General on Much Ado About IT

A simple mail filer for Microsoft Outlook (VBA)

Julian Knight — Sun, 19 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Like many people I receive an unmanageable amount of email each day. Many days I get through only around 1/3 of the email I receive.

However, the role I am in professionally requires me to retain a large proportion of correspondence. Some because it relates to ongoing projects, other because of security, audit or compliance reasons.

In addition, I work across many projects. It isn’t unusual for me to be involved in two dozen or so projects at any one time on top of my day-to-day management work.

So I have many folders – hundreds in fact – and filing email into the right folder has become a real drag. It can take an appreciable amount of time to hunt down the correct folder and Outlook does not provide any way to search/filter folder names in the UI.

Thankfully, I have access to VBA macros in Outlook. While the experience of using VBA macros to control Outlook is rarely pleasant, it does get the job done – mainly.

My requirements for the utility were as follows:

Must let me select multiple emails, if any have already been filed, show me the folder(s) so I can quickly file new email to the same folder as the rest of the conversation.
Must give me a list of all my folders with a simple way of filtering the list by typing a few letters.
Must also let me open a folder for viewing instead of filing or cancelling.

A couple of hours later, I was able to create a new utility which you can grab the code for from my GitHub repository: https://github.com/TotallyInformation/outlook-filer

There are a few tweaks I’d like to incorporate but as it is, it is highly useful and I use it many times a day.

Stay Secure! The Latest Recommendations for IT Security

Julian Knight — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 21:07:14 +0000

Individuals and enterprises do not understand the value of their Information nor how to protect it. This article attempts to reveal simple and practical ways to protect IT assets and outlines some of the latest thinking and tools from industry experts.

IT Security changes over time and it is important to stay abreast. New threats are appearing all the time and so threat management also needs to change.

Here are some tips and pointers to the current thinking in IT Security.

Back in February of this year (2013), the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in the USA published a short but to the point paper on how to successfully combat the majority of current cyber security threats. The paper gives an excellent background to the latest threats without getting too technical. But the great thing is the 4 steps that they give to combating the majority of current threats.

These are summarised as:

<li>
<div dir="ltr" data-font-name="g_font_p0_1" data-canvas-width="152.32256276321408">
<em>Patch operating system vulnerabilities, for the same reasons discussed above</em>.
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div dir="ltr" data-font-name="g_font_p0_1" data-canvas-width="613.1027311220175">
<em>Minimize the number of users with administrative privileges, the highest level of authority to make changes or undertake actions on a network</em>.<br /> Users with administrative privileges are the goldmine for the bad guys. They are the easy back door into the heart of your enterprise systems.
</div>
</li>

Not a good day to travel!

Julian Knight — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 09:18:57 +0000

But a good day to work from home!

Freezing fog reduces the M1 to a car park. Outside our house in Sheffield the pavements and roads are coated in layers of ice making it lethal to go anywhere until you get to the main roads.

Thank goodness for the remote working facilities provided by the NHS Commissioning Board! Saves me a dangerous journey from Sheffield to Leeds.

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Great visibility on the M1! Not.</figcaption></figure>
</dd>

Recommended iPad Apps – 2012-10

Julian Knight — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Here is my list of recommended apps for business users on the iPad.

The iPad is a great business tool but is certainly very limited without adding some additional tools. This is a list of the ones I recommend for day-to-day use.

GoodReader – $4.99

This is the best all-rounder. It is a document viewer with good sync and connectivity options including the usual DropBox, etc. but also with SharePoint and custom servers. It has all the basic PDF annotation tools too. The only annoyance is the need to buy a different app for the iPhone – there is no call for this when the app costs this much.
iAnnotate – $9.99

This is better overall than GoodReader at handling PDF’s and doing more complex annotations. It can also convert Word and PowerPoint documents to PDF itself and has some limited document sync capabilities. I use this if I need to annotate Word or PowerPoint files, the PDF is particularly complex or I need more complex annotations.
iThoughtsHD – $9.99

An excellent mind-mapping tool that enables easy visualisation and organisation of thoughts. It has some really good editing features and superb import/export from/to other, desktop mindmapping tools. I use this a lot and the only annoying thing is the need to buy a separate app for use on the iPhone (I’ve personally not bothered). It does, though, get plenty of updates, a few of which attract an extra charge but overall still worth it. If you are a mindmap fan, this is the tool for you.
CloudOn

