Eric Gunnerson Ask a Question about a simple question about Regular Expressions:

Welcome to week #2 of our class. This is a simple one:

S2 - Verify a string is a hex number

Given a string, verify that it contains only the digits 0-9 and the letters a through f (either in uppercase or lowercase).

Answer/discussion on Friday...

[Via MSDN Blogs]

My answer for this would have to be

^[A-Fa-f0-9]*$

However I know that it means that you can start a number with a 0 which may or may not be what he wants.

Technorati Tags

hex number [feed], regex engine [feed], hex [feed], msdn [feed], eric gunnerson [feed], C# [feed], regex [feed], regular expression [feed], .Net [feed]

Related Wikipedia Documents

Wikipedia: Regex, Regular expression, Hexadecimal, Wikipedia: Binary numeral system, Wikipedia: MSDN, Wikipedia: C Sharp programming language, Grep

My Related Documents

C#, .Net Framework: RE: Regex 101 Exercise S2 - Verify a string is a hex number, C#, .Net Framework: Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2, C#, .Net Framework: C# 3.0. Ugh!

Related Amazon Books

A Programmer's Introduction to C# 2.0: (UK)/(USA), A Programmer's Introduction to C# (.NET Developer Series): (UK)/(USA), Regular Expression Pocket Reference: (UK)/(USA), Regular Expression Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach: (UK)/(USA), Regular Expression Recipes for Windows Developers: a Problem-solution Approach: (UK)/(USA), Programming C#: (UK)/(USA), Windows Forms Programming in C#: (UK)/(USA), ASP.NET Unleashed (Unleashed S.): (UK)/(USA), MCAD Training Guide 70-316: Developing and Implementing Windows-based Applications with C# and Visual Studio.NET: (UK)/(USA)

Related Images

After my experience with AJAX Tag 2 [still not finished] and the quick turn around of DeliTag I have decided to alter the purpose of AJAX Tag. AJAXTag was designed to help me give the user what related information they might want to see. Well, I have had a change of mind. I still might do that, and provide an OPML file of all the results that I collate, but I think it would also be good to let the readers of my blog explore for themselves.

That means, I will definiatly include an Interactive version of my blog which will allow the users to explore and find out extra information about a journal entry that they are looking at. Finally resulting in an OPML file that they can save and use.

This idea has been a long time in comming and is partially related to Memorandum, which Robert Scoble likes so much. I never really liked mem' that much because not all the articles interested me, and if they didn't interest me what was the point in exploring the related data around these articles. Hopefully if I provide my AJAXTagger in every entry then it I create, people who come to my site are potentially intereseted in what I write about and therfore will be more inclined to explore the relevant data around the article.

What do you think about this? paul.kinlan@gmail.com

Technorati Tags

Robert Scoble [feed], Ajax [feed], Blog [feed], Relevant Data [feed], Memorandum [feed], Idea [feed], Journal [feed], Opml [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Opml ,Oml ,Blogroll ,Dave Winer ,List Of News Aggregators ,Journal ,Idea ,Blogroll ,Ajax (programming) ,Wikipedia: Robert Scoble

I have been thinking about adding complete AjaxTag Functionality to my page as a default standard. That is, at the end of every article there wiil be a section for dynamically generated data, the data will be pulled in on the fly for now. It will not be cached but I might have to think about that in the future.

The information will include realted searches, related blogs, related images, related Wikipedia articles etc. All of this will be based on the context of the journal entry.

At the end of every post you will be able to subscribe to an OPML file with all the results in, i.e An Outline all the related information about the post.

Technorati Tags

Cached [feed], Wikipedia [feed], Blogs [feed], Journal [feed], Images [feed], Opml [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Opml ,Oml ,Blogroll ,Dave Winer ,Outliner ,Bbc News Online ,Rss (file Format)

Mind Valley said BlinkList was back up. No it isn't. I hope everything is okay.

