Dave Sifry: "This weekend, I had a few hours of free time and I whipped a new feature with two interfaces:  It is a standard XML-RPC ping server... that you can add to your weblog software configuration... that will immediately add your weblog into a special high-priority queue for Technorati's indexing runs." [Corante: aa Corante on Blogging] 
7:42:57 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Just added a small script to the bottom of my weblog to run a scroll. <SCRIPT language=JavaScript type=text/javascript> </SCRIPT>    Took it out.  It was breaking aggregators. <SCRIPT language=JavaScript type=text/javascript> </SCRIPT> [John Robb's Weblog] 
6:56:09 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Ping Pong Pow. I've been ping mad all day since I found this neat little utility that can ping multiple hosts. Not very useful to the huge legions of loggers who use MoveableType, but a boon indeed to those who use homebrewed setups or others like e107 that currently don't have ping capability. [MetaFilter] 
6:49:19 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Sonylogging.

Joi cooks up a little Moblogging magic with Sony...

Sony Image Station with MetaWeblog API.  It's a moblog gateway. It receives email from a cell phone with a photo attached. The Sony team made an XML RPC metaWeblog API interface to Sony Image Station. We take the picture, talk to Sony Image Station using metaWeblog API and post the picture in a photo album. Then the gateway talks to Movable Type using the metaWeblog API to create an entry with the thumbnail from Image Station that clicks thru to the full picture on the Image Station site. The text and the title get entered into Movable Type and the category is pre-set. We are using the metaWeblog.newMediaObject (which Movable Type current supports) to send the images. Please support this standard so photo sites can use the API.

[Ross Mayfield: On Blogging] 
3:27:50 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Six Places.

In a single HTTP Request/Response transaction there are a total of six places that information can be stored. If you are designing a web service, which of the six you choose depends on the context, i.e. where and how your service is going to be used.

For an illustrative example, consider this elided request/response from the draft EchoAPI RFC. Here is the request:

POST /reilly HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/not-echo+xml


<?xml version="1.0" encoding='iso-8859-1'?>
<entry> 
    <title>My First Entry</title> 
    <subtitle>In which a newbie learns to blog...</subtitle> 
    <summary>A very boring entry...</summary> 
    ...
</entry>

And the response is:

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Content-Type: application/not-echo+xml


<?xml version="1.0" encoding='iso-8859-1'?>
<entry> 
    <title>My First Entry</title> 
    <subtitle>In which a newbie learns to blog...</subtitle> 
    <summary>A very boring entry...</summary> 
 
    <link>http://example.org/reilly/2003/02/05#My_First_Entry<;/link>
    <id>urn:example.org:reilly:1</id>
    ...
</entry>

The six different locations to store information are:

1. The request URI. Okay, this is the first line of the request and also contains the method, like GET or PUT, I'm lumping them together to simplify things.
2. The request headers, in RFC 822 format, you might remember that I've talked about RFC 822 Headers before.
3. The request message body.
4. The response status code. This is the first line of the
5. The response headers, again in RFC 822 format.
6. The response message body.

That's a lot of choices. When designing a service it's not always clear where some components of a message should be placed. For example, if you are attaching to a service that requires authentication, do you encode the authentication information into the requesting URI, do you use one of the HTTP authentication mechanisms which puts the authentication in the request headers, or do you put a name and password into the message body being sent? You could also send custom HTTP headers with authentication information. None of the choices are inherently better than another. All of the choices have their pros and cons, and each are appropriate depending on the context.

For example, Bulu, the code that runs this site, encodes the authentication information in the URI when doing Editable Comments. It's the least secure method, but the given the context, editing comments on a weblog, it's adequate. On the other hand, Bulu uses one of the HTTP Authentication mechanisms when creating or editing entries. That action requires more security than editing comments.

So where should you store your information? Beats me, but just keep in mind that as you design your service that you have six places to choose from.

[BitWorking] 
3:17:23 PM      comment []   trackback []  



HTML Utopia: Chapter 4: CSS Web Site Design, Pt. 3. The development of any Website begins with its design. In this and the following chapters, you'll move from tables to using CSS as your primary page layout tool and learn a new set of design principles. By Sitepoint. 0707 [WebReference News] 
3:12:24 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Gepingte Eitelkeiten. Technorati kann jetzt auch direkt gepingt werden, damit man schneller in dem Index landet und dadurch seine Eitelkeiten besser befriedigt werden. Entweder man fügt http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping in die Liste der zu pingenden Sites ein oder man pingt manuell über ein kleines Formular. [Industrial Technology & Witchcraft] 
3:42:14 AM      comment []   trackback []  



overflow: hidden. I've never really played with the CSS overflow property, partly because I don't trust it to work in a decent number of browsers. Haiko Hebig's Title Pictures show off a clever use for the property to display varying amounts of an image depending on the user's browser size; what's more, I've tested it and it works in Gecko, Opera 7 and IE6 (no IE5... [Artima Web Buzz] 
3:24:36 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Fixing an IE scrolling glitch. Mike Golding offers a solution to the slightly odd IE bug whereby divs in CSS layout sites suffer glitches as the page is scrolled (from December 2002): The problem is in the way that Internet Explorer 6 renders its layered elements. A DIV that has nothing behind it on the page is rendered bit by bit (for efficiency) as the page scrolls. If the... [Artima Web Buzz] 
3:20:36 AM      comment []   trackback []  



EchoAPI Draft RFC Rev 01.

I have posted an updated version of the EchoAPI Draft RFC, which includes the following updates:

1. Renamed from EchoAPI.html to follow the more commonly used format: draft-gregorio-NN.html.
2. Renamed all references of URL to URI.
3. Broke out introspection into it's own section.
4. Added the Revision History section.
5. Added more to the warning that the example URIs are not normative.

As always, drop by the wiki to to provide your feedback.

[BitWorking] 
3:14:05 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Andrew Pearson did a subs harmonizer in PHP. [Scripting News] 
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Philip Miseldine has a subs harmonizer running in .NET. [Scripting News] 
3:11:00 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Steve Kirks: Open Letter to the RSS Community. [Scripting News] 
3:10:28 AM      comment []   trackback []