This is what you need when you just have to have access to full Microsoft Office from your iPad. Accesses files from Dropbox, Google and Box.net. Does the job really well.
Pocket Informant – Pro version $14.99 (use on iPhone and iPad), Std version $9.99 (iPhone or iPad not both), “Go” version $4.99 (both platforms but very limited)

Somewhat expensive and arguably overly complex Calendar and task manager. Links to the iOS built-in calendars or direct to a number of external calendars such as Google. Certainly looks good and has loads of excellent features but I find myself rarely using it as I generally access my calendar on the iPhone using Easy Calendar, which I find quicker to use. But if you need more in the way of task and project management, this is a good tool to use. It now costs far too much to recommend for most people unless you can get it on special offer.
OneNote – Free

OK, this one is actually quite horrible I admit! However, it is the official app for accessing Microsoft OneNote notebooks via Skydrive (live.com, Office365 or whatever it is called this week). OneNote on Windows desktop is arguably the best note taking tool every made, very simple to use, easy to use but is the closest you will come to working as though on paper with all the flexibility it provides. Unfortunately, OneNote on iOS stinks! It has far too many limitations to list here. Still, I do use it in meetings day-to-day for taking quick notes that sync back to the desktop. Note that, while there are alternatives, I’ve not found any that are actually worth paying for – at least not yet.

Well those are the basics. The rest of these have more specific uses or are for occasional use.

EverNote

This is another cloud-based notepad with desktop and web interfaces. Certainly not as easy or flexible to use on the desktop as OneNote but great for automatically getting the text from an image, and quickly doing visual notes (e.g. take a picture of your car number plate or that great wine you had at a friends house)
TouchDraw – £5.99

This is a quite amazing vector drawing tool that also does diagrams. Unfortunately, the iPad isn’t really that easy a platform for doing drawing of this kind but if you want to, TouchDraw is a great tool for doing it. It is certainly capable of doing simple diagrams such as organisation charts, floor plans and simple flowcharts. It’s surpassing feature is the ability to import/export Visio diagrams.
Filamente – Free Lite version, $19.99 standard version or Enterprise version

If you are a SharePoint user, this is the tool for you. Access to SharePoint shared documents and lists. Gives offline access, view mail (.msg) files, WYSIWYG editing, approval workflow. Yes, it is expensive though it sometimes appears at a reduced price. The alternatives are equally as expensive.
Textastic – $8.99

An excellent tool for text editing. Great for developers on the go. Connect and sync with development servers and Dropbox. Extended keyboard and highlighting for 80+ programming languages. Has a built-in WebDAV server for sharing files locally.
MagicalPad – $1.99

Nice alternative to iThoughts. If you don’t need the import/export capabilities of iThoughts, you might like this app instead. It is more focused on note-taking and is a bit like a simplified OneNote.
Noteshelf – $5.99

One of the nicer free-form note taking and sketching tools. Slightly more expensive than some of the alternatives but has a good all-round interface and nice smoothing. Also has a nice selection of background “paper” though additional backgrounds cost more.
Notify – £1.49

This is note-taking on steroids! Has perhaps the most features of any of the free-hand note taking tools. Including text, calculations, lines and filled areas. It works on the iPhone too. It used to be too slow and didn’t have decent smoothing but these issues have now been fixed. Not as pretty to use as Noteshelf and has a few rough edges but more than made up for by the lower price and feature set. The feature list is too long to list here but bullets & handwriting recognition (uses additional app Writepad – £2.49) are available
MyKeePass – $0.69

KeePass is a desktop security tool for storing passwords and other ID information that has been around a long time and is very well respected. MyKeePass gives you access to the Keepass database from iOS devices. Includes the ability to use Dropbox to keep everything in sync and backed up. Great tool, not needed often but when you do, a life-saver.
LastPass

LastPass is a cloud-based password management tool that keeps your ID’s secure by only ever decrypting locally (plus a bunch of other clever stuff like tokens and one-time-passwords if you want them). They have a couple of iOS tools, one of which is only available for paid premium users (only $12 per year!). Worth paying just to support them I think. I use the browser integration constantly and the iPad/iPhone versions occasionally.
Docusign Ink – Free (but needs paid for credits to check other peoples signatures)

More secure than signing documents with a PDF annotation tool, overkill for many uses.

