Category Archives: Web Services

Making the Web Programable

Set xsd style dates with zulu time zone in java

By Ian | June 18, 2009

I need to set some XML Schema Date/Time Datatypes (also called xsd date) values for Created (being now) and Expired (one month from now) so that the result might look something like a dateTime in UTC (also known as GMT, but also being a 24 hour clock format) time by adding a “Z” (for Zulu?) [...]

Also posted in Java, XML & RSS | Tagged java | Leave a comment

DRM free Songbird Media Player is out of the nest with R1.0!

By Ian | December 2, 2008

in the works since 2005 has SongBird has reached a major milestone with is 1.0 release!!
What is it? A DRM (Digital Restrictions Management, or they “restrict your rights to digits”. ) free, non-proprietary, cross platform, extensible (plug-in services!!), open-source, customizable music player. That’s what!
It’s built atop XULRunner platform (also used by Mozilla [...]

Also posted in Digital Rights & Wrongs, Media, Music, XML & RSS | Leave a comment

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) StartUp event in Toronto

By Ian | September 16, 2008

The team from Amazon Web Services (AWS) came to Toronto (at the MaRS Building)to show us their stuff, and demo’s from some local folks showing the “what”, “where”, and “how” to their use of AWS in real life. (no admission cost for the event. Yea!)

Tracy Laxdal did a great job on all the the logistics [...]

Also posted in Code, LinkedIn, Toronto | 2 Comments

Amazon’s Web Top Site (Alexa) web service and Ruby; Fixed and juiced!

By Ian | March 15, 2007

I had need to get some data from Amazon Web Services, and in particular their Alexa Top Sites web service which provides access to lists of web sites ordered by Alexa Traffic Rank.
And, happily, they had a Query Example in Ruby! (as well as Java, Perl, PHP, and C#)
It is a bit unclear about [...]

Also posted in Code, LinkedIn, Ruby and Rails, Web, XML & RSS | Leave a comment

Amazon Web Services Developer Connection : Query Example in Ruby

By Ian | February 1, 2007

Amazon Web Services Developer Connection : Query Example in Ruby
line 27 of the sample should read :
“http://ats.amazonaws.com?” +
not
“http://awis.amazonaws.com/onca/xml?” +

Also posted in Code, LinkedIn, Ruby and Rails, XML & RSS | Leave a comment

Doing Time in Code

By Ian | March 30, 2005

Coding Time and Date “stuff” is one of the hardest parts of any real world application.
It’s messy for reasons beyond the technological ones, but start there, seems like every language does things differently – each languages designer(s) try to get it right “this time” – and frequently has several incompatible approaches – once [...]

Also posted in Code | Leave a comment