Tech crunch has a little article about Memorandum and Blogniscient. I have tried them both, I didn't actually think they were that great.

I can tell you why I definatly won't be using them. I can't flipping spell their names when I type them out in a web browser!

Ben Ruedlinger’s Blogniscient relaunched today with a completely new look and feel. An old screenshot of the service is here.

Blogniscient is a blog news organizer that, like Memeorandum, uses a propreitary algorithm for determining what’s hot in the blogosphere at any given time. Unlike Digg, which creates news items based on user bookmarking and subsequent voting to determine front page items, Blogniscient and Memeorandum are automated.

...

[Via TechCrunch]

Technorati Tags

Crunch [feed], Memorandum [feed]

I have found a couple more thanks to this site: http://www.momathome.com/.

There is Shadows, Simpy, Del.icio.us and BlinkList [although the latters site is not working]. Are there any more?

I am looking for services that are similar to del.icio.us so that I can add them to my AJAX based DeliTag. I am thinking that I can upload the tags to Del.icio.us and other services in one go.

[Via C#, .Net Framework]

Technorati Tags

Ajax [feed], Php [feed]

Ever since I have created DeliTag and put it on the main page I have had IE7 say that my page is a suspicous site. I think it is because I ask for a username and password, unless someone has reported me for something. Anyway, if you were wondering what I do with the Del.icio.us username and password that you put in I have created a Privacy statement for you to read. In summary, all I do is pass on your username and password as a normal web request to Del.icio.us. It is unsecured, but so is Del.icio.us so there is nothing I can do about it. I do not do any other work with it. The only other data that is processed is my website content, which belongs to me (therfore I take the inherent usage and privacy limitations that Yahoo infer when using their Webservices)

The Privacy Statement is at http://www.kinlan.co.uk/Deli/DeliPrivacy.htm which describes it better. If you have any comments let me know: paul.kinlan@gmail.com or leave a comment.

Technorati Tags

Privacy Statement [feed], Username And Password [feed], Ie7 [feed], Web Request [feed], Webservices [feed], Infer [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Web Service ,Ajax (programming)

I was getting really annoyed/bored with the Adsense adverts on the main page. They weren't very visible and I am sure they did nothing for the site. They only place they are in now is the article just before the comments. Lets see if this makes any difference.

Technorati Tags

Adverts [feed], Adsense [feed]

I really want people to see DeliTag and use it. Therefore I have also decided to put it on my main page. I will also be putting it on Tagger.Kinlan.co.uk.

For those how don't know what DeliTag is. It is an AJAX Based Mashup of a Yahoo and Del.icio.us web service. It reads in the context of a page and creates tags that you can post to Del.icio.us

Technorati Tags

Delicious [feed], Web Service [feed], Tagger [feed], Ajax [feed], Tagger [feed], Main [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Ajax (programming) ,Web Service

Every single page that is not the main page on my site now has the ability to post tags to Del.icio.us. It is very simple to use, you select the text that you think contains the important information about a post; click "Generate Tags"; select the tags that it returns and then click "Submit Tags". This will then submit that page with the related tags to del.icio.us. You also have to put your user name and password in.

Have a go. Click on the title of this entry to go to the Item Page and then you can go from there.

It is all AJAX Based and unfortuantly needs IE6 and above at the moment. I will make it Firefox compatible soon.

Technorati Tags

Delicious [feed], Firefox [feed], Ie6 [feed], Ajax [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Ajax (programming) ,Criticisms Of Internet Explorer ,Mozilla Firefox

I finally got it working with thanks to /browservulsel.blogspot.com. It is a neat little article that helps get the back links working.

Technorati Tags

Back Links [feed], Blogspot [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Blogger ,Trackback ,Link

I am looking for services that are similar to del.icio.us so that I can add them to my AJAX based DeliTag. I am thinking that I can upload the tags to Del.icio.us and other services in one go.

