Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

The Twitter Location Search app utilizes Google Maps to show approximate radial distance from a specified point on a map If you are an API developer, this tool can be useful to visualize approximate radial distance while dealing with location-specific queries. The Twitter Search API supports a parameter called geocode that returns tweets by users located within a given radius of the given latitude/longitude for a given search term. The parameter value is specified by "latitude,longitude,radius", where radius units must be specified as either "mi" (miles) or "km" (kilometers). The maximum limit for the radius is not specified in the API docs but the Advanced Search feature on Twitter has 1000 as the upper limit.

When websites provide Feeds of their content, they not only allow that content to be read through Feed readers like Google Reader but also let other sites consume that content programmatically. These feeds can be in various formats like RSS, Atom, JSON, JSONP. Instead of scraping content from sites they don't own, developers can use RSS, Atom & JSON feeds with server-side programming languages to display that content on their own sites. JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation. The advantage with JSON for developers is that it can be directly translated into a JavaScript object. No parsing is necessary to get at the data. A client-side programming language like JavaScript can however not be used to load a feed if the domain from which the feed is originating is not the same as the site where it is going to be consumed programmatically. That's were JSONP comes in. The P in JSONP stands for "padding". A JSONP feed is same as a JSON feed except that the fe...

A global  LinkedIn survey  of 6580 professionals revealed that 71% of women & 60% of men keep to-do lists ..LinkedIn found professionals working in agriculture claim to be most productive: 83 percent stated that they regularly fulfill most of all of their planned tasks. The regularity of routine (due to sunlight, seasons and the fact that if you don’t feed the pig, the grass, the chickens… well, they die) is real motivation to get your to-do’s done and something those of us outside of agriculture can learn from. Here's a list of web-based free   To Do List apps that you choose from - To Do  (M365) Gmail Tasks  ( mobile version )  Simplenote   ToBeeDo   Ta-da List   Todoist   voo2do Remember the Milk   Toodledo  ( see Toodledo's comparison of popular TO DO list apps ) Producteev   TodoListMe   Todo.ly   Workflowy   Task Resolver   GQueues   Focuth   Organisr

Notes from the TechNet Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control Service (ACS) Academy  video series  - ACS or Access Control Service is a cloud service that abstracts authentication & lets you focus on app development rather than on plumbing ACS is part of Windows Azure Platform - a service within AppFabric  ACS offers federation with Internet identity providers (like Windows Live ID, Facebook, Yahoo, Google) & corporate identity providers (via ADFS v2.0)  Federation means you can outsource authentication to industry mature identity management systems ACS implements federation and trust for web apps using industry standards protocols. ACS can use WS-Federation, WS-Trust, OpenID, OAuth 2.0, OAuth WRAP and SAML 1.1 and 2.0, SWT token formats ACS works for Web and Web services architectures The core functionality of Access Control Service (ACS) & Active Directory Federation Services or ADFS is STS or Security Token Service Both Access Control Servic...

NY Times has a nice article on Rage Comics  - When you get angry, you can lash out or seethe inside.  Or you can head to the Web to assemble and publish a cartoon to share some of that rage. Many people with little to no artistic ability — but with some pretty funny tales — do that in something called rage comics.  ... They have created a genre of Internet humor that, unlike the Keyboard Cat or Rickrolling, two famous Internet memes, continues to grow nearly five years after its obscure beginnings. Today, thousands of rage comics are posted daily. Most are the creations of anonymous people seeking not fame, but an audience with whom they can air their dark wit. Popular themes are public embarrassment, private shame in the bedroom or bathroom, and most of all, the unbearable burden of dealing with other people’s stupidity.   RageMaker  is a popular browser-based rage comic editing and publishing tool that you can use once you have dialogues for you car...