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Rails 1.2.1 Impression. I hadn’t seen assert_select before, which lets you unit test generated HTML using CSS selectors; a really neat idea.

# 15th February 2007, 9:14 am / assertselect, css, rails, testing

IE and 2-letter domain-names (via) IE won’t let you set a cookie on XX.YY, where YY is anything other than .pl or .gr. Other browsers have better exception lists.

# 15th February 2007, 12:33 am / cookies, dns, internet-explorer, mark-pilgrim

Introducing RDFa. A way of representing RDF triples in XML that doesn’t suck.

# 15th February 2007, 12:22 am / rdf, rdfa, xml

Tips for Writing Nicer Site Badges. Ed Eliot’s putting together a much needed set of best practices for badges and widgets.

# 14th February 2007, 11:26 pm / badges, ed-eliot

Django templates in Venus. It’s nice to see the Django template system being used outside the context of the overall framework.

# 14th February 2007, 11:22 pm / django, templates, venus

Tutorials on Microformats. Roger Costello’s 11 tutorials on microformats, covering hCard, hCalendar, hReview and more.

# 14th February 2007, 4:45 pm / microformats, tutorial

Multimap API: Decluttering Markers (via) V1.2 of the Multimap API is out, and the nicest new feature is automatic decluttering of close-together markers.

# 14th February 2007, 11:30 am / decluttering, mapping, maps, multimap, multimapapi

FreeYourID.com. A free .name domain for 90 days, with built-in tools for managing e-mail forwarding and your OpenID. Could do with some unobtrusive JavaScript, but they’re really fast at responding to suggestions.

# 13th February 2007, 4:26 pm / domains, freeyourid, openid

Too many Chiefs... OpenID’s current biggest problem is that there are plenty of OpenID providers but not nearly enough places that you can log in to with one.

# 13th February 2007, 11:49 am / openid

Say Hello to Elixir for SQLAlchemy. New ActiveRecord style layer over SQLAlchemy; a collaboration that includes the authors of ActiveMapper and TurboEntity.

# 12th February 2007, 10:28 pm / elixir, python, sqlalchemy

soaplib (via) New open-source Python SOAP library, with a pleasantly Pythonic looking API.

# 12th February 2007, 10:26 pm / jonathan-lacour, python, soap, soaplib, web-services

Fake bloggers soon to be “named and shamed” (via) Apparently due to a new EU directive banning companies from “falsely representing oneself as a consumer”.

# 12th February 2007, 9:35 am / astroturfing, spam

United Nuclear (via) Gotta love an online store that stocks both “Misc Radioactive Items” and “Anti-Radiation Pills”.

# 12th February 2007, 8:25 am / radioactive, science

Cats or Dogs (via) Finds statistically interesting facts based on people answering a sequence of “X or Y” questions. Written in Django by James Tauber in less than four hours.

# 11th February 2007, 1:49 am / catsordogs, django, james-tauber, statistics

boto. Python library for accessing Amazon’s S3, SQS and EC2 Web Services, with excellent documentation.

# 11th February 2007, 12:17 am / amazon, aws, boto, ec2, python, s3, sqs

About LiveBus.org. I love sites with a colophon. LiveBus.org is powered by Django.

# 10th February 2007, 10:57 pm / colophon, django, livebus

LiveBus.org (via) Brilliant Google Maps mashup in a similar vein to Chicago Crime—displays screen-scraped bus timetable information for Oxfordshire and Surrey in a far more useful format.

# 10th February 2007, 10:56 pm / chicagocrime, google-maps, james-wheare, livebus, maps, mashup, oxford

OpenID (and TypeKey) using native OpenSSL functions in PHP. Wez Furlong shows how a small patch to PHP’s OpenSSL support makes it a whole lot easier to perform the cryptography behind OpenID (at the moment you need to use the bc or gmp modules).

# 10th February 2007, 10:49 pm / openid, openssl, php, wez-furlong

Blanket Fort. xkcd on why you still want one.

# 10th February 2007, 4:30 pm / forts, funny, xkcd

No boys allowed. Ask MetaFilter on how to build the perfect fort.

# 10th February 2007, 4:29 pm / ask-metafilter, forts

Sumo! A Generic Microformats Parser For JavaScript. Dan Webb’s BarCamp talk on Metaprogramming JavaScript will be a must-see.

# 9th February 2007, 10:57 am / barcamp, dan-webb, javascript, microformats, sumo

Hanselminutes Podcast on OpenID. Good podcast discussion on OpenID, from a .NET developer’s perspective.

# 9th February 2007, 9:19 am / openid, podcasts

Parallel Python. A simple mechanism for running Python code in parallel across multiple processes and/or machines, based on submitting jobs and retrieving their results.

# 9th February 2007, 1:51 am / parallelpython, python

The Psychology of Security. I haven’t even started on this yet, but I bet it’s worth reading.

# 9th February 2007, 1:27 am / bruce-schneier, psychology, security

.php? .cgi? .who-cares? J-P Stacey argues that “URLs need to be hackable by the developer as well as by the user”. There’s certainly room for improvement in keeping complex URL structures maintainable from a server-side developer’s perspective.

# 9th February 2007, 1:01 am / cgi, urls

Mono 1.2.3 has been released (via) More importantly, it ships with IronPython in the form of Seo Sanghyeon’s Community Edition.

# 9th February 2007, 12:55 am / ironpython, mono, python

Add OpenSearch to your site in five minutes. OpenSearch is easy. DeWitt demonstrates how you don’t even need a site search engine to implement it if you take advantage of Google’s site: operator.

# 9th February 2007, 12:52 am / dewitt-clinton, google, opensearch

First Oxford Geek Night a success! It really was the best evening geek event I’ve been to in a very long time.

# 9th February 2007, 12:51 am / natalie-downe, oxford, oxford-geek-nights, oxfordgeeks

The OpenID Directory. A new directory of OpenID consumers and providers. If they can make sure that the listed sites actually let you log in this could become a really valuable resource.

# 9th February 2007, 12:19 am / openid

Pipes. New Yahoo! service for combining and remixing Atom/RSS feeds using a really sophisticated drag-and-drop UI.

# 8th February 2007, 7:52 am / atom, draganddrop, pipes, rss, syndication

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