Technorati Tags

Ajax [feed], Delicious [feed]

Further update to my AJAX Application DeliTag (The Delicious Tag Poster), if you select the text in the IFRAME then the software will only analyse the selected text rather than the whole page.

Technorati Tags

Ajax [feed], Delicious [feed], Tag [feed], Iframe [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Json ,Ajax (programming) ,Tag Cloud ,Tag

I am quite pleased with myself. After 1 hour and using the Framework I have been creating for a while for the AJAX Tagger I have created a piece of software that will automatically post to Delicious the tags that are related to any page on www.kinlan.co.uk.

It only works on Kinlan.co.uk, but it you have a Delicious Account please try this and let me know if I should develop it futher.

Here are the instructions, Press "Goto", When the page has loaded press "Analyze". Once the Tags Come Back, select the ones you want and type in your Delicious username and password and then press "Submit".

The passwords are sent plain text, but this is the way Delicious does it and I don't process them because I call Delicious straight away.

IE6+ is needed and so is The Cross Domain Data Island support.

It works for anypage on my site. I will endeavour to get some support for sites outside my domain.

DeliTag

Technorati Tags

Delicious [feed], Cross Domain [feed], Ie6 [feed], Tagger [feed], Ajax [feed], Passwords [feed], Analyze [feed], Loaded [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Password ,Ajax (programming) ,Cross Site Scripting

A Del.icio.us automatic tag creating application. It will work a similar way to my Ajax Tagging Application by generating topical tags based off the content of the HTML page. Relevant topical tags can be selected and then used to upload the URL and the related tags to Del.icio.us.

I think it would be handy, how about you?

Technorati Tags

Tagging [feed], Ajax [feed], Upload [feed], Handy [feed], Tag [feed], Url [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Uniform Resource Locator ,Tag Cloud ,Tag ,Tag Soup ,Tagging ,Rss (file Format) ,Ajax (programming)

I have just been playing with the Amazon Web service API REST interface and I must say that it seem remarkably quicker than using the SOAP API. I am saying this without doing much testing, but when ever I did calls from C# using a Web Reference it always seemed to take a while to pull back the results, the REST API on the otherhand is far far quicker.

Thinking about it I am using two completly different systems, one was a Windows Forms application, the other is a Linux Server on an unbelivably fast network connection.

Technorati Tags

REST [feed], Web Reference [feed], Amazon [feed], Soap [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Soap ,Amazon

Check out YMDB.com, it is a simple and easy to use site that allows you to list your favorite films and see who else likes what you like.

I think it would suit an AJAX Style interface because adding in titles and moving them through the lists is pretty tedious. Other than that it is good.

My Profile.

Technorati Tags

Tedious [feed], Ajax [feed], Interface [feed], Profile [feed], Ymdb [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

User Interface ,Wikipedia: Ajax

There is a little problem with the AJAX Tagger Version 2. I will be working on it later tonight when I get home. I mistakenly thought that a change that I did last night didn't need testing :)

I was just browsing around Waterstones the other day and I saw the sequel to Peter F. Hamiltons Pandora's Star Book UK/US: Judas Unchained UK/US.

I loved Pandora's Star, it is a massive space opera (900 pages hardback)! It is about a star that is being observed and then suddenly disappears and all the ramifactions that this has on a futuristic society that is spanning many many stars.

I can't wait to get Judas Unchained, it is only about £12 on Amazon rather than £20 in Waterstones. I never knew it, but Peter F Hamilton is known for his massive space operas that cover many books.

Technorati Tags

Waterstones [feed], Pandora [feed], Amazon [feed]

I have replied again on Abhinaba's blog.

You said "I have time again seen that people point to intellisense and other editor features to justify or nullify arguments. But a editor feature can never justify design decisions. Not everyone uses VS editor. Moreover a lot of people have build systems that _do not_ use solutions and rely on make files (nmake) or "sources" "dirs" files (NTBuild). Since there is no sln/proj files for the VS editor to use, intellisense do not work and users open CS files individually to edit. This is not a corner case situation and some teams even in MS uses this approach.".

