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I love the XSLT document function. With it, you can access the whole Web from a stylesheet; this gives a lot of flexibility, in the right situation. For example, my local library’s online system is based upon iPac (now sold as the Horizon Information Portal, I think), a common packaged library management system. One of its nifty features is letting you keep a list of books (“My List”) that you’d like to eventually check out of the library. In conjunction with Jon Udell’s LibraryLookup bookmarklet, you can shift from keeping books in your Amazon shopping cart and buying them to keeping them in your library’s list and borrowing them. That said, the data isn’t exactly in the format that I want it; to figure out what’s available in my local branch, I have to click through and scan a list of branches. What I’d really like is a list of books that are on my list, at my local branch, and currently available, all on one page.
While we’re at it, I’d like to have it available on my phone, so I can know where to go in the stacks when I’m looking for something to read. ’ to the URL’s query arguments, you get back an XML representation of the page’s underlying data. Unfortunately, iPac doesn’t use HTTP authentication; it has a form login and then gives you a session ID, but luckily, the session ID is in the URL, not in a cookie. Enter document(). Because everything’s in the URL, it’s possible to use XSLT to log in, get a session ID, get My List, find availability information for each individual book, and then log out. All in one stylesheet. Here’s the stylesheet and an example of a document to run it against; you’ll need to supply a username and password, as well as a search URI and a branch name that you’re interested in. Needless to say, this is incredibly iPac-specific, and even with other iPac systems, may need tweaking. You can also see a snapshot of the books which are both currently interesting to me, and available at the Burlingame library. One caution; this is pretty resource-intensive on the library’s servers, because it has to check each book’s availability with a GET. I’ve got mine running with a cron job just every few days, so it won’t stress them; I wouldn’t suggest running it as a client-side stylesheet for this reason. I am using XSLT to transform XML into HTML. While stepping through the XSLT, I would like to go to the URL below (I get the last ten digits from the XML) and scrape the company name from the page and put it into my HTML output. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Have you ever wanted to try out a new personality? Since we're stuck with ourselves, day-in and day-out, our own personalities might sometimes feel a little tired from time to time. So what can we do about this? There are, of course, costumes, which are probably the reason so many people look forward to Halloween -- they can be their favorite superhero for a night and revel in a little creativity. But not all of us are willing to play dress up throughout the calendar year, mainly because doing so violates generally held social norms. After all, most Web sites that offer some kind of online community allow their users to create avatars, an electronic image that represents the person controlling it. Generally, members can be as creative as they like with their avatar, either fashioning it as close to their appearance and personality as possible or creating an entirely different personality.
One of these social networking services is Zwinky, a service launched in 2006 and owned by InterActiveCorp (IAC). Zwinky lets its members create their own cartoonish, large-headed and big-eyed avatars, which they can use in several different ways. One thing to keep in mind: Zwinky is open to anyone age 13 and older. If you're younger than 13, you won't be allowed to make your own account, not even with parental permission. Zwinky profiles can also be set to "private" if you're 18 or older, but profiles of Zwinky users younger than 18 are automatically set to private. So how does Zwinky work? What can someone with a Zwinky avatar do? And what kind of place is Zwinktopia, anyway? This may be a slightly unfamiliar approach for members of other social networking sites -- most simply request that you create a username and password and fill in some personal information, including e-mail addresses and phone numbers.
Zwinky, however, requires you to download a Zwinky icon onto your Web browser, which users click on to access the program's interface. When you've successfully installed the Zwinky program and opened up the program window, it's time to customize your Zwinky character. Every Zwinky has a personal wardrobe, which users can access by clicking on the "Open Wardrobe" button near the bottom of the screen. You can manipulate a Zwinky's appearance to make it look however you want, and users choose traits including gender, skin tone, hair style and color, and more. To move a Zwinky from one place to the next in a specific area, members simply use the mouse to point and click. You can make new friends or see a list of the ones you already have by clicking on the "View/Add Friends" button at the bottom of the interface. This button allows you to either send an e-mail to a fellow Zwinky requesting friendship or to see where in Zwinky's world your friends are.
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