Archive for July, 2006

"Deadwood" may not be the most popular drama on cable TV, or even on HBO, but it wins the Buzz shoot-out for inspiring historical searches. We can't remember a show kicking up such a ruckus due to its characters. ...

The flurry of swaps expected to swamp baseball at the trade deadline never materialized. With big names dealt before the deadline (Bobby Abreu and Carlos Lee), many teams chose to sit out the deadline or make

The show never had many ladies to begin with, and now "Saturday Night Live" loses not one, but two women of the "Night." Witty twosome Tina Fey and

Yes, it has. In fact, the highest court in the United States has proved unafraid to change its mind...

Photo from wiseacre photo.

This week’s featured user is Metzger52365, a dog lover and third on the Pets leader board. He has answered 1,470 questions with 53% of them being selected as best answers. Sticking to Pets, his favorite category, he offers most of his answers on Dogs, but on occasion answers in the Music category. He has helped people select kid friendly pets, and explained what causes bad breath in dogs. He has even given help to people living with a French Bulldog and revealed the truth behind chocolate and dogs.

Here is what he had to say:

“Well, there isn't really a lot to say. I'm about as close to your so called average Joe as they get. I spend most all of my time in the pets section (mostly dogs) and enjoy trying to help others with their four-legged family member. I have been around dogs since I am old enough to remember. I do a lot of research, not only on the net but through books on the subject. A lot of things have changed in the last 20 years when it comes to better understanding what dogs need. Be it training, medicine, or food, a lot has been learned since the day grandma and grandpa had dogs. I'm a big fan of labs, and have been for the last 20 years. I will probably never own another breed. Besides that I spend time tending to our water garden/koi fish pond, reading, and being a total fantasy sports freak. I have worked with the developmentally disabled for about the past 6 years now, and am happier job-wise than I have ever been in my 42 years. I haven’t had much time lately to answer questions due to work, but things seem to be calming down. May you all enjoy your time on Answers, and may you all have happy times in real life too.”

Thanks for all your contributions!

Katie T.

I'm happy to report that Answers is back to serve your knowledge needs.  We're still doing some tweaking and fiddling to make sure this doesn't happen again, so we may take another breather later today, but we'll work to make sure that the breather periods are as short as possible.  Thanks again for your patience and sorry about the inconvenience.

Nick

Amy Sedaris bakes them. Scarlett Johansson scarfs them. And a Los Angeles bakery sells 1,500 a day. Though long caught in the sticky clutches of children's birthday parties, the cupcake is emerging as an

As you have probably noticed, the Answers site is taking a breather.  We're working on it now and hope to bring the site back shortly.   Thanks for your patience.

Nick

Jane talked about reading feeds with ease in IE7 Beta 3. I want highlight what is new in the Windows RSS Platform in Beta 3.

With the release of Beta 3, the Windows RSS Platform is now API complete. This means that, barring any serious bug that we must fix, applications written against the Beta 3 API will run unmodified against the final RTM release of the platform.

Since the Beta 2 release we've made the following changes to the RSS Platform:

1. Added support for updating all feeds: FeedsManager.AsyncSyncAll()
2. Added support for adding and deleting enclosures from the store. This allows for improved enclosure management and alternate enclosure download outside of the RSS Platform's enclosure download: FeedEnclosure.SetFile() .RemoveFile() and properties .DownloadUrl, .DownloadMimeType
3. Changed signatures of FeedFolderEvents.FolderItemCountChanged and .FeedItemCountChanged as well as FeedEvents.FeedItemCountChanged.
   They now indicate which item count property has changed, either the item count or the unread item count of a feed or folder
4. Added FeedItem.Modified to reflect xml element <atom:updated> or <dcterms:modified>
5. Added FeedItem.Guid to reflect xml element <atom:id> or <guid>
6. Split the RSS Platform internally-generated XML elements from the Simple List Extension (SLE) namespace "cf" (http://www.microsoft.com/schemas/rss/core/2005) into their own namespace "cfi" (http://www.microsoft.com/schemas/rss/core/2005/internal)
   For example, <cf:read> is now <cfi:read>. This new namespace is reserved for the internal use of the RSS platform, so we remove any elements in the "cfi" namespace from incoming feeds before processing them.
7. Final API changes based on feedback, including
   1. Proper capitalization of certain properties in the automation/dual interfaces which are used by .NET managed code interop
   2. Additional FEEDS_DOWNLOAD_ERROR's
   3. Renamed Feed.Id to Feed.LocalId
   4. Renamed FeedItem.Id to FeedItem.LocalId

We want to thank the numerous people that provided feedback in blogs, comments, emails and newsgroups posts which resulted in the above changes.

Let me reiterate that we now consider the RSS Platform API complete. We are not planning to change the API. Applications written against the Beta 3 API will run against the final release of the RSS Platform.

Note: We are aware that the MSDN documentation does match the latest API changes. We will update it, but don't have an ETA at this time.

- Walter