I was reading the Y! Mail updates blog today and it apears that a bunch of enhancements are out.  Too bad I don’t see them  .  I seem to be on web farm 503, based on the “f503″ in my URL and I have to just assume that the new enhancements (and the previously mentioned chat beta) just haven’t been deployed on my farm yet.

I would be best to not either not annunce updates until everyone can use them, or alert readers that a roll-out is in process.

Today Yahoo! released their API for mail.  Developers can now write apps that read, search and write mail messages to/from the Yahoo! Mail service.  I’m a big fan of Y! Mail (though I wish that the beta for chat and calendar would hit my account already).  I’ve been a premium account holder for about three years now.

Here’s a screencast giving an overview of the new API.

Be sure to also check out these sample applications written to show off the functionality possible with this new API.

This makes me want to code.  All of these potential uses of a Yahoo! Mail API are bouncing around in my head.

Google just released support for KML overlays via their API.  Google Maps has supported the overlay of KMLfor a while, but I have been waiting for API support since Fall of last year.  I am using this for a project with BayAccess, a non-profit promoting safe a clean recreational use of the the San Francisco bay.

Before: http://www.danharrelson.com/bayaccess/iframe.html

After: http://www.danharrelson.com/bayaccess/index.html (need to add in the other KML feeds)

I tried to build a page pulling in a KML for one of my bike rides, but of course I pick a time when MotionBased having trouble so the feed is intermittent so I saved the KML to my site.  IE won’t display this properly either, so use FireFox. 
http://www.danharrelson.com/t/bike.html
 
Google Maps renders it, but tells you that there’s an error in the KML: 
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.danharrelson.com/t/MotionBasedExport.kml

Update: Chris contacted his collegue at Google who implemented the KML overlay feature and I was pointed to the documentation which outlines the proper way to write a page.  The bike map is corrected now and works on IE.

Today I installed a new theme.  It’s named blog.txt as it’s a very simple and text based.  I was actually referred to this site in looking for a “sandbox” theme that can easily be edited.  I think I’ll stick with this theme for a while instead of writing my own.

Update: For some reason, the incorporation of Snap Preview into this new theme reduces the top margin to zero.  Ugh, I really don’t feel like trying to debug this tonight.

Update 2: I just checked the site in FireFox (I’m an IE7 user) and the new theme looks like ass.

Update 3: I worked ou the kinks and previewed the site in IE7, IE6 and FF2.  The only problem I see is in Firefox, the background of the littls Snap icons is orange for the RSS feed from MotionBased.  That’s a problem for another day…

I haven’t been riding for a while.  Partially it’s the weather (I know, bad excuse in California).  Mostly was just having a hard time finding the time to sie in the saddle.  I’ve found it a better use of time to take Rusty on a long walk since I kill two birds with one stone.

Yesterday I took my neighbor Scott on a 50 mile ride through Pleasanton.  This is my 4th or 5th time riding this loop.  It’s a great route with lots of interesting hills and beautiful countryside.