You're right, intellisense can't justify having lengthened/shortend etc Naming conventions, but neither can its use or lack of be used to justify the reverse [I think that makes sense]. I understand that you want to be as verbose as you can in as smaller an area, but I still think verbosity wins the day.

Again for your second class, you shouldn't really be ripping the enums out and using them elsewhere [this could cause unintended consequences, at least having to change the class declaration makes it explicit that you know are changing all the enum refeneces], they should be referenced in the context that they are to be used in, and thus I belive having them in the class where it is initially related is the better choice.

Obviously [and I might condraticy myself now] if you have many classes from the start that use them I agree with your point. But, if you have a file filter [specific to files] and a directory filter [specific to directories] I would keep them at class level named as filter and not at the namespace level named as FileFilter, DirectoryFilter.

Technorati Tags

Intellisense [feed], Filter [feed], Verbose [feed], Editor Feature [feed], Enum [feed], Namespace [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Namespace ,Enum ,Enumeration ,Visual C Plus Plus

Finally, someone like me who has trouble seeing what you can do with opml [see below]. I have been in the same boat, I spent three days finding resources about the type/url, xmlurl etc attributes. I had no idea what to do with them! It is not standard, but it is meant to be that way [for some reason]. I spent three days looking for common ways to define outlines but could find a consistent way that everyone uses. It appears that if you create whatever attribute you want, document it and enough people use it and recognise it, then it will become a "standard" attribute.

I have a couple of posts on http://tagger.kinlan.co.uk about this and the Javascript OPML object model I am trying to create (http://www.kinlan.co.uk/AjaxExperiments/opml.js) I use it on http://www.kinlan.co.uk/AjaxExperiments/AjaxTag2 [which isn't finished yet so it might take a bit of getting used too], I use it because based on a blog post there can be many many related links/resources/searches that a user might want to look at based on a blog entry. I though it would be handy to have an OPML file to look at instead of all the links cloging up the blog.

As for determining the file type then I am can't really help you because as far as my app is concerned it doesn't care what type it is because all it uses is links for pages and images. I need to add support for feeds.

I am not an Opml expert. This is the results of my observations of a couple Opml feeds. I fail to see how to adequately leverage Opml in the mash-up web world.

A few weeks ago, I published a demonstration for searching multiple site's entirely via the web-browser. I was illustrating the value of opening up unauthenticaed cross-domain xmlhttp requests and the opportunities that would create.

I planned to build a new demo that can "mash-up" Opml. This demo would take an XML feed (whether RSS, Atom, or Opml) and render it. For Opml lists, I wanted to expand each list item based on type. Opml files (e.g., reading lists) expansion would have been a powerful expression. Loading an Opml file would render the list. Each outline item would be rendered based on type within the page - links to other Opml lists would expand in outline format, links to Rss feeds would expand with the feed in place, links to Mp3 or videos would expand with a media player, html pages could expand with a preview of the page, and so on. This provides a foundation for a a very quick and effective newspaper page.

Developing this should have been trivial. The base code was less than a few screenfuls. However, my good intentions quickly fell apart because I discovered that Opml provides no (actually minimal) semantics to understand the items in the list without having to physically request them.

Opml apparently has a type attribute. However, this type attribute is not well defined. According to the Opml Guidelines, this merely tells you that the link is an Rss feed or something else. Something else is pretty broad. Having to request the resource to somehow determine its type is a non-starter (I am not downloading a multi-megabyte video just to know its a video). Even worse, different feeds use the url and xmlurl fields differently. I found Opml files that list each type as a "link" and then the url refers to an Rss file.  Even in the most recent post dated a week ago, Validating OPML, while the type attribute is considered required, it still appears to distinguish only between Rss and the everything else. I can't understand why isn't type just the mime-type?