SSH Error: "ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host"

Julian Knight — Sat, 05 May 2012 21:20:56 +0000

Fixing up an SSH login error after moving to a new ISP. "ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host" is caused by the lack of a reverse DNS entry.

At home, we’ve just switched from a slow (2mbps) ADSL connection to a wonderfully fast 40mbps connection provided by the excellent Origin Broadband using the South Yorkshire fibre network provided by Digital Region.

I did have a small problem though that has taken some searching to resolve so I’ll detail it here in case others find it useful.

As soon as we switched over, I couldn’t connect to my VPS over SSH. I was getting the message:

It turns out that this is due to the fact that the server contains the following entry in /etc/hosts.deny:

The OS does a Reverse DNS Lookup to check for bad domains and this line tells the system to reject connection requests to SSHd that don’t have a reverse DNS address. So it seems that my new ISP hasn’t (yet?) registered a reverse DNS address whereas my previous ISP (PlusNet) did.

You can remove that entry but that has a security implication. The better fix is to add a line to /etc/hosts.allow:

Where 1.2.3.4 should be replaced by the fixed IP address your ISP gives you. Visit WhatsMyIP.com to find out your address. If you don’t have a fixed address, you’ll probably have to do the alternative fix. The “ALL” keyword ensures that your location can access all services on the server.

I’ve made the change and it works fine. I’ve also raised a ticket to see if I will be getting a reverse DNS entry.

Update 2012-07-13: Annoyingly, I’ve had no response to my ticket with Origin Broadband. However, the fix works fine.

Low-cost Information Management, Communications and Collaberation Tools

Julian Knight — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 22:00:47 +0000

Although much of the work I do is for very large organisations and extremely costly projects, being an adopted Yorkshire-man, I’ve always an eye open for a bargain! More seriously, there are many small to medium sized businesses and charities that cannot afford big IT budgets but that still are crying out for good information management, communications and collaboration tools. In this article, I’ve tried to highlight a few tools that I think are worth looking at. I’ve not included anything in this article that requires a monthly or annual cost. All the tools here are available for free at least with limited features. The feature lists given are for the free versions with paid-for key features noted where appropriate. I also note if any of the web sites are blocked by typical enterprise firewalls. There is a lot more than what I’ve shared here, I’ll try to update this article from time-to-time.

Office Applications

Word processing, spreadsheets, presentations are the core of an office application suite. Additional tools might be included such as email, calendar, note taking, formula editing, diagrams, mind mapping.

SSuite Office Software I’ve not tried this free, Microsoft Windows only, office suite but it certainly looks interesting.
Microsoft Office I know that it may seem strange to include this in an article about low-cost solutions. However, you can get Microsoft Office at a very low price from a number of legitimate sources. These include enterprise licenses that allow home use and student licenses if you have a full-time student in the house. Cut-down versions of the MS Office suite are also often bundled with computer sales.
Google Docs This free offering from Google provides a reasonable choice for straight-forward documents but may be blocked from some enterprise sites. You get 1GB of free space and can pay for more if you need it.
Gliffy

Web-based diagramming like a simple version of Microsoft Visio. Free version is limited to 1 user, 5 diagrams and 2mb storage. Otherwise a monthly fee is required starting at US$5 per month.
Other options: Libre Office (forked version of OpenOffice, good enough for most people, not as good as MS Office), AbiWord, KOffice (Linux), iWork (Mac), …
Options not to bother with: Microsoft Live – far too simplistic, unreliable logins, poor sharing compared to Google (though you do get 25GB of free space).

Web Conferencing

Should provide instant messaging, voice, video, whiteboard (shared drawing space) and desktop sharing between computers as a minimum. May also provide meeting management tools, recordings of meetings and other facilities. Will generally be web applications that just require a web browser to access though plugins such as Adobe Flash may also be required and some may provide specific mobile tools.

