May will be off from Mayvelous for about 3 weeks from tomorrow.
May will be visiting her “Boo Hoo sister” in Adelaide, Australia for a moral support.

If moral support doesn’t work, May is planning to give a physical support by wacking her up.

May would like to leave Mayvelous with a very busy friend, almost-to-be blogger, Mr J. Sheehy.
Mr. Sheehy always been a great friend and regular helper for May and Mayvelous as he is a brilliantly talented senior colleague.
May hope that Mayvelous and her readers will not give any trouble to Mr Sheehy by sending too many spam comments to clean up.

May would very much like to leave Mayvelous with her brother Zatlite but knowing him as a very unreliable, incapable and good-for-nothing plus he refuses to help, Mr Sheehy is the best choice to leave in charge.

May send sincere thanks to Mr Sheehy for taking care of Mayvelous and hope that he enjoy testing out wordpress.

Ping and Trackbacks are quite well known terms in blogger world. I’m not gonna talk about trackback(Blog-Blog/ post-post, notifying this blog uses content/resources related/referenced to that blog) here but like to share some of my notes about blog pinging and my collection of rss ping services.

Ping is the name of a computer network tool used on TCP/IP networks (such as the Internet). It provides a basic test of whether a particular host is operating properly and is reachable on the network from the testing host.
Ref: Wikipedia

If you are a blogger, you might have been using some of the most famous ping services to notify the blogosphere about your site update.
Some of you may not know that everytime you post to your blog, you are sending a ping to one or more services depending on your blogging platform. For example, those of blogspot users are pinging to Weblogs.com ping service everytime you make a new post. Ofcos that is if you specified it under “Setting” > “Publishing” > “Notify to Weblogs.com” to “Yes”.
For wordpress blogs by default includes Ping-O-Matic service. As usual, the good thing about wordpress is that you can add any number of ping urls in the text box specifies there.

There are lots of sites offer XML-RPC ping services on the web to track your site/blog updates. What those do is that, you added new post to your blog, you notify(ping) one of those xml-rpc services and they’ll come and crawl your site which in term updated in their database and make available to their visitors and propably those visitors will visit your site. Ah…something like that.
The main thing is that pinging and xml-rpc services publish your post/site to a wider medium, which is good.

XML-RPC is a remote procedure call protocol which uses XML to encode its calls and HTTP as a transport mechanism. It is a very simple protocol, defining only a handful of data types and commands, and the entire description can be printed on two pages of paper. This is in stark contrast to most RPC systems, where the standards documents often run into the thousands of pages and require considerable software support in order to be used.

It was first created by Dave Winer of UserLand Software in 1995 with Microsoft. However, Microsoft considered it too simple and started adding functionality. After several rounds of this, the standard was no longer so simple and became what is now SOAP.
Ref: Wikipedia

The followings are my collection of XML-RPC services. I guess only non blogspot blogs can use that. I suggest blogspot users to use the following links to submit the ping manually:
# Ping.o.matic
# Pingoat
# Blo.gs

You don’t need to add all those in your admin ping list. Only the main links as followed would be enough cos’ they ping to others as well.

Main list I use

• Blo.gs: http://ping.blo.gs/
• BlogRolling: http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
• PingGoat: http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
• Ping-O-Matic: http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
• PubSub: http://xping.pubsub.com/ping
• Syndic8 : http://www.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
• Technorati: http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
• TopicExchange: http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
• Weblogs.com: http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
• WebLogAlot: http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

The List

1. 1470Net: http://1470.net/api/ping
2. a2b: http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
3. Amagle: http://ping.amagle.com/
4. Blo.gs: http://ping.blo.gs/
5. BlogRolling: http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
6. BlogDigger: http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
7. BlogShares: http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
8. BlogsNow: http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
9. BlogStreet: http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
10. Bitacoles: http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php

    http://bitacoras.net/ping

11. BlogDB: http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
12. Blogg.de: http://xmlrpc.blogg.de/
13. BlogMatcher: http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
14. Blogoole: http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
15. Blogoon : http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
16. BlogPeople: http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
17. BlogRoots: http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
18. Bloggoone: http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
19. BulkFeeds: http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
20. Bitacoras: http://ping.bitacoras.com
21. BloggerJP: http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
22. BlogMura: http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
23. BlogBuzzMachine: http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
24. Bakeinu: http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
25. CoreBlog: http://coreblog.org/ping/
26. Cocolog-nifty: http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
27. DataShed: http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
28. Exblog: http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
29. FeedBurner: http://ping.feedburner.com
30. FeedSter: http://api.feedster.com/ping
31. IceRocket: http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
32. Lasermemory: http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
33. My.Yahoo: http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
34. My.YahooRSS: http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
35. MyBlog: http://ping.myblog.jp
36. MoreOver: http://api.moreover.com/ping

