Hello.

I've posted another update to my ICMP ping tutorial series on MSDN Blogs. This installment focuses on crucial aspects like calculating checksums and serializing packets into byte arrays for transmission. While we haven't started sending data over the wire, understanding these concepts is vital for the next steps. Check out the post for more detail. Read More

Wow! Google Blog Search indexed my latest post in just minutes! I was amazed by how fast it appeared in the search results after uploading. I'm curious if other search engines are this quick. Technorati is fast, but I have to ping them. With Google, it just worked automatically. Big kudos to Google and possibly Blogger for the seamless integration! Read More

My Atom feed was truncating the description text, making it look odd. I've fixed the problem and hope it didn't affect my readers too much. Read More

I've encountered a bug in IE6/7 where dynamically created checkboxes lose their checked status after being added to the document. Setting the checked property after appending the element seems to be a reliable workaround. If anyone knows why this behavior occurs, please contact me! Read More

Part two of my C# Ping tutorial is now available! This installment dives into the structure of Ping packets and their place in the communication stack. It explores the fundamentals of how ping works, from sending echo packets to receiving echo responses and using response time to determine network connectivity. Read More

I need to remember to learn more about the Dojo Toolkit, a JavaScript library. Read More

I came across Matt Harrison's post discussing the challenges of choosing between various Ajax toolkits and frameworks, and it really resonated with me. He highlighted the OSA Foundation's survey of Ajax/JavaScript libraries, which covers a wide range of options like Dojo, DWR, JSON-RPC-JAVA, MochiKit, Prototype, Rico, SAJAX, Scriptaculous, Xajax, and Sack. It's fascinating to see how these libraries address different aspects of Ajax development. This makes me rethink my recent work on the backend XMLHttpRequest for Ajax Tagger Version 2, and whether leveraging existing solutions may have been more efficient. Links to the OSA Foundation, Michael Mahemoff's framework information, and my own previous blog post on Ajax layers are included for further exploration. Read More

I'm back to blogging and starting a series on socket programming! First up: building a simple Ping client using System.Net.Sockets. I'll walk you through it, and as a starting point, you can check out the ICMP RFC. Stay tuned for more! Read More

I found a cool fisheye effect using Javascript at the Dojo Toolkit website. Check it out, it's neat, but I'm not sure how practical it is. Read More

I'm curious about the hype surrounding Page Rank, especially with the upcoming update. Personally, I don't have any Page Rank and question its significance. Is it just a placebo, creating a false sense of understanding Google's algorithms? What are your thoughts? Read More

I'm working on a JavaScript Object Model for OPML and have found areas for improvement. I initially misunderstood the OPML spec, particularly regarding the attributes of the outline element, which are more flexible than I realized. This is important for handling things like files, links, HTML, and RSS. The current model has issues with proper quoting of characters like quotes and ampersands, but otherwise, the generated OPML XML seems good. I'll be updating the model to handle these attributes soon and will post more about the specific attributes in a future post. Read More

I've updated Ajax Tagger Version 1 to clean up how Wikipedia article titles appear in search results. It now removes the "- Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia" suffix. This improves the result list's readability and still adheres to Wikipedia's linking policy by referencing Wikipedia elsewhere in the implementation. Read More

I'm struggling to get the BlogItemBacklinkCount tag to display backlink counts for my Blogger blog hosted on my own server. I suspect it might not function in this setup, leading me to believe the entire backlink system isn't automatic as advertised. Has anyone else encountered similar issues? Read More

I've created a basic JavaScript Object Model for OPML, which you can find here: http://www.kinlan.co.uk/AjaxExperiments/opml.js. It's not entirely finished yet, but the core structure is in place. I plan to write proper documentation soon. Read More

I'm developing a JavaScript Object Model for OPML, a first as far as I know! This is essential for my AJAX Tagger version 2, enabling dynamic OPML creation, flexible saving options, and real-time user interaction updates. Read More

I've just released version 2 of AJAX Tagger, and it now includes a Related Images feature! It pulls images from Flickr that you can easily insert into your blog posts. While it works great, be aware that downloading many images might be slow in Internet Explorer due to its concurrent request limit. I believe this is a fantastic addition and can significantly boost traffic to your blog, especially considering images are known to attract readers. Read More

I reported two issues with the Yahoo API over the weekend: one regarding the result number restriction not working as expected and another about the contextual term extraction API failing to process text after encountering HTML tags. Yahoo responded promptly on Monday, confirming that one issue is a bug being addressed and the other has already been fixed. I'm very impressed with their responsiveness and quick turnaround. Read More

Our baby boy, Jack Paul Francis Kinlan, was born on October 11th, 2005, weighing 8lb 11.5oz. Both mom and baby are doing great! We waited a week before sharing the news to enjoy some quiet family time. Read More

David Sifry of Technorati reports impressive blogosphere growth, doubling every 5 months and reaching 19.6 million blogs by October 2005. Around 70,000 new blogs are created daily, though spam blogs account for 2-8%. Sifry's data also shows a staggering posting rate, with 700,000-1.3 million new posts daily. While acknowledging Sifry's valuable contribution, I'd like to see more discussion regarding Technorati's API strategy and how they plan to leverage it for future development. Specifically, I'm interested in how Technorati is engaging with the community and incorporating user feedback, especially regarding feature requests on their Wiki. Read More

I've been pondering the use of tags lately, and noticed a lack of diversity in tagging practices. Many use tags for blog promotion or linking related content. I favor the latter, as it aids in content discovery. However, popular tags on sites like Technorati are often too broad (e.g., "books","blogs") making them less useful for finding niche communities. I propose using more specific sub-tags alongside broader ones. For example, if blogging about Asimov's Foundation series, include both "Asimov" and "Foundation Series" as tags. Tools like my Ajax Tagger and tagyu.com can help suggest relevant tags. I encourage everyone to use a wider range of tags to enrich the tag space and improve content discoverability. Read More