Dan Wood: The Eponymous Weblog

Dan Wood is co-owner of Karelia Software, creating programs for the Macintosh computer. He is the father of two kids, lives in the Bay Area of California USA, and prefers bicycles to cars. This site is his weblog, which mostly covers geeky topics like Macs and Mac Programming.

Useful Tidbits and Egotistical Musings from Dan Wood

Categories: Mac OS X · Cocoa Programming · General · All Categories

Wed, 27 Aug 2003

TV Listings & other Watson tool updates

permanent link · Topic/Watson
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Many (but not all) Watson users have been experiencing problems with the TV Listings tool over the last couple of weeks. I finally have an idea what has been happening, and can now resolve the issue.

When Watson (or any browser) accesses a web site, there may be more than one server computer on the receiving end, even though it appears that there is just one. This is a technique called "load balancing". Apparently, the folks at TVGuide.com have been updating their HTML -- something not uncommon, and a program that 'scrapes' sites has to deal with it. But in this case, the HTML has changed on some of their servers, not all of them.

So today's fix (to 1.7.2.2) accomodates both "old" and "new" HTML, and everybody should be happy now. Unless, of course, there is yet another variation in the mix that I haven't found. Many thanks to the Watson users who helped diagnose and test the fix!

Other updates today:

  • Sujal Shah's football tool, to 1.1.3. Another update may be needed after tonight's game.
  • Randy Saldinger's iMedia tool, to 1.0.0.1.
  • Weather, to 1.7.2.5, to accommodate Satellite images in Hawai'i and forecasts in areas of the Pacific Northwest.
  • eBay to 1.7.2.7, to deal with very small result lists

Contributed "iMedia" Watson tool: strong reactions

permanent link · Topic/Watson
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A couple of days, ago, Randy Saldinger submitted iMedia, a Watson tool that browses "independent media" sources -- news, columns, and audio programs. Since making it available for download directly from Watson (from the "Install More Tools..." menu), I've come across some rather strong e-mails, both in favor of, and against the tool.

Love it or hate the tool, all I can say is that Free Speech is a truly wonderful thing!

Just "Discovered": Safari Bookmarklets (Favelets)

permanent link · Topic/MacOSX
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I have been hearing about "bookmarklets" / "favelets" for a while, but never paid much attention to them. Last night, I just discovered what they are all about. It's really cool -- a "bookmark" that does some useful JavaScript.

Alas, Safari isn't compatible with a lot of the ones out there, but I'm sure that will improve with time.

Some sites to check out:

(BTW, the term "bookmarklets" seems to be more common than Favelets -- a Google search on each term shows the clear "winner".)