AnyMeeting

Web-based. Free, advert supported. Up to 200 attendees, 6-way video conferencing. Polls and surveys, invitations, registration forms, optionally charge attendees. Flexible audio options: audio broadcast, conference call, VoIP (computer microphone & headset)
Vyew

Web-based, requires Adobe Flash. Free, advert supported. Up to 10 attendees. Forums, record activity, shared annotation of documents. Additional attendees and other features available on premium versions requiring monthly fees.
Other web-based alternatives: WebEx, GotoMeeting, GoToWebinar, Adobe Connect, Microsoft LiveMeeting.

Voice

Phone-to-phone voice calling.

ChatTime An iPhone app that uses local access numbers in many countries allowing international calls at low rates. Doesn’t require 3G or data access. Note that they still recommend using local SIM cards when roaming. International calls between 2 ChatTime users do not incur additional charges (both users have to call their local ChatTime access numbers).

Project and Task Planning

Tools that help teams and organisations plan complex tasks.

Asana

Team and project online task manager. Free for up to 30 members. Calendar sync, mobile web compatible, multiple workspaces (project categories), multiple projects, email in (new tasks by email), receive email updates, activity feed for each task, SSL connection, iPhone app
ReqMan

Totally free, unlimited users and projects. Project planning, time management & recording, requirements gathering, questionaires, reporting, WIKI, workflow, change requests, test cases, issues.
HappyToDos Online to-do and task management. Projects & tasks, estimate completion dates, estimate effort (hours), time reporting, team collaboration & file sharing.

Other Possibles

I’ve not yet looked at these but will do at some point

zeropc.com (blocked at enterprise site as possible malware)
https://podio.com/ (blocked at enterprise site as “Social Networking”)

Things to remember

When using web-based tools, remember that you may want more than connection security. Many tools claim to be “secure” by using SSL but that only secures the connection between you and them. Your data is unlikely to be stored encrypted on their servers and even when it is, it is even less likely that you can specify your own secure key so that server administrators at their end are prevented from accessing the data. In addition, remember that there are rarely enforceable service level contracts with web suppliers, if their systems fail, or they themselves fail; your data is history.

HTML Semantic Markup – What should I use?

Julian Knight — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Please note that this article may be unfinished.

Over the years, HTML has gradually been pushed towards a place where machine-readable, meta-data vocabularies are given increased value and importance. This article takes a quick look at what vocabularies are available and which ones are worth using in a web application right now.

In the past, the limited vocabulary of HTML itself has meant that authors have pushed meta-data into HTML attributes meant for other purposes such as the CSS “class” attribute (ref. “Semantics in HTML5″ at A List Apart). But of course, there are no standards for this markup and so it is not universally recognisable. There are some other design patterns that have also been used in some limited degree to address these issues such as the abbr design pattern that uses the HTML abbr tag to add meta-date. Unfortunately, these have negative side effects such as making life difficult for visually impaired users so their use is tailing off.

In more recent times, “micro-format” markup has appeared to try and resolve these issues and with the advent of HTML5, we are just starting to see these formats become mainstream.

Prior to HTML 5, there were a very limited set of semantic tags in three categories, the main ones of which are:

Structural HTML tags

div, span, h1-h9 (headings), ol & ul (lists), p (paragraphs)

Content HTML tags

abbr, address, code

Rhetorical HTML tags

em, strong

HTML 5 semantic markup

HTML version 5 introduces a new set of markup designed specifically to give HTML documents greater semantic meaning.

The main new structural tags are: , , , , , .

In addition, there are new text-level semantic tags as well such as the tag.

The W3C have an excellent (though incomplete) write up about HTML 5 called “A Web Developers Guide to HTML 5“. There is also “HTML5 differences from HTML4” that contains a lot of useful information.

REL attribute based semantic markup

The REL attribute is valid on link tags <a …. rel=”…”> and there are a number of standard names that add meaning to a link:

Other microformat semantic markup schemes

These are some of the more commonly used and useful micro-formats.

RDFa (xHTML extension)

Note that hCalendar is not included because it uses the abbr design pattern which causes usability issues as noted above.

When should I use , , , and ?

One of the good aspects of the nascent HTML 5 standards is a clearer definition of when and why to use these deceptively simple markup tags. Historically and were used somewhat randomly to mark up emphasised text and only a few people used (emphasis).