I know this has been a challenge for others as I found code attempting to determine types via the file extension on the Url. This approach is very unreliable especially with the dynamic nature of many sites (Many times every file, regardless of actually mime-type, will end in extensions such as .aspx, .php, etc.).

So... I guess I don't get it. A list is interesting but without knowing what is in the list I fail to see how I can adequately leverage and "mash" it up into a greater experience.

Please enlighten me.

[Via Scott's "SiteExperts" Place]

Technorati Tags

Attribute [feed], Cross Domain [feed], Xmlhttp [feed], Tagger [feed], Object Model [feed], Http [feed], Opml [feed], File Type [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Opml ,Oml ,Dave Winer ,Outliner ,Wikipedia: Hypertext Transfer Protocol (http) ,Xmlhttp ,Cross Site Scripting

There has been another update to the ICMP ping tutorial. Still nothing on the wire yet, but this is all the important information such as check summing. Check it out it is a very good series so far.

Keep up the good work Feroze.

In this part, we will write a routine to calculate the checksum of the packet, and a routine to serialize the packet into a byte array. Recall from PartII that the request and reply packets have a particular encoding on the wire. We will have to write a routine that will encode the packet into a byte array, so that the array can be sent on the wire.

[Via MSDN Blogs]

Technorati Tags

Byte Array [feed], Wire [feed], Msdn [feed], Checksum [feed], Encode [feed], Encoding [feed], Ping [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Ping ,Checksum ,Cyclic Redundancy Check ,Transmission Control Protocol ,Microsoft Developer Network ,C Sharp

There have been some minor updates to the OPML Javascript Object Model. I have added support for an OPML Attribute which are attached to an Outline. This was done so that it is much more flexible and allows developers to add proper attribute combinations to an Outline. Furthermore, I borrowed an instanceOf method from some site (if you know the site let me know) which enforce some sort of type checking when inserting OPMLOutlineAttributes to the attribute array.

The javascript I borrowed was this:
function instanceOf(object, constructor) while (object != null) { if (object == constructor.prototype) return true; object = object.__proto__; } return false; }

Technorati Tags

Javascript [feed], Attribute [feed], Instanceof [feed], Constructor [feed], Proto [feed], Prototype [feed], Opml [feed], Object Model [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Opml ,Oml ,Dave Winer ,Outliner ,Prototype Pattern ,Constructor ,Ajax (programming) ,Xmlhttp ,Dynamic Html

There is an interesting article over on Abhinaba's weblog about where you would place the declaration of the enum. I personally don't agree with his argument. He says that his ideal way of defining the placement of an enum is at the level of the class and not inside the class.

His basic argument that typing the class name infront of the enum can become a pain. I don't really care that it can be a pain, that is what intelisense is there for. Having the enum defined in the class is better in my opinion because it means that there will be fewer abiguity problems if you need to use another enum with the same name from another class. It is, in my opinion also easier to read.

Anyway, below is a snippet of his journal entry. To see what he has to say visit his blog, and see if you agree with me or not.

Email me: paul.kinlan@gmail.com

Frequently while designing classes that have methods which accept enums as parameters, a common question arrises on where to define the enum. Whether to define it inside the class or in the same level as the class.

Lets consider a class Folder which has a method List. It accepts a enum Filter and based on it prints the name of all files or directories in the Folder. We can define the enum at the same level as the Folder as below

enum Filter
{
    File,
    Dir
}
class Folder
{
    public Folder(string path) { /* ... */ }
    public void List(Filter filter) { /* ... */ }
}
Folder folder = new Folder("c:\");
folder.List(Filter.File);

Or define it inside the Folder class as in

class Folder
{
    public enum Filter
    {
        File,
        Dir
    }
    public Folder(string path) { /* ... */ }
    public void List(Filter filter) { /* ... */ }
}
 
Folder folder = new Folder(@"c:\");
folder.List(Folder.Filter.File);

...

