We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size.

   Being a Bulgarian, I decided to dedicate the second part of the series to John Atanasoff. In Bulgaria he is known as the creator of the computer. I want to make it clear that I do not think that he was the creator of the computer. The computer did not have a single creator so no giant can bear this title alone. John Atanasoff however is certainly one of the giants, who carried on their shoulders the machine we call computer during the times when it was really heavy. In his case, it was 320 kg. One way or another, shedding light on his work should be interesting even if you are one of the people who choose to believe that this particular giant invented the computer on his own...

    It was high time for our team to introduce a new set of features. Like half of the Web users visit this website so optimizing the experience is really important. The first feature we have added is the OR-based tag search. I think it is pretty self-explanatory what it does. It also works with the RSS feed if you craft the URL using '|' as the separator symbol for OR and '+' as the separator symbol for AND. For example subscribing for:

http://sietch.net/Rss.aspx?Tag=programming+english

Yields a feed of all posts that are in English AND are about programming. Subscribing for:

http://sietch.net/Rss.aspx?Tag=music|movies

Will produce a feed of all posts that are about music OR movies.

    The second addition is the Web Slice for the latest comments. Web Slices are something like a visual RSS feed that is refreshed automatically. If you are using Internet Explorer 8 you can subscribe to it. Alternatively if you are using the minority browser Firefox you can use the WebChunks ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8494 ) addon to subscribe. Rumor has it that Opera 10 will support Web Slices out of the box. If you are using other minority browser I just do not know what you can do and how you are going to live without this invaluable feature. I guess you will have to keep refreshing the page manually every 15 minutes. Here is what the Web Slice looks like:

    We also fixed a bug related to duplicate items in feeds in some readers like Google Reader. This particular fix was deployed some time ago so people who are subscribed via Google Reader should have had no duplicates for the last items.

    As always you can download the source code and even get involved in the development on Codeplex - http://blognet.codeplex.com/

   I have been playing with ASP.NET MVC these days and I am ready to share my impressions with the countless readers of this no-blog. I have seen several presentations comparing ASP.NET Web Forms with ASP.NET MVC and they inevitably start with the presenter slipping out of any responsibility and telling the audience that he cannot tell them what to use. Well, these presenters are pussies. While I will not take any responsibility when your project fails I can tell you which one you should choose. Just take this simple quiz...

   There is still some slight probability that even after reading The Broken Web and The Broken Web 2 there are still optimists about the future of the web among the throng of readers of this no-blog. After all with so many readers chances are that some of them will be in severe error. Of course I am here to help them get rid of their illusions because the sooner they see the truth the lesser the pain will be. Today I will tell you about the company that has thrown the greatest amount of shit in the fan of absurdity that we call World Wide Web, but before that let me point once again some random thing that went very wrong with the so called "web standards"...

   There is one browser in human history the popularity of which can only be compared with the popularity of this no-blog. This browser used to own the Web several years ago with like 95% market share. Most of the web users today first saw the web using this browser and even though in recent years it lost some of its glory it is still the dominant browser on the Web. Love it or hate it, it is here to stay. So without further ado I present you the latest installment in the history of Internet Explorer – Internet Explorer 8.