Annoyingly, one of those is the Term Extraction API
Which means my Windows Live Writer Auto Tag Generator plug-in will simply cease to work.

Important Announcement: The Term Extraction Web Search service will be discontinued on August 31, 2

So, what can you do.

Well, according to a few posts on twitter, Zemanta seems like a suitable replacement.

I’ll check this out, and write up a post on it soon, in the mean time, there’s an introduction here.

Download:

Project can be downloaded from Codeplex here

Usage:

To generate tags, simply highlight all of the text (or a relevant section) and press “Inert Auto Generated Tags” in the Insert menu on the right hand side.
The tags are then displayed in a list (shown below)

You can delete any tags generated by pressing the Del key, or right clicking, and clicking delete (the list is sometimes a bit random… but this is due to the Term Extractor API)

Hit Ok, and the tags are copied (comma separated) into the clipboard, for you to paste in to the Tags section in Windows Live Writer.

The tags generated for this post were:

auto tag
relevant section
wlw
tag generator
target
single day
clipboard
comma
codeplex
source code
open source
ip
address
yahoo

Limitations:

• Currently, the post text has to be selected before selecting “Insert Auto Generated Tags”
• Due to the limitations on the Yahoo Term Extractor API, only 5000 requests can be made in a single day from each IP address. I can’t see anyone reaching that limit… but I just thought I’d mention it!
• You need to manually paste them into the tags section on WLW… this is something I’m working on. (feel free to help… it is open source!)

Source Code

I’ll be posting full details, and a little tutorial of how what and why etc…. shortly.
Until then, the project is on Codeplex, with no documentation.

This is probably the most simple API I’ve come across:

http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=http://www.alexjamesbrown.com

(obviously, you can replace http://www.alexjamesbrown.com with any URL)

The day we arrived in Brussels (10th May) there was some special festival, so there were many people out in the streets.

We pulled up outside the hotel around 5 minutes after we left the station (it really would be a 10 Minute walk)
First Impressions were good – hotel is nicely presented, clean and well lit.

Checking in, I noticed that you could buy Internet connection for 10 Euros for 24 hours (which is what I’m using to write this post!)

We were given room 304.

Room

Room was very clean, large, and spacious, with modern decor.
The bathroom was brilliant, had a bath, with shower.
The shower was extremely powerful, lots of pressure, which I like.
One thing that we noted – no soap was left for us on arrival but we did get it on day 2)

The bed, although advertised as a double, was actually two singles pushed together, but this did not matter. Was very comfortable.

We had a TV, with a type of Freeview box that allowed us to get BBC1 and BBC2.

Gym

The hotel was equipped with a “fitness room”
This was a little disappointing – not because there was not much equipment (there isn’t really room) but because none of it worked.
There is:
A treadmill
A cross trainer
A bike
A multigym – Lat pull down, leg extension, pec-dec etc.

This would of been adequate for our 2 night stay, however most of the equipment did not work.
The multigym had come off its pulley system, the treadmill was missing its safety key, the bike, didn’t move. The only thing working was the cross trainer.

Breakfast

Breakfast was served on level -1
Consisted of cereal, ham, cheese, fruit, pastries (croissants etc..) cooked sausages, bacon, eggs.
All in all, was very nice.

Location

The hotel is brilliantly located. Just a few minutes walk from Great Market Square and many shops.
Directly opposite the hotel was a supermarket, where we bought some things for the room, since the mini-bar was hideously expensive – ?3 for a can of coke!!

 Useful links

Official Site: http://www.hotelflorisavenue.com
Hotel Chain: http://www.florishotels.com
Trip Advisor: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g188644-d344865-Reviews-Floris_Avenue_Hotel-Brussels.html

I use Freelancers.net to scout out potential freelance clients, however logging on to the site every couple of days is somewhat tedious. Much better would be to have an RSS feed to subscribe to?

Unfortunately Freelancers.net doesn’t provide one!

Not to worry, using Dapper, i have created one.
The URL for the feed is below:

http://www.dapper.net/services/freelancers

Happy freelancing.