Hello.

I finally got a Windows Live Writer plugin working after starting from scratch! Stay tuned as I'm planning to integrate my Ajax Tagger into the Windows Live Writer framework soon. This will be a cool experiment combining Web 2.0 APIs with Windows Live Writer.

Check out my colleague Phil Calver's new site, www.whatsatthetop.com, a Top 10 Retail Mashup built with ASP.Net 2.0 and Web parts. It pulls data from sites like Amazon, CNet, and Booksense. Phil's looking for feedback, so let him know what you think! Share any suggestions or ideas for charts you'd like to see at webmaster@whatsatthetop.com.

My BBC Programme Calendar to iCal mashup, which converts BBC program data to iCal, works seamlessly with Outlook 2007. Users can easily import program schedules by navigating to their account settings, clicking the internet calendars tab, clicking "new", and entering the URL of the desired program. For example football fans can import the data for the footie http://www.kinlan.co.uk/bbc/football.

I've created a tool that converts BBC program listings into iCal format, allowing you to subscribe to a calendar of your favorite shows. Just add the program keyword to the end of "http://www.kinlan.co.uk/bbc/" (e.g., "http://www.kinlan.co.uk/bbc/breakfast") to get the iCal feed. You can then add this feed to Google Calendar, MS Outlook, or other calendar applications to stay updated on program schedules. I'm still developing this, so feedback and suggestions are welcome!

My tag directory has a cool new feature: Amazon product integration! It pulls book data from Amazon AWS related to each tag. Right now, it adds links to relevant products, but I'm thinking of adding images soon. This latest addition brings the total number of Web 2.0 APIs used in my mashup to four, including Delicious, Yahoo Search API, and Google Blog Search RSS. Check out the examples for tags like RDF, RSS, and Mashup to see it in action.

I'm excited to announce that DeliTag will be featured on the main page to increase visibility and usage. It will also be available on Tagger.Kinlan.co.uk. As a reminder, DeliTag is an AJAX-based mashup of Yahoo and Del.icio.us, allowing users to generate and post tags to Del.icio.us based on page content.

I'm struggling to understand the practical uses of OPML, especially given the inconsistent use of attributes like 'type', 'url', and 'xmlurl'. While I'm developing a JavaScript OPML object model for my own projects (like a tagging system where OPML stores related links for blog posts), I haven't found a clear standard for defining outlines. It seems like the 'standard' emerges from popular usage rather than formal specification. I'm particularly interested in how to determine the file type of items within an OPML outline, as my current application only uses links for pages and images (feed support is still pending). The lack of clear semantics in OPML makes it difficult to build dynamic applications that can 'mash up' content from different sources based on the OPML structure.

I had this brilliant idea to create a merged RSS feed using client-side processing. The idea was to have a main RSS feed that linked to other feeds. My custom XML would include a list of sources. Then, using XSLT in the browser, the client could merge these external feeds into a single view. It worked perfectly locally! However, I hit a roadblock with cross-domain security restrictions when I uploaded it to my server. The browser wouldn't let me pull in feeds from other domains due to security concerns. Additionally, client-side XSLT processing isn't universally supported. So, even if the security issue wasn't there, many feed readers wouldn't be able to display the merged feed. In the end, the project failed. But, I learned a lot about browser security, XSLT limitations and client/server interactions!