Hello.

I need as many peoples helps as I can get. I am setting up a hierarchical tag directory and I need people to help me populate it.You can add tags in to the database by simply searching for a topic via the web interface, or you can also use standard http GET requests via my “API”. Simply type in your browser address bar http://www.topicala.com/api/add/[TagName]To make it hierarchical, it would be a great help if people could put a parent topical category by using the input box on the search results.

I have invested in some Adwords Advertising campaigns, for this site and also my http://www.Topicala.com. I will let you know how they get on but for now they are bringing an extra 60 visitors each to both sites on average a day [which I can afford :)]I am still in the early stages and I have been playing around with differnt things to see how they work, but I have tuned off adverts in googles search results because they were costing too much.

Check out Kirk Allen Evan’s blog entry (http://blogs.msdn.com/kaevans/archive/2006/06/11/626299.aspx) . All through it, his reasons given point to calling it something less than .Net 3.0 IMHO. Again, note that .NET Framework 3.0 is an additive release to .NET Framework 2.0. With .NET Framework 3.0, the languages still use the 2.0 compilers, and leverage the 2.0.50727 Framework.It is based on 2.0 for everything so why not keep with that!!! The version number really doesn’t make anything clear!

I have just seen the following over at Somasegar’s blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2006/06/09/624300.aspx)With this in mind we have decided to rename WinFX to the .NET Framework 3.0. .NET Framework 3.0 aptly identifies the technology for exactly what it is – the next version of our developer framework.The change is in name only and will not affect the technologies being delivered as part of the product. The .NET Framework 3.0 is still comprised of the existing .

This is a response to the comment on my blog (http://www.kinlan.co.uk/2006/05/some-things-about-xlinq.html) by Mike ChampionFirstly, I can point to the XML file for you easily. It is the Wikipedia XML Abstract file (http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20060518/enwiki-20060518-abstract.xml ). The format of it is pretty rigid, I am not too sure if there is a schema available but you can see that it is pretty self explanitory, there is no header information (from what I can remember) and it is one large document.

I was seeing reports across the internet that that Blogger has now introduced RSS 2.0 support in to the blogs that they host. Seeing that I use blogger but host on my own server account I thought I would check it out. Sure enough IE7 has detected the new RSS feed but it looks like I have a mess of feeds that I need to tidy up! Back to the template.

I have just updated my pages on my blog with some hCard information. If you don’t know what hCard is, it is microformat that enables machines to easily read contact information about me whilst also being visible to the readers of my page.The microformat page explains things better than I can: hCard is a simple, open, distributed contact information format for people, companies, and organizations, which is suitable for embedding in (X)HTML, Atom, RSS, and arbitrary XML.

Because at the moment I can’t syndicate my comments through blogger, I thought I would promte a comment from Mike Champion (The program manager for XLinq) to the front page of my blog. So other people get the chance to see this issue more publically and so you (the reader) can respond too if you so wish.I will be trying to reply to the comment properly by the end of the week, I am on vacation at the moment so I will try and do some thinking when I get chance :) But I will respond properly.

I have just re-installed all the Latest Beta bits for WPF and WCF etc. I expect to get some posts sorted soon. I have some ideas that I think will work quite well and will give me a better understanding of all the components.Stay Tuned.

No significant updates to functionality, incosistent abilty to publish pages, little flexibilty. I really wouldn’t recommend blogger.com to anyone.

I have been playing around with XLinq in C# 3.0, and I must say I am not that fulfilled by the querying aspects of the API.I must say this right now, I have not explored its potential fully, and I am definatly not an expert on the subject but I was hoping for something more. For instance, my biggest gripe at the moment is that it has an “in-memory” query language (unless I am mistaken) which means that the XML document has to be fully loaded into memory.

I have just a comment in a really old post :) about C# 3.0Functional programming is for the academia and not from the industry and should be left as such.Amen. At first read of the comment, i seem to agree whole heartedl. However, I have had a little time to think about the statement. C# 3.0 isn’t functional programming, it takes some aspects from academia and puts them into a context where it can be used in industrin and business.

We’ve just had Sky+ installed here at home. I must say it is pretty cool. Set it up to record my programs :) Star Gate SG1, Simpsons :)It is the toshiba 80GB box and it has 2 USB ports on it, however I hear that you can’t do anything with it :( ah well.If anyone has any cool info about Sky+ let me know :)

I have just launched a blog on topicala.com @ http://www.topicala.com/blog check it out for all news about my aggregating search engine :)

A Friend (Paul Pierce) of mine has launched a new blog it will contian plenty of stuff, but he said he will be talking about .Net a bit. His second post contains info about how to use NMock 2.I think it reads really well and is better than my blog, but I could always just be fishing for praise :)Anyway, check it out if you get chance. http://www.

I have just been playing around a little with C#3.0 with XLinq trying to see how easy it would be to parse a simple xml document and create a list of strongly type objects out.I had fun doing this and I will show you what I was doing so that you can either: a) learn a little of what I learnt b) tell me where I am going wrong, i.e, if there is a simpler method.

Following on from yesterday about my http://www.Topicala.com topical result aggregating engine being launched, I have now added OPML output of results. Therefore everything that you see on the screen is now also output as OPML. Cool!! :)Let me know what you think:

I might as well anounce the first of the major projects I have been developing in my spare time.Topicala (http://www.topicala.com/): A Topical search aggregator.Enter a Topic, and see all the related information about that topic.It is still a work in progress but it is nearly finished, some bug fixes and also OPML output is needed, but that won’t take long.So feel free and have a play (some example searches): http://www.topicala.com/tag/Kinlan

I have developed a little program that converts a BBC Listing into an iCal format file.Simply put the keyword of the programs you want to be alerted for at the end of the following url “http://www.kinlan.co.uk/bbc/" and it will return a calendar iCal file with the events for the related programs over the next week.Examples are: http://www.kinlan.co.uk/bbc/breakfast http://www.kinlan.co.uk/bbc/top%20gear http://www.kinlan.co.uk/bbc/rossYou can use this url in your Google Calendar (http://calendar.google.com) by simply clicking on the manage calendar link, then on “Add calendar” link in the other calendars section; Select the “Public Calendar Address” tab and then enter the url that you want to subscribe too.

I have not had a lot of time to update this blog recently. I have been working on a couple of side projects. One of which is one I hope to get released this week. Another is a .Net hosted site to host examples that I do on this blog.The .Net hosted site is behind schedule and probably won’t see the light of day for another couple of weeks, but I aim to use it as a guide to help people use .