later. I can get through loads of text without having to worry about my Tagging system or other styling stuff.

Technorati Tags

Blogger [feed], Tagging System [feed], Html [feed]

This is my first post using the Blogger Word Blogging tool.  It is pretty cool, pretty easy to use.  I would like to know If I have any control of the HTML that is created.  Only because the AJAX tool that I use only outputs HTML.  It will be interesting to see what people can do with it.  At least I have a decent spell checker!

One thing I have noticed is that if you put a smiley icon in the text it only comes out as a “(“.

Edit: apostrophes don’t come out very well either.
Edit: Images and tables aren’t supported either.  Gutted.

I think I will post a blog tomorrow with the features that I would like to see.

Edit:  It is really fast at publishing the post too.  I mean I find that it is really really fast.

Blogger have released a new product. Just when I filled in the survey saying there weren't developing enough cool new stuff to keep me interested they come out with this:
Word Blogger, which I think I will call Worger! :)

This is a plugin for Microsoft Word that lets you post a Word document direct to your blog. I can't wait to have a go, it looks interesting. Does anyone have any reviews of it yet? Does it keep the exact format of your Word document?

This is actually quite a timely software release, I was getting really annoyed with the WSIWYG editor that I had gone back to plain mode. Why the WSYWIG editor can't do lists, paragraphs and blockelements correctly is beyond me. (it does tag links and email addresses nicely though!)

Anyway, I will give it a try and post my feed back on my blog.

Technorati Tags

Blogger [feed], Word Document [feed], Blog [feed], Microsoft Word [feed]

Robert Scoble talks about how Developer API's are changing the face of retailing. I think I briefly talked about this a while back now (Are there any good web services out there: http://www.kinlan.co.uk/2005/04/are-there-any-good-web-services-out.html).

I personally think if a retailer isn't planning to create API's that enable applications to be built on top of their product catalogue, ordering systems etc, then they are losing out on a massively huge potential future audience. I can't really justify it more than that, other than it is what I belief will happen.

So I think I agree with Roberts statement, just not really that it is going to change quickly. For reasons below.

One stumbling block for me to start to use API's like EBay's is that most of the ones I find charge per call. As a Full-time developer, after hours home developer; I can't afford to start using these services to see if I can start to do something "Entrepreneurial".

Additionally, I find it hard to find companies that offer API's to their data, everyone seems so, how should I say it, keeping their cards tight against their chest.

Am I missing the point here? I mean afterall Amazon provide access to their content (if only they would allow me to list Market Place Items through the same Interface) for free. It's a revenue generator to provide open access to an API.

Has Ebay changed there per call billing policy? I am finding it hard to read their site, something has gone awry with the layout.

Does anyone know of any cool retail web services (possibly in the UK).

Technorati Tags

Developer Api [feed], Web Services [feed], Robert Scoble [feed], Ebay [feed], Amazon [feed], Entrepreneurial [feed]

This is the fourth part to my successes and failures when creating an AJAX Experimental application.

Part 4: It got me