    http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

37. NewsIsFree: http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
38. PingGoat: http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
39. Ping-O-Matic: http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
40. PubSub: http://xping.pubsub.com/ping

    http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt

    http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php

41. PopDex: http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
42. RootBlog: http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
43. Syndic8: http://www.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
44. SnipSnao: http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
45. Technorati: http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
46. TopicExchange: http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
47. Weblogs.com: http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

    http://rpc.weblogs.com/

    http://ping.weblogs.se/

48. WebLogAlot: http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
49. Weblogues: http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

Only the links download txt file here. I hope this post helps you.
So next time you browse the net and come across new ping services, save the url and share with me too so that I could update my list.

Resourceful Links:
# Community Server list
# Elloitt Back Ping List
# Blog Herald Ping List
# SEO Black Hat Ping List
# Ensight Ping List

Technorati Tags: XML-RPC, RSS, Ping, Syndication, SEO, Useful, Links, Resources, References, Blogosphere, Services

Do you know that target=”_blank” (Open page in new window) is not a valid xhtml tag? Well you probaby do but I didn’t till now.

I kinda knew it’s invalid but I thought it’s valid for Xhtml transitional and version 1.0 only but not for strict…something like that I thought. Well I was absolutely wrong. It’s a html tag and totally invalid for xhtml whether your xhtml is transitional or strict or frame. Just not gonna work(it works) validate right.

So I asked one of my colleagues and he pointed me to some script he used. I looked at it, thought about it and knew it’s opening new window or pop up window (Douh!). But I’m confused which tag exactly is the replacement of target=”_blank” tag. I got sinking feeling that I might be looking at the very solution right under my nose and don’t know about it. It’s kinda embarressing to ask him again for straight answer so what to do…google is my best friend. Always to google before asking stupid questions. So I googled and there is it, so simple and so stupid I was. hehe.
So the answer is to replace it with rel=”external”

Check these articles for more short explanation and a nice script:
target=”_blank” XHTML 1.0 Strict Conversion
New-Window Links in a Standards-Compliant World

This is probably a usless post but who cares!
Anyway I’m compiling a longer, useful post and this one is posted as a breaking news.

Technorati Tags: Xhtml, Standards, rel

This is a great resource, definitely should check out.

a set of 40 layouts that have been tested successfully on Internet Explorer/win 5.0, 5.5, 6 and beta 2 preview of version 7; Opera 8.5, Firefox 1.5 and Safari 2.

Download the entire collection, 40 HTML pages in a single zip file.

Link: Layout Gala
Via: Web Graphics

Technorati Tags: Layouts, Resources, Reference, Webdesign, CSS

Just got one more interesting extension : QuickChat

QuickChat is an extension that is designed to allow you to chat about anything on any website with the users that are actively browsing that site.

Pretty cool one, chat with whoever online for visiting site.
Updated to my “Favorite Firefox Extensions List”.
Link: QuickChat

Technorati Tags: Firefox extensions, QuickChat, Firefox, Extensions

Sharing some of my favorite firefox extensions with you. All of them compatible with Firefox 1.5.0.1.

• Web Developer 1.0.2 – Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.
• Screen grab! 0.8 – Takes a screen shot using Java.
• LoremIpsum Content Generator 0.4.2 – Uses latin words to create filler content.
• JustBlogIt 0.3 – JustBlogIt with a simple right-click.
  
• Performancing 1.1.1 – Excellent Blog posting.
  
• SpellBound Development – Adds spell checker support to web forms and extensions.
• IE Tab 1.0.8 – Enables you to use the embedded IE engine within Mizilla/Firefox.
• Foxylicious 0.5 – Integrates your del.icio.us bookmarks into your Firefox bookmarks.
• X-Ray 0.6 – See the tags on a page without viewing the sourcecode.
• QuickChat 0.2 – is an extension that is designed to allow you to chat about anything on any website with the users that are actively browsing that site.
  
• Fangs 1.0.0 – Renders a text version of a web page similar to screen reader output.
  
• FireBug 0.3 – Web Debugging Evolved
  
• CSS Viewer 1.0.1 – A simple CSS property viewer
  

So what’s your favorite extensions? Please share with me too.

Technorati Tags: Firefox 1.5.0.1, Extensions, Web Developer, Performancing Firefox, SpellBound, IE Tab, Foxylicious, Screen Grab!, Lorem Ipsum Content Generator, JustBlogIt, Browsers