Get out more - Travel the world, virtually. This news article provides few very good links to virtual libraries, tours, documentaries etc.

Microsoft, IBM offer WS-Security spec to OASIS - "Microsoft, IBM, and VeriSign have submitted WS-Security, a group of Web services security specs first announced last April, to the OASIS standards group. The growing list of all-star players that have already agreed to serve on the OASIS technical committee includes BEA, Cisco, Intel, Iona, Novell, RSA, SAP, and--drum roll, please--Sun Microsystems." - One thing I also noticed about this submission was that it was offered to OASIS and not W3C.

On a related note, Learn about the various existing and upcoming XML security standards.

The New Don Box Home Page [via Sam Gentile's Radio Weblog]

Well, We are placed sixth on google when you search for Elephant's Toes. Cool. This might change though with people still blogging about it. I guess another rule to The Google Challenge should be that, you are allowed to blog only once on the keyword and that's it, no more blogs using that keyword atleast for that week. There are some very amusing posts, though. Read it all by searching Google for elephant's toes.

The Glass Engine [via John Patrick's Weblog] - One of the most amazing use of technology I have seen recently. It allows you to navigate through Philip Glass's works based on few parameters like sorrow, joy, intensity, density etc. The Glass Engine is an IBM research project to enable deep navigation of more than 60 of the composer's works.

WildLife fact of the day - Elephant's Toes

According to Hindu mythology, the world is supported on eight pairs of elephants, called lokpalas. These "lokpalas" are said to have been created by the Hindu God, Brahma, out of the cosmic egg at the beginning of creation. Guarding and holding up the Earth as they are, elephants are now believed to be guardians. Well that was mythology, now for the fact. The elephants are large in size and guess what helps to balance it's own load, It's their toes. Behind elephant's toes is a large pad, called tippy toes which cushion their steps. An Asian elephant has five toes on the front of the feet and and four on the back. This distinguishes it among other things from African elephant, which has only four toes on the front feet and three on the back.

Mark Pilgrim is running a series of stories titled "30 days to a more accessible weblog". Here he tries to answer few questions on how to make your site (although he mentions weblogs, but I feel that these stories applies to any website) more accessible to people with disabilities. Till now he has presented five stories with five different protagonists, We've had Marcus and Jackie who are blind, Bill who is not able to use Mouse and relies on Keyboard for navigating between links, Michael who is colorblind (he can only see shades of grey) and Lillian, an immigrant who does not have administrative access to her machine and does not understand why CNN.com web site cannot be made larger.

Look Ma, Not even a single table.

We've removed the last table that was holding the Site Logo. Now we've a pure tableless layout throughout the site. There have been a lot of discussion about using tables vs CSS based tableless layouts. Here are few links that will clear some confusion:

Tables or CSS: Choosing a layout by Craig Saila.
Why avoiding tables (for layout) is important by Dave Polaschek

For us the reason to make this transition was to make this site more accessible, more usable.
Also, the site now validates as HTML 4.0 Transitional and CSS. Another step closer to more accessible design.

We are taking part in The Google Challenge. It's a cool idea and rather simple. "Each week the staff will decide on a "keyword" for the week, this will happen on every Thursday. The keyword will be posted on the frontpage of this site. Then all particpants of the challenge will get an email* notifing them of the keyword and other general site update information. Then the blogger will write an entry in their blog having to do with that subject. Then a week later the staff will search Google for "keywords" with the mature filer ON. We will go through Google until we find the top 5 bloggers. They will be listed on the frontpage. We do not have any funding so no cash prizes will be awarded. This is all in fun."

Somehow this went out of my radar. Digital Web published an interview with Eric Meyer (CSS Guru), some days back. In the interview Eric answers questions on CSS Standards,CSS Positioning, Netscape and other very relevant topics. While I am here, Eric has a CSS Experiments section on his website. Here you can view some really cool CSS stuff with the latest being, pure CSS menus demo which he uploaded this morning.

What Do You Want to Patch Today? - More bugs in IE, SQL Server, More possibilities for hackers, More patches for you and me to download and install. The cycle never ends.

Sweet Sweep...Lakers Threepeat

Once again, Lakers are the Champions.

Web Services to aid DOS attacks

Atlast I know what REST stands for. Now to the next part, why so much excitement and confusion over it.

Check out Paul Prescod's (the man in the midst of most of the conversations centering on REST) home page for more details on REST.

This is the social network killer app. [David Watson]

Defining Web Services using WSDL

Yeah, that's the title of our first article. The article provides the anatomy of a WSDL document and closely examines the components of WSDL with the help of a sample web service written using SOAP Toolkit 2.0 and Visual Basic 6. Go, Check it out and let us know what you think of it.

W3C weighs in on Web services.

Gartner believes that Web services will drive most of the innovation and new thinking in application development and deployment through 2007. Gartner is taking a very closer look at Web Services. Check out the latest spotlight on Web Services.

Microsoft today announced TrustBridge, a new technology that will allow different organizations using the Windows operating system to exchange user identities and interoperate in heterogeneous environments using industry-standard XML Web services protocols including Kerberos, WS-Security and forthcoming protocols in the WS-Security family. Well, This was coming for some time after the industry wide push to secure Web Services gained momentum.

Update: Find out more about the Windows "TrustBridge" technology and how Microsoft will support federation via WS-Security in a variety of products.

Mozilla 1.0 released. Finally !!

"CSS is the promising young recruit who hasn't realized his full potential.".- We agree. A nice article which demystifies CSS and sorts out realities and also gives futuristic view for each CSS promise discussed.

Read The F***ing Story, Then RTFM - Cultural differences and perspectives when reading the Manuals. Guess, You can make use of this article if you are internationalizing your application and are targeting different cultures around the world.

RSS For Non-Techie Librarians - Well, We are not Librarians and we consider ourselves techie, but still this article is cool and introduces you to RSS(Rich Site Summary) and the tools and resources available to enjoy RSS feeds. We have been wanting to provide RSS feed of WebJives.com for some time now. Looks like another future project !!

And Yes, We like and use NewzCrawler too.

The design of some of the leading online stores is mediocre at best, but it is improving, according to a new study by Web site usability expert Jakob Nielsen.

This morning I examined the website logs and found out that the site is getting quite some hits from Brainstorms and Raves website. Well, we found out, Shirley Kaiser, website owner and author of brainstormsandraves.com has mentioned our website in her blog (Friday Feast # 11). Thanks Shirley for the kind words.

XML Namespaces and How They Affect XPath and XSLT

Good article demystifying Namespaces and use of Namespaces in DOM, XPath and XSLT.

Lakers still rule the West

Mike Bibby and the Kings were almost there but in the end the pressure was too much for Kings to handle. Lakers are in NBA Finals (third time in a row). It was a great game, evenly contested which kept us to the edge of our seats all the time in the fourth quarter and then in the overtime.

Mike Bibby gave another great performance and established himself as a star along with Kobe, Shaq, Jason Kidd et al.

The companion web site of Eric Meyer on CSS is up and running. From what I have heard and read, this book will be very different then the present books on CSS and will contain projects with lots of examples.

While I am here, Eric Costello et al are also out with their new book, Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content from Presentation. Check it out.

Training Tools is offering free web based course to Photoshop 6. There are other free courses too.