Hello.

So, after some thought, some replies (mostly favouring SVN) I have chosen to go with Mercurial as the VCS for the project that I am working on.The reason being, is that although I won't be hosting on Codeplex, they support Mercurial and there are plenty of tools that .Net developers can use to bind to the SCM and the fact that it is a distribute system means it wins in my eyes.

Just a quick question for the .Net developers out there, both Windows and Mono.Given a choice of Subversion or Mercurial, what would be your preferred source control service and why? Which helps you work the best? Which has the least impact on your workflow? Sorry guys, I know that some of you may use others SCM's, but I am just interested in these two?

Using HTML5 Canvas with Drag and Drop (setDragImage) I know a lot of people complain about Drag and Drop (DnD), but it is not all that bad. At least we have a platform to work off for the future. We have recently seen a lot of improvements to Gmail which now includes additional support for Dragging in to Gmail to upload your docs and files, and also dragging attachments out of Gmail to the user file system.

I was reading the documentation about -webkit-gradient on the Apple HTML documentation site and I stumbled across something that I had never seen before.  I thought it was so cool, that I decided to write a blog post about it. With the introduction of CSS3 into many top-line browsers there is now the ability to manipulate the background-image of any element, specifically gradients and svg.  One of the things that is missing is canvas as an element for the background.

I really wanted to get a reference to Walker Texas Ranger in to the title, but I really couldn’t think of anything that cool. If you can think of a great Chuck Norris reference leave a comment, I am all chins! It always amazes me that there is so much to HTML that is still not being exploited by developers. One pattern I see regularly is recursive descent through the DOM to find particular TEXT nodes that contain a given string so that the container element can be manipulated.

I am just about to visit Amsterdam on a business trip. The last time I went to Amsterdam was when I was 7 (I think). I remember really enjoying it then, granted I was 7 and I loved trams, but I am really looking forward to visiting it again. What would people recommend to do if I have any free time over the next two days? I plan in taking a couple of photos so I can at least try and document some of this trip.

Currently stuck in Liverpool John Lennon airport. For all the investment that has gone into this place I cannot believe the state it is in. There are not enough chairs in the departure lounges, so when all the planes are delayed (thank you easyjet) everyone has to either sit on the dirty floor or lie against windows or stand for hours at a time. The restaurants don’t clean up anywhere near enough.

We have been thinking about what properties of an HTML application make it an application rather than a webpage with logic. We have documented our thoughts here: http://code.google.com/chrome/apps/articles/thinking_in_web_apps.html (Thinking in Apps). This is only the start of our thinking and work on what hopefully will become a robust guide to patterns in web application development. Many of the things that define a great web page experience are also the same things that describe an application experience on the web, however we think there are some subtle differences, especially around the use of client side data storage, offline support and user experience.

One word. HOT!I have never been in a temperature that hot (it was only in the mid 30's - apparently it was even hotter earlier in the week), I was dressed for the wet London that I left behind earlier that morning. But that didn't stop it from being a fun event. Chris Chabot did a great talk about Buzz. I then presented my "Web Apps" presentation (http://html5offlinedemo.appspot.com/app.html). The talk centred around the differences between Native Applications and Web Applications, some of the core pillars that we think make for great applications and some of the features of HTML5, CSS3 and some of the other supporting specifications such as WebSockets.

If all goes well and my flight arrives on time I will be doing a talk at the Berlin GTUG (http://www.berlin-gtug.org/2010/06/july-2010-berlin-gtug-meeting.html) about building HTML based Applications.The talk should be about 45 minutes or a little less and will cover what makes an app an app rather than a web page. There should be some good examples in there too. I have never been to Berlin before, so I am really excited even though I will only be there for 1 night (and arriving at 4pm) I will post the slides after I have finished and any photos (I hope to get lots :))

A little late. I have released the code I used as a demo for the Buzz talk I gave at the TwitterDevNest event.The code is on GitHub under the name  PaulKinlan/BuzzInOutDemo.

In February I did a quick presentation for the TwitterDevNest about how you can get your Data in and out of Buzz - however I forgot to get the slides up. The slides are a bit bare, as I was talking for most of it, however, we covered: - WebFinger - OpenID - Buzz feeds, consuming and producing - Pubsubhubbub - Salmon I also said I will open source the code.

I have just moved all my blog content from kinlan.co.uk to paul.kinlan.me. My new site is hosted on Posterous which seems to be pretty darn cool. I should be blogging more and hopefully this will get me going a bit more :)

I have been beavering away at a lot of social network API’s recently which lead me first to Twitter’s API and then onto FriendFeed’s API. I really like FriendFeed’s API, it is very meticulous in the data it aggregates and makes available to developers. So after a couple of hours playing with the API I endeavoured on my first major project with FriendFeed. I named the project FriendDeck, the basic premise is that there is no similar tool available for FriendFeed that works like TweetDeck.

[[posterous-content:tcvjftJrHIDgAAzgJjxH]] Earlier this week I released a new Google App Engine project called Twollo (http://www.twollo.com). Twollo, allows you to discover new people to follow by entering your interests into the website. By using Twollo, we filter the Twitterverse and find and follow the appropriate Twitterers automatically for you; taking much of the leg work out finding good people to follow. The main difference between Twollo and MrTweet is that MrTweet appears to suggest “interesting people” to follow based on their popularity.

I have been using Blogger for many years now on my own server. It has got to the point where I don't find the features of blogger fit in with my needs as a blogging platform so I am moving to Wordpress. I am keeping all the content here on this site and I may still update it from now and then. The new blog will still be more broadly focused against all aspects of the development of software not just c#.

On the 17th of April I will be doing a talk at the Liverpool Users of .Net User group about Domain Specific Language Tools and T4 templates. The general flow of the talk will be: A brief overview of Domain Specific Languages. What are the Microsoft DSL Tools and examples of toolkits in use What the Microsoft DSL Tools are not Where they can be used and how they can help developers and end-users.

I am just about to release some Business Listing search software. It is called Topicala Business (http://www.topicala.com/business/). If you are the owner of a UK business you have to opportunity to claim your listing and add a description of your line of business, a list of services you offer and contact information such as a URL, Address and telephone numbers for free. Topicala Business is Unique in that it also searches the web for you so that you can find out what your customers and competitors are saying about your business.

A few .Net developers have gotten together in Liverpool to form a User Group where we can discuss everything .Net. We have a web page with a rather snappy URL (http://www.usersof.net/), so if you are in the area and are interested in .Net why not join the Google group http://groups.google.co.uk/group/liverpoolusersofdotnet and come to meetings if you want(The next one is April the 17th 2008 - http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/454169/). The more the merrier.

I am now on twitter. Twit me. My username is PaulKinlan http://www.twitter.com/PaulKinlan Topicala Tags: Twitter, Twit, PaulKinlan