Hopefully, I will find someone who can teach me “How to play a Harmonica”. If you have link to a good online tutorial, please let me know.

To create your own IM Bot you need to have some very basic programming skills. You can use any programming language, I prefer PHP. You also need to have web space to host your bot.

For example, I have created a Twitter Bot that can be used to tweet in your twitter account using any IM client.

If you like to write a personal IM bot, just follow these simple steps:

Step 1: Register at Imified

Step 2: Create your Bot which is just a simple script which resides on your webserver. It can be in any programming language.

Step 3: Copy the path of your script in the clipboard shown below.

Your Bot is ready to serve now.

The script I wrote is self-explanatory.
Just Add Tweetbot@bot.im in your IM client to try it.

//Twitter.PHP
require('TwitterAPI.php');

if($_REQUEST[('value'.($_REQUEST['step']-1))]=="reset")
{
	echo " start all over again now ";
}

else if($_REQUEST[('value'.($_REQUEST['step']-1))]=="?")
{
	echo " Hi, I am a Twitter Bot, you can tweet and see friend's timeline using me.
 type 'reset' to start again at any stage.";}

else{

	switch ($_REQUEST['step'])
			{
				case 1:
				echo "Enter Twitter UserName:";
				break;

				case 2:
				echo $_REQUEST['value1'];
				echo ",Enter Your Password, dont worry I dont store your password:";
				break;

				case 3:
				echo "Thankyou for submitting details
                                        Type 'tweet' to post a tweet and 'friend' to see friend's timeline";
				break;

				case 4:
				if (trim($_REQUEST['value3']," ")=="tweet")
				{
					echo "Enter Message to tweet";
				}

				else if($_REQUEST['value3']=="friend")
				{
					echo "I am working on this function, will publish it soon";
				}
				else
				{
					echo "enter correct choice ";
				}
				break;

				case 5:
				$result=tweet($_REQUEST['value1'], $_REQUEST['value2'], $_REQUEST['value4']);
				echo $result;
				}

}

No, This is not the only code you require. We need to use Twitter API as well, I have put that code in a seprate file.
You can make a number of Applications using different Open APIs

//TwitterAPI.php
function tweet($username,$password,$message)
{

// The twitter API address
$url = 'http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml'; 

// Set up and execute the curl process
$curl_handle = curl_init();
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_URL, "$url");
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 2);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "status=$message");
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "$username:$password"); 

$resultArray = curl_getinfo($curl_handle);

    curl_close($curl_handle);

    if($resultArray['http_code'] == "200")
		{
    $result="Yipee, Check your profile ";
		}
	else
		{
		 $result="Error , Username or Password is not correct ";
		}
	return $result;
}

Learn How To Use Imified API
Happy Coding!

Here is a link where you can read more about web.config inheritance. While settings are inherited from the higher level of configuration file, child configuration files are always permitted to override them. Inheritance downward is useful for applying a unique settings for all applications on server but in certain situation a higher config file may want to prevent inheritance in child applications. This can be achieved by using the <location> element as follows.

<location path="." inheritInChildApplications="false">
<system.web>
...
...
</system.web>
</location>

The above code can prevent inheriting the <system.web> element in this case, into the child web application. Please note that this piece of code should be placed in the parent’s web.config file.

What is a Web Slice.
Web Slice is a new feature in IE8 which allows users to subscribe to a portion of a webpage. Web Slice behave just like RSS feeds for a portion of a webpage.  Web slice are based on hAtom Microformat and hSlice Microformat. Any developer can create a web slice in a existing webpage just by annotating HTML with class names for title, entry content and other properties.

How to create a Web Slice.
Here is a simple working example.
Note: Web Slice works only when page is served by a server.

WEB SLICE Example


 WebSlice Title


 this is the content that will appear in the preview window





10

The migration process is smooth and mainly breaks  in 4 steps for me On safer side, I stimulate the migration process on my PC before finally performing on this site.

Step 1. Migration starts with a fresh installation of WordPress on targeting server/computer. It is simple and detailed installation instructions can be found here. My blog is hosted on Godaddy and it provides a easy installation of WordPress. You can also check your hosting provider for this.

Step 2. DasBlog to BlogML Converter – This is a GUI tool which will generate the BlogMl from your dasBlog posts.  To give a brief overview – BlogML main goal is to provide the ability to port between different blog engines.

At the time of this migration, I don’t see any utility which can directly migrate dasBlog to WordPress. I’ve first migrated it to BlogML and then from BlogML to WordPress. and backup.