[Via MSDN Blogs]

Technorati Tags

Filter [feed], Class [feed], Snippet [feed], C# [feed]

I had a little problem with my ATOM feed. It was truncating all the text in the description so it was looking odd. I hope this hasn't effected any of my readers. It appears to be sorted now.

Technorati Tags

Atom [feed], Feed [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Rss (file Format) ,Feed ,Web Feed ,Aggregator ,Atom (standard)

The second part of the C# Ping Tutorial is up. At the moment it doesn't have much in the way of solid implementation, but this is a series of posts so expect more. It is quite a good post because he talks about what Ping packets look like and where they are on the communications stack.

Anyway to quote the post.

Let us start out by looking at requirements of the Ping client. Basically, the task of the tool is to find out if a specified server is alive, and on the network. The way it achieves this is by sending an echo packet to the server. The server responds with an echo response. If the server responds within a certain time interval, then we can assume that there is network connectivity from the client to the server. If it doesnt respond, then it could indicate a variety of things that could be wrong

[Via MSDN Blogs]

Technorati Tags

Ping [feed], Ping Client [feed], Echo [feed], Msdn [feed], Network Connectivity [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Microsoft Developer Network ,C Sharp ,Icmp Echo Request ,Loopback ,Ping

I didn't realise it until I subscribed to the results of a search in Google; Google indexes RSS feeds quickly, it was about 10 minutes or so between when I uplloaded the article to when I saw it in the results.

Are the other people out there this fast. Technorati seem to be pretty quick now, but I have to prompt them with a ping. Googles, I didn't have to do anything unless Blogger do it for you.

Technorati Tags

Rss [feed], Technorati [feed], Ping [feed], Blogger [feed], Search [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Wikipedia: Search Engine ,Blogger ,Ping ,Technorati ,Tag Cloud ,Blogosphere ,Rss (file Format) ,Rss ,Really Simple Syndication

I have been having a problem in IE7 and Internet Explorer 6, by where if you dynamically create a checkbox, set it to checked = true and then add it in to the HTML document, it loses it's checked status.

var newCheck = document.createElement('<input name=relatedSearchesChk>');
newCheck.type = "checkbox";
newCheck.onclick = updateCheckStatus;//Function to Call when clicked
newCheck.relatedUrl = currSearch.Query;//Expando String
newCheck.relatedObject = currSearch; //Expand Object
newCheck.checked = isChecked; //DOESN't WORK. isChecked is just a local Booelan Variable.
tagCell1.appendChild(newCheck);

The closest related problem on the web that I found was this thread: Java Forums - Creating a checked Checkbox through javascript. The solution in this thread works.

However I found another solution. Update the checked status after it has been added to the document. I have no idea why it works like this but it does work.

var newCheck = document.createElement(<input name=relatedSearchesChk>');
newCheck.type = "checkbox";
newCheck.onclick = updateCheckStatus;//Function to Call when clicked
newCheck.relatedUrl = currSearch.Query;//Expando String
newCheck.relatedObject = currSearch; //Expand Object
tagCell1.appendChild(newCheck);
newCheck.checked = isChecked; //WORKS

If you know why this happens I would love to know: paul.kinlan@gmail.com

Technorati Tags

Javascript [feed], Internet Explorer 6 [feed], Java Sun [feed], Checkbox [feed], Ie7 [feed], Internet Explorer [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Internet Explorer ,Internet Explorer Box Model Bug ,Tabbed Document Interface ,Mozilla Firefox ,Wikipedia: Check Box ,Javascript ,Ecmascript ,Wikipedia: Ajax ,Json

This is a really interesting post that I need to read more into.

Matt Harrison was talking about making choices between various Ajax toolkits, frameworks, or libraries.

He linked over to the OSA foundation and their Survey of AJAX/JavaScript Libraries.