HTML 5 says that:

should be used to highlight text to draw attention without implying any change of “voice” or implying any increased importance (e.g. a product name or the lead-in to an article).
should be used to imply a change of “voice” from the main text (e.g. a technical term or idiomatic phrase).
should be used to imply a non-textual annotation (e.g. mis-spelled text).
should now only be used to indicate increased importance compared to the surrounding text.
should be used to indicate emphasised text.

Oddly, has been deprecated in HTML 5 which is unfortunate as it would provide a useful semantic meaning in a number of contexts such as legal documentation.

Note: If you look at the HTML source for this document, you will find that it doesn’t actually follow these recommentations! That is because I used the visual editor in WordPress which uses TinyMCE which still insists on using the form that was correct prior to HTML 5 (using for italics and for bold text).

Other References

Semantics in HTML
The semantics of HTML elements and attributes

REL attribute reference for HTML links

Julian Knight — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

NOTE: This table may be incomplete

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<strong><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Description</span></span></strong>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<strong><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Reference</span></span></strong>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<strong><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Notes</span></span></strong>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Designates a substitute for the link&#8217;s context.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">W3C.REC-html401-19991224</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to an appendix.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">W3C.REC-html401-19991224</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to a bookmark or entry point.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">W3C.REC-html401-19991224</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to a chapter in a collection of resources.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">W3C.REC-html401-19991224</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to a table of contents.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">W3C.REC-html401-19991224</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to a copyright statement that applies to the link&#8217;s context.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">W3C.REC-html401-19991224</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to a resource containing the most recent item(s) in a collection of resources.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a title="&quot;Feed Paging and Archiving&quot;" href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5005"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">RFC5005</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to a resource providing information about the link&#8217;s context.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"><</span><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/powder-dr/#assoc-linking"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">http://www.w3.org/TR/powder-dr/#assoc-linking</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">></span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to a resource that can be used to edit the link&#8217;s context.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a title="&quot;The Atom Publishing Protocol&quot;" href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5023"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">RFC5023</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to a resource that can be used to edit media associated with the link&#8217;s context.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a title="&quot;The Atom Publishing Protocol&quot;" href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5023"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">RFC5023</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Identifies a related resource that is potentially large and might require special handling.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a title="&quot;The Atom Syndication Format&quot;" href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4287"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">RFC4287</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">An IRI that refers to the furthest preceding resource in a series of resources.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #800080; font-size: x-small;">RFC5988</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> this relation type registration did not indicate a reference.  Originally requested by Mark Nottingham in December 2004.</span></span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to a glossary of terms.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">W3C.REC-html401-19991224</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to a resource offering help (more information, links to other sources information, etc.)</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">W3C.REC-html401-19991224</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to a hub that enables registration for notification of updates to the context.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"><</span><a href="http://pubsubhubbub.googlecode.com/"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">http://pubsubhubbub.googlecode.com/</span></span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">> <</span><a href="http://pubsubhubbub.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/pubsubhubbub-core-0.3.html"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">http://</span></span></a><a href="http://pubsubhubbub.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/pubsubhubbub-core-0.3.html"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">pubsubhubbub.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/pubsubhubbub-core-0.3.html</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">></span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> this relation type was requested by Brett Slatkin.</span></span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to an index.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">W3C.REC-html401-19991224</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">An IRI that refers to the furthest following resource in a series of resources.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #800080; font-size: x-small;">RFC5988</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> this relation type registration did not indicate a reference.  Originally requested by Mark Nottingham in December 2004.</span></span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Points to a resource containing the latest (e.g., current) version of the context.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a title="&quot;Link Relation Types for Simple Version Navigation between Web Resources&quot;" href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5829"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">RFC5829</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to a license associated with the link&#8217;s context.