Simon Willison’s Weblog

More blogroll fun

Stuart has added an extra innovation to his blogroll. Clicking on a link there now sets a cookie (via javascript) recording your visit—these are then used to display a ’new’ icon if a blog has been updated since your last visit. The only downside is that the system can only track visits made through links on Stuart’s site. Stuart says that easily automated stuff like this is why he recommends using a system like Moveable Type rather than rolling your own blog software. He’s right, but I treat writing my own as an entertaining learning excercise—I get to play with RSS, web services, XML parsing, the fun never stops ;)