Their survey discusses:

• Dojo


• DWR


• JSON-RPC-JAVA


• MochiKit


• Prototype


• Rico


• SAJAX


• Scriptaculous


• Xajax


• Sack

The world of Ajax libs is an interesting one, as they cover various functionality.

We blogged about the Ajax layers in the past:

NOTE: Michael Mahemoff also collected framework information

[Via Ajaxian]

I have been doing a lot of backend work with XMLHttpRequest for my Ajax Tagger Version 2, and I am wondering if I should have bothered. I will look into some of these solutions and see what each offers.

Technorati Tags

Ajax [feed], Javascript Libraries [feed], Dwr [feed], Xmlhttprequest [feed], Json [feed], Tagger [feed], Toolkits [feed], Libs [feed], Dojo [feed], Rpc [feed], Prototype [feed], Backend [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Xml-rpc ,Remote Procedure Call ,Widget Toolkit ,Json ,Ajax (programming) ,Xmlhttp ,Javascript

Read up about the Dojo Toolkit.

Technorati Tags

Dojo [feed]

There is a fish eye effect javascript solution over at http://dojotoolkit.org/~alex/dojo/trunk/demos/widget/Fisheye.html it looks really neat. I don't know how pratical it is but I really liked it.

Technorati Tags

Fish Eye [feed], Javascript [feed], Fisheye [feed], Widget [feed], Dojo [feed], Html [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Dynamic Html ,Widget Toolkit ,Wikipedia: Fisheye Lens ,Fish Eye ,Javascript

I always find this kind of interesting

After a long hiatus, I am back to posing to my blog. I am going to start out with a series on Socket programming.

In this series, I will show you how to implement a simple Ping client using classes from the System.Net.Sockets  namespace. It should be an exciting journey.

For starters, you can familiarize yourself with the RFC for ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) which is the protocol used by the PING client. The RFC for that is here: (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0792.txt).

Until next time,

Cheers.

[Via MSDN Blogs]

I always have wanted to create a ping client in .Net but never got around to it. There was no particular reason why I wanted to create a ping client, I just always thought it would be quite cool. Anyway, watch out on Feroze Daud's WebLog.

Technorati Tags

Ping Client [feed], Rfc [feed], Socket Programming [feed], Msdn [feed], System Net [feed], Icmp [feed], Sockets [feed], Socket [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Transport Layer Security ,Berkeley Sockets ,Internet Control Message Protocol ,Icmp Echo Request ,Icmp Destination Unreachable ,Icmp Source Quench ,Ping ,Traceroute ,Network Utilities ,Microsoft .net ,Microsoft Developer Network ,C Sharp

A lot of people out there are talking about Page Rank and the iminent page rank up date. I can't say that I am really bothered I have never had any and I doubt I ever will. Does it really matter that much? Email me or leave a comment if you know about it.

I personally think it is a placebo that make people think that they understand google's system, when in acutal fact it has relativly little meaning anywhere.

Maybe I am wrong though!

Technorati Tags

Pagerank [feed], Google [feed], Placebo [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Wikipedia: Placebo Effect ,Google ,Pagerank ,Search Engine

It has been pretty interesting designing this Object Model in Javascript for OPML. Mainly because I have found several flaws in the design that if fixed will make it a lot better to use. I discovered them because I am using the Object Model directly in AJAX Tagger version 2.0.

The basic problem is that I didn't completly understand the OPML specification and I started to implement the mini API before I knew more about it. The area that I need to extend in the object model is around the attributes of the outline element. I only thought you had a type and text, but it turns out the specification is quite loose around the attributes that you can have, but there are several well used attributes that hook up with files, links, html and rss etc. I will document them some other time.

