The SMH tech section has picked up on an ongoing debate about the whois service & what it should contain.  ICANN was accepting submissions on a new set of proposals on how the whois database should work up until 00:00 UTC 30th Oct 2007 (that was 10:30am AEDST yesterday).

So what’s the actual issue?  Wendy Seltzer has a good run-down on her site:

The specifics of the current debate, apart from the substanceless comments filling the forums, is a proposal to allow domain registrants to substitute an “Operational Point of Contact,” or OPOC, in the public listing. While all their private information would still be collected, it need not be published. Instead, the OPOC would route messages to the right recipient, for operational, technical, or legal inquiries. Thus OPOC would simultaneously make WHOIS a better technical contact resource and improve domain registrants’ privacy options. Even OPOC doesn’t go so far as I would like — I’d allow anonymous registrations, rather than insisting that data be collected if not displayed — but it’s better than the status quo.

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 New SubSonic Provider: LOLCode.NET

Just finished putting the wraps on a new provider for SubSonic using the new LOLCat.NET coding engine. If you haven’t seen it, it’s “teh suk”

…

HAI!
IM IN YR Northwind
HOW DUZ I ListProducts YR id
PRODUCTS = GETPRODUCTS id
OMFG FOUND YR PRODUCTS
IF U SEZ
IM OUTTA YR Northwind

Read the rest, he goes on to show how to work with strings, try/catch, switching & loops.  This is available right now in the latest checkin. 

Also, congrats to Rob for his new job at Microsoft!

New WordPress release, minor revision number update.  There’s a bunch of bug fixes, security patches and speed improvements, but the best new bit is that now your blog will turn Windows Live Writer keywords into tags for the post.  Once again showing why I love using WordPress, the developers aren’t just inward looking.  They’re seeing what’s else is out there that people use, and adding features to work with them too.  None of this "not invented here" complex.

Note: This is not the ‘Insert Tags…’ link on the WLW sidebar, that will still insert the Technorati (or whatever) links inside the div with the GUID id attribute (why does it do that?).

To get the WordPress tags working, view the properties bar (hit F2 inside WLW or click the little up arrows next to the ’set publish date’ box. Then put the tags you want into the keywords field, comma separated.  When you publish the post, the keywords will be turned into tags on post.

Great simple new feature that makes it just that little bit easier to post.  I no longer have to go into the WP post edit page to update the tags for a new post, in fact, I rarely go to the edit page at all now.

As an aside, does anyone know how to change WLW so that it’s the keywords field that shows up by default at the bottom of the new post window instead of the set categories drop-down?

So most people know LOLCats now right?  If not, drop over to ICanHasCheezburger.com for a minute & check it out.  Leave your brain at the door.

So then some genius came along and designed a LOLCode specification, that is, a programming language that uses LOLCats language as its syntax.  That specification is now in its 4th revision (yes, you read that right, people have that much free time on their hands).

But wait, there’s more.  The specification has now been implemented in a number of languages & platforms including .NET.

So you can now write your next ground-breaking social networking startup site in LOLCode.NET.  Yes, you can write software in LOLCode & debug it using Visual Studio.  The compiler was written by Arachnid, very smart guy by the way.  I highly recommend reading his series on Damn Cool Algorithms if you’re interested in such things.  The compiler has been rather well received by the .NET community, so much so that Nick Hodge featured it in a presentation he gave at TechEd07. Nice.

Still, I’m almost certain that this is one of the signs of the apocalypse.

New software releases in the last week or so:

1. TopStyle 3.5 - Awesome, made more so by the fact it’s a free upgrade from v3.0!
2. FeedDemon 2.6 Beta.  Nick out-does himself by releasing 2 new programs in one week
3. Freshbooks is releasing v4.1.  Can I just re-iterate to any of my fellow freelancers, that this is an invaluable site, sign up!
4. AdSense is releasing a new ad format that will allow you to change the look of the ads on your site without changing any code.  Currently in closed beta
5. Gmail gets IMAP support. Also currently in closed beta.

   and last but not least

6. Firefox released a new security upgrade!

It always seems like these things come in batches.

Google has announced nine more cities that have street view enabled in Google Maps:

Now you can check out 360-degree views of Chicago, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland and Tucson. As an added bonus, the images in Phoenix, Tucson and parts of Chicago are all in high resolution.
But wait! There’s more. Ever wish you could pan up to the very top of a 50-story skyscraper using Street View? Well, prepare yourself for some serious sightseeing; we’ve introduced the ability to pan up in most new cities.

That’s pretty awesome, so start being nosy again!

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