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a title="&quot;Atom License Extension&quot;" href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4946"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">RFC4946</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to the next resource in a ordered series of resources.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">W3C.REC-html401-19991224</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to the immediately following archive resource.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a title="&quot;Feed Paging and Archiving&quot;" href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5005"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">RFC5005</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">indicates a resource where payment is accepted.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #800080; font-size: x-small;">RFC5988</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">this relation type registration did not indicate a reference.  Requested by Joshua Kinberg and Robert Sayre.  It is meant as a general way to facilitate acts of payment, and thus this specification makes no assumptions on the type of payment or transaction protocol.  Examples may include a Web page where donations are accepted or where goods and services are available for purchase. rel=&#8221;payment&#8221; is not intended to initiate an automated transaction.  In Atom documents, a link element with a rel=&#8221;payment&#8221; attribute may exist at the feed/channel level and/or the entry/item level.  For example, a rel=&#8221;payment&#8221; link at the feed/channel level may point to a &#8220;tip jar&#8221; URI, whereas an entry/item containing a book review may include a rel=&#8221;payment&#8221; link that points to the location where the book may be purchased through an online retailer.</span></span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to the previous resource in an ordered series of resources.  Synonym for &#8220;previous&#8221;.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">W3C.REC-html401-19991224</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Points to a resource containing the predecessor version in the version history.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a title="&quot;Link Relation Types for Simple Version Navigation between Web Resources&quot;" href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5829"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">RFC5829</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to the previous resource in an ordered series of resources.  Synonym for &#8220;prev&#8221;.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">W3C.REC-html401-19991224</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to the immediately preceding archive resource.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a title="&quot;Feed Paging and Archiving&quot;" href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5005"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">RFC5005</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Identifies a related resource.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a title="&quot;The Atom Syndication Format&quot;" href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4287"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">RFC4287</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Identifies a resource that is a reply to the context of the link.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a title="&quot;Atom Threading Extensions&quot;" href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4685"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">RFC4685</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to a section in a collection of resources.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">W3C.REC-html401-19991224</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Conveys an identifier for the link&#8217;s context.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a title="&quot;The Atom Syndication Format&quot;" href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4287"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">RFC4287</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Indicates a URI that can be used to retrieve a service document.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a title="&quot;The Atom Publishing Protocol&quot;" href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5023"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">RFC5023</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">When used in an Atom document, this relation type specifies Atom Publishing Protocol service documents by default.  Requested by James Snell.</span></span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to the first resource in a collection of resources.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">W3C.REC-html401-19991224</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to an external style sheet.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">W3C.REC-html401-19991224</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to a resource serving as a subsection in a collection of resources.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224#ref-W3C.REC-html401-19991224"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">W3C.REC-html401-19991224</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Points to a resource containing the successor version in the version history.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a title="&quot;Link Relation Types for Simple Version Navigation between Web Resources&quot;" href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5829"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">RFC5829</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Refers to a parent document in a hierarchy of documents.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #800080; font-size: x-small;">RFC5988</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> this relation type registration did not indicate a reference.  Requested by Noah Slater.</span></span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">points to a resource containing the version history for the context.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a title="&quot;Link Relation Types for Simple Version Navigation between Web Resources&quot;" href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5829"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">RFC5829</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Identifies a resource that is the source of the information in the link&#8217;s context.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a title="&quot;The Atom Syndication Format&quot;" href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4287"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">RFC4287</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Points to a working copy for this resource.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a title="&quot;Link Relation Types for Simple Version Navigation between Web Resources&quot;" href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5829"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">RFC5829</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

