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

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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