Step 3. Now you have to import this BlogML to newly setup wordpress.  I used this plugin (BlogML-WordPress-Import) of wordpress. You should know how to install wordpress plugin to use this.
(But before import you might want to configure the “Permalinks” (under Settings) as you desired. If you do this before importing posts, you can benefit with a file that contains the old and corresponding new Urls. This information can be used for 301 Redirects.)

4. You will have to place the attachments and images manually on the right path on server. Also don’t forget static pages and any extra stuff that you may want to move with new blog. You can also set the 301 Redirects, this will ensure that traffic from links point to right post on your blog. To set this up open .htaccess file and add your old and new link (Make sure you add full ‘New Link’  (with http://www.yourdomain.com).) as follows-

redirect 301 /dir1/old_link.aspx  http://www.yourdomain.com/new_link

The above four steps conclude the migration process. Easy it was.

If you want to uninstall the windows vista operation system, then you wouldn’t be happy to know that there is no uninstalling option for Windows Vista. Yes, the Windows Vista installation is permanent. You cannot uninstall windows Vista from Add/Remove Programs.  In case of dual boot, most importantly you will have to restore the MBR to what it was before installing Windows Vista. Like in my case, I have windows XP installed on my Desktop PC and I install this Beta Trial version of Windows Vista.
(Windows Vista uses different mechanism to boot the system. Earlier OS have been using NLTDR but in the case of Windows Vista it is BOOTMGR.)
In any case, if you want to remove the Windows vista from dual boot system, follow the following steps I Performed for the same.  Remember it is not a task for faint hearted.
Given below are the steps I performed to remove the Windows Vista from my PC.

1. Boot the computer in to Windows XP.
2. Insert the Windows Vista DVD in the DVD Drive.
3. Go to “Start” and “Run”. Type in “d:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt52 ALL /force” (without quotes, d: is the DVD drive letter.).
4. Restart the computer, and you will notice the boot selection menu is gone.
5. Format the partition/drive where you had Vista installed.
6. Remove two files (Boot.BAK & Bootsect.BAK) on XP root folder (C:)

Note. Bootsect.exe is a utility by Microsoft which updates the master boot code for hard disk partitions in order to switch between BOOT MGR and NTLDR. You can use this tool to restore the boot sector on your computer.

You can type “bootsect /help” for more detailed explanation of usage.

Performing the above step helps in returning to the previous state, when I didn’t installed the Windows Vista.

Setting up dasBlog is really very easy task, you will know it shortly. You can go through these generic notes provided by dasBlog (http://www.dasblog.info/SetupInstall.aspx )

Now once you have been through with the notes above, let’s go further with these steps to setup your dasBlog on Godaddy.

Upload all the files in dasblogce folder to your web server. You should keep the same structure of file and images. Any change in that may cause your web application not run properly.

[Note: Before uploading your files, make sure you have made the necessary changes the site.config file (as instructed in turorial). You need to change the <Root> value to your Blog root directory.]

You can upload the files in a new folder or in your root folder. Ex – If suppose you want to add your blog to this path (http://www.yoursite.com/blog) then you need to create a blog directory in the root and upload all contents of dasblogce in the blog directory.

After you finished uploading, open the hosting manager given by Godaddy and click on the “Directory Management”. This will brings up a new screen where you can create new directory and set the permission to the directories.

You need to set the write permission to the following directories:

To create and set permission to the directory click on the “Create Directory” Button, it will bring up the new screen given below

Your screen should look like this:

Click on the “Continue” button. Confirm your changes by clicking on “Add” button in the next screen.

Repeat the same steps SiteConfig and logs directory

[Note: You may also need to set the permission on content\binary directory. For this you can create a sub directory under content and set the permission as we have done above. Binary directory is used to store the images and files attached with your post.]

Once all above is done your application is ready to run online.

What is AJAX?

First of all let me tell you that AJAX is not a new programming language. It’s a new simple technology for creating interactive web pages. AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML.

What it does exactly?

AJAX is a web development technique for making interactive web pages. This technique silently updates a webpage with the new data from server. This all happens in background. This means the page displays the new data from server without refresh. Ajax uses the Java Script to send and receive data between web browser and web server. AJAX makes asynchronous requests for data transfer. This allows us to update the portion of page instead of whole page.

What do you need to do to learn it?

Good news is if you are a web developer then you don’t need to learn any new thing. Most of the web developers are already using these technologies for several years.

AJAX uses the following Open standards

    * XML
    * JavaScript
    * HTML
    * CSS

XML is used for retrieving the data from server. Though, we can get the data in simple plain text format also.

JavaScript is used for updating the web page when the data is returned from the server.

HTML and CSS is used for creating a webpage and applying the styles respectively.