Other than that the OPML XML that it generates seems to be good, apart from the quoting of " and the &'s :)

Technorati Tags

Object Model [feed], Attributes [feed], Tagger [feed], Ajax [feed], Quoting [feed], Api [feed], Extend [feed], Xml [feed], Javascript [feed], Rss [feed], Opml [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Opml ,Oml ,Blogroll ,Dave Winer ,Outliner ,Rss (file Format) ,Rss ,Really Simple Syndication ,Javascript ,Ecmascript ,Wikipedia: Ajax ,Xml ,Application Programming Interface ,Ajax (programming)

The Javascript file can be found here. It is not fully complete, but a basic object model is up. I will try and document it later.

Technorati Tags

Opml [feed], Object Model [feed], Javascript [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Javascript ,Ecmascript ,Json ,Opml ,Blogroll ,Dave Winer ,Outliner

There is one thing I have never seen. A Javascript OPML Object Model! I am just in the process of creating one for my AJAX Tagger version 2. I need the object model, because I need to create the document on the fly and then save out in a variety of ways. I also need it to be easily modifyable so that it updates in real-time as the user uses the application.

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Object Model [feed], Tagger [feed], Ajax [feed], Javascript [feed], Opml [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Opml ,Dave Winer ,Outliner ,Json ,Ajax (programming) ,Document Object Model

Related Images is now in AJAX Tagger version 2. The Images are pulled back from Flickr and will be able to be included in the post that the user is creating. It works pretty well, other than the fact all the images might be slow to download with IE's limit on the number of concurrently open requests.

I think it is a pretty darn cool feature. Especially when it is one of the things that can help get people to your blog

Use pictures. They draw the eye. Look on Flickr or Google Images. Take what is Creative Commons, but be liberal with your link of thanks. Ask when unsure.

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Images [feed], Flickr [feed], Tagger [feed], Ajax [feed], Download [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Ajax (programming) ,Flickr ,Tag Cloud ,Yahoo! 360º

I posted to the mailing list two issues over the weekend.

One about result number restriction:

Hi,
I was just reading the documentation which gives the following URL as an example:
http://api.search.yahoo.com/MyWebService/V1/relatedTags?appid=YahooDemo&tag=yahoo&results=2 It is supposed to return only two results yet all 48 are returned? Is this correct? I need to start using this API and I don't know if it will return the correct results.
Kind Regards,
Paul Kinlan

And the other about Contextual term extraction not processing results after an HTML style tag. i.e anything that has a "<" or ">" in:

Hi,
I have been playing with the contextual term extraction API, and I have noticed (well at least I think I have) that if there is a HTML tag in the text for term extraction then the term extraction API doesn't examine data after the starting tag.
For instance if I had the following text:

I have been trying to play with Blogger BackLinks, and I can say that I don't really like them. I don't really like them because people have to use them! I was expecting Blogger Backlinks to automatically link into the Google Blog search to find a list of all the blogs that link to my post. And then update my page from there.
I think what I will do is develop a version that does use them, it will fire a query off to Google and see what happens from there. I mean, after all Google Blog search allows you to do this, and export the results as RSS.

The API only seems to analyse up to and including href="xyzabc">. Anything after this in not included in the results.
Has anyone else experienced this?
Kind Regards,
Paul Kinlan
www.kinlan.co.uk

I got two replies on Monday (1 day after I posted the problem), one confirming that it is a bug that is being worked on and the other confirming that my problem has just been fixed. Way to go Yahoo! That is the way that I like to see services run. Keep up the good work.

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ahoo [feed], Api [feed], Search [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Search Algorithm ,Searching ,Application Programming Interface ,Yahoo! ,Yahoo ,Msn Search

Ajax Tagger Version 1 has been fixed again in the wikipedia document section. It now removes the " - Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia" from the results section. This means that the page is now a lot clearer and it is easier to find related wikipedia documents. It makes sense really and it totally fits around the linking policy of Wikipedia which states that at least one reference to Wikipedia be made.

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Wikipedia [feed], Tagger [feed], Ajax [feed]

Wikipedia Documents

Ajax (programming) ,Wikipedia ,Rss (file Format)

I am having trouble with Blogger's BlogItemBacklinkCount</