<td valign="top" width="31%">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Points to the versioned resource from which this working copy was obtained.</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="19%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">[</span><a title="&quot;Link Relation Types for Simple Version Navigation between Web Resources&quot;" href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5829"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #0000ff; font-size: x-small;">RFC5829</span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">]</span></span>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="33%">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span>
</td>

New page added to blog: Privacy & Disclosure

Julian Knight — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:32:54 +0000

Finally got round to properly publishing this page that declares the site’s privacy policies and disclosure of intent. This is also linked to from every page as per [EU “Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003”][1] and Google requirements. Also added an HTML 5 logo. [1]: http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electronic_communications.aspx “External link to EU privacy requirements. Opens a new window.”

Coping With Google Reader Changes

Julian Knight — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 17:30:53 +0000

If you are a Google Reader user, you will have noticed the latest design change and probably been amazed at how poor the new layout is. What you may not have immediately noticed is just what you’ve lost. In this article I look at what has been lost and what you might be able to do about it, at least in the short term.

There are a number of lost capabilities that many people have been relying on

The Sharing capability provided other Reader users the ability to see what you shared and you can see what they are sharing.
Notes allowed you to add a note whether linked to an article or not. You also used to be able to add comments to shared articles These things constituted an unofficial API into Google Reader and Google are busy ripping the heart of Reader and replacing most of the “social” aspect with links to Google+. So in the future, instead of marking an article as “Shared”, you will “+1” it and it will appear in your Google+ feed instead of Google Reader. This change will be happening over the next month or so. Thankfully, there are a few things that you can do, at least temporarily. There are a number of Google Reader specific URL’s that you can use to still access some of the information. To make use of most of the following, you will need to know your Google Reader user ID which is a 20 digit number that you can see in your browsers address bar when using Reader, this is marked as <20DigitUserId> in the URL‘s below. The following URL’s will show the various views in the normal web interface:
Shared articles:

http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/broadcast

No longer available directly from the web interface so it is uncertain how long this will stay usable. It would be sensible to export shared articles while you can using the JSON exports listed below.
Your notes:

http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/created

Again, no longer directly available, who knows when Google will disable this view. If you really want your notes, it would be sensible to export them while you have the chance (see the information on the JSON formats below).
Your links:

http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/link
Liked articles:

http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/like
Stared articles:

http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/starred
All unread articles:

http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/fresh
All read articles:

http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/read
All articles:

http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/reading-list
Articles with a specific tag:

http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/label/

is the name of the tag as it appears in your list
All articles in a folder:

http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/label/_

_ is the name of the tag as it appears in your list. Note that folders and tags are designated in the same way.
All articles in a specific RSS/ATOM feed:

http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/feed/_

_ is the full URL (including the scheme, e.g. http://)
Friends comments (comments on articles you’ve shared):

You can no longer access these at all from the web interface but the URL would have been:

<a href=“http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/broadcast-friends-comments”>http://www.google.co.uk/reader/view/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/broadcast-friends-comments So that’s how to get each of the different types of view in the web interface but what about using these views in other systems such as displaying in a WordPress blog? Well neatly, you can make a simple adjustment to the URL to get an ATOM feed, just replace “view” with “atom” in the URL:

[http://www.google.co.uk/reader/atom/user/<20DigitUserId>/state/com.google/broadcast][1] It is worth noting that the resulting ATOM feed contains tags that define all of the feed types above, read, unread, having a note or comment, liked, shared, starred, tagged or in a folder. The tags take the form:

and so on.
In addition, then entry may also have tags related to the original feed, e.g.

Finally, in addition to having an ATOM feed for parsing with an RSS feed reader, you can also get a JSON formatted feed by replacing the “view” with “export/jas” in the URL’s given above. This gives output in JSON Activity Stream format. This isn’t as rich as Google’s own propriatory JSON format which can be accessed by replacing the “view” with “export/json“. The JSON formats also support some additional, optional parameters in the URL:

filename=

Default file name to save
likes=false
n=99999

Maximum number of entries to include
verb=starred

Not sure what this is. Verbs can be: starred, liked, shared, noted, shared
co=false

Include Comments
hl=en

Output Language [1]: http://www.google.co.uk/reader/atom/user/%3C20DigitUserId%3E/state/com.google/broadcast

New Blog Design Page

Julian Knight — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 08:59:55 +0000

I’ve added a new page to this blog explaining the [design of the site][1]. [1]: /about/design-blog “Design for this Blog”

How to repost Blog entries and Diigo links

Julian Knight — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 20:00:27 +0000

It can be hard to keep track of the various social networks that you want to post to. In particular I want to ensure that my Blog posts and [Diigo saved links][1] get reposted to [Twitter][2] and Facebook. I used to have some complex set-up that worked intermittently. Now however, I’ve started using [TwitterFeed][3] which is much simpler to manage and seems pretty robust. I have two feeds set up, one that reads the RSS feed from this blog and another that reads the RSS feed from my [Diigo account][1]. These both pass summary entries on to both [Twitter][2] and Facebook. To make things slightly more complex, I also feed a summary of my Diigo links to my Blog on a daily basis using the [tools on the Diigo web site][4]. So I filter these entries out of TwitterFeed using their filtering facility. Sounds complex but it is pretty straight-forwards to set up and it then just works. [1]: http://www.diigo.com/user/knightnet [2]: http://twitter.com/knightnet [3]: http://twitterfeed.com/ [4]: https://secure.diigo.com/blog_this/config

Microsoft’s Facebook Docs.com fails at the first hurdle

Julian Knight — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 19:00:23 +0000

Had my first test for Microsoft’s new [docs.com][1] this week – and it failed badly. In case you don’t know, Microsoft recently announced a new beta [Office Live link-up with Facebook][1]. You can log in using your [Facebook][2] login instead of a Microsoft Live Id. So you would think that it would be possible to use [docs.com][1] as a collaborative document editor and I suspect that you are supposed to be able to – as long as your documents don’t contain anything complex – such as comments! My wife wanted to share a spreadsheet with some friends – very simple – just a few lines to help them schedule some transport for the kids during an upcoming dance show. [Docs.com][1] seemed ideal for this as they are all on [Facebook][2] so it should be much easier than using [Google docs][3].

The first problem is that [docs.com][1] doesn’t always pick up your existing Facebook login so you have to log in again.
The second problem is that even when you are logged in, there is a large banner asking you to sign up for the Beta programme – very confusing.
The third problem is that the interface does not work correctly with [Firefox][4] – there is no warning of this but there are some things, such as adding viewers and editors, that fail with no proper explanatory error message.
The fourth problem is that only the original creator can add other editors or viewers, there is no way of delegating this.
The fifth, and most serious, problem comes from using cell comments to annotate cells. Apparently Microsoft’s shiny new [online Office suite][5] cannot cope with this. Not only does it not show them on the web page, it will no longer let you edit the spreadsheet online! To compound the problem, when someone else (who has been given edit rights) then downloads the sheet as instructed – there is no way to get the edited sheet back online!! OUCH – it is, in fact, much easier to simply email the document back and forth. Of course, we could have used [Google docs][3] for this. In fact, [Google docs][3] seems to have much better compatibility with [Microsoft Office][6] than Microsoft do!! It had no problem with cell comments. You can also set the document to not require a login, handy as many people don’t have Google logins. But by this time, the audience had lost patience with the technology and done things a different way. It may only be in Beta but Microsoft seem to be determined to demonstrate that they don’t understand user interactions in a collaborative sense nor do they have any comprehension it seems for the need for simplicity. 1 out of 10 for [docs.com][1] then – must try better! UPDATE 2010-06-18: Tried again, this time with [Google docs][3]. I set the document so that anyone can edit it (without needing a Google login), shared the link using Facebook messages and everyone is happy. You can even work on the document together, you actually see other people updating the document. Given that it also supports more useful features than docs.com, [Google docs][3] gets the thumbs up – 10/10 PS: Sorry about comments, I’ve updated the [Blogger][7] theme and it seems to have broken the old comments. If you are desperate to get in touch, feel free to use my [comment form][8]. I’ll put any comments on here manually. [1]: http://docs.com/ [2]: http://www.facebook.com/ [3]: http://docs.google.com/ [4]: http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ [5]: http://www.officelive.com/ [6]: http://astore.amazon.co.uk/muadabit-21?_encoding=UTF8&node=4 [7]: http://blogger.com/ [8]: http://www.knightnet.org.uk/comment.html

Welcome

Julian Knight — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 15:36:27 +0000

I’m afraid that his is likely to be a pretty random collection. I will add stuff here that I come accross on the web that I think may be useful at some point. I will also add things that I discover as I’m writing stuff.

Mining the Paper Mountain

Julian Knight — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

One of the biggest problems with trying to de-clutter my life is the “paper mountain”. This is all the stuff that comes through the front door on a depressingly regular basis. At least the majority of it is now from organisations that we actually do have legitimate dealings with as a family (bank, etc.) but it still piles up on the table by the front door and then adds to even bigger piles in the office. So it was with interest that I read an article on using a scanner to organise the paper mountain and I knew that I needed to give it a go. Of course, it was never going to be that easy for an inveterate “hacker” and having recently switched from Windows to Linux (Ubuntu) on my home machines, I was soon searching for tools to help automate the scanning and filing process.