SMS from out of the blue. What should I do?

A friend of the BOOT and industry insider (not called Tim) received a text message yesterday from a phone number that neither or us recognise that said "Tim have made an offer to buy out ????.com" where ???.com is a city specific destination site owned by a private equity firm. I am keeping the actually URL a bit quiet as there is some sort genuine secret mistake that occurred and this SMS was meant for me. The carefree blogger in me wants to shout about this and add it to my mini deal list but the corporate professional in me is hesitant to tell the world (or my 200 or so readers) in case there is something more here that I should know about. So - dear reader- what should I do? Tell you all about this mini-deal or wait to see if this is an important miss-sent work SMS?

Doing Business In China

For any business owner or CEO who has been considering
doing business in China, a new section of an international
trade web portal has opened to help you.

The lead page is titled "Doing Business In China" and
details some of the complexities of importing from China
and trying to do business there in general.

There are Nine (9) web pages that currently make up this
new Chinese business mini-web site, rather than listing
all nine here, you are better served by visiting each of
them from the "Doing Business In china" anchor page.

To give you a little hint the valuable information you
will find here, we have listed a few of the pages so you
may visit them direct, if you like:

Manufacturing In China - if you or your business has ever given
consideration to moving some (or all) of your production to
China, this page provides some vital details you need to know.

China Export Manufacturing

Wholesale Direct From China - but without the hassle of
importing from China yourself.

China Trade Shows - trade and sourcing shows for Chinese made
products are one of the best ways of locating new products to
import and this page details how to find the best China trade
and sourcing shows in the world.

There are 5 other web pages (with more to come), so be sure
to visit Doing Business In China and bookmark it as one of
your favorites so you may easily return because this new mini-
web site is expected to grow with more valuable Chinese
business and trading information.

Ronald Coble
Coble International B2B Marketing Services

Sanjay dutt released from jail

Sporting a several-day-old stubble and his hair close cropped, Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt walked into his Pali Hill home here Thursday to an emotional welcome from his family and friends, after spending 23 nights in Mumbai and Pune prisons.

The actor, who stepped out of Pune's Yerawada Jail at 7.15 a.m. and took a chartered flight to Mumbai soon after, took most of his fans off guard with his early homecoming.

A large number of fans had been gathering outside his home every day ever since the Supreme Court granted him interim bail Monday. Only a few were present Thursday.

Wearing a white striped shirt and blue jeans, Dutt, 48, drove into his home in a black sedan at around 8.30 a.m. - just over an hour after gaining freedom.

As the car entered the sprawling residence in the Imperial Heights building in the upmarket Pali Hill neighbourhood, family members and friends from the film fraternity rushed out to welcome him home.

After a traditional homecoming puja and breaking of a coconut, Dutt first kissed nephew Siddharth, sister and Congress MP Priya's son, and then hugged both sisters Priya and Namrata.

Brother-in-law Kumar Gaurav had flown with him from Pune where too Dutt's fans failed to see their hero walk of the prison because jail authorities decided to release him early in the morning so as to avoid huge crowds.

There, after stepping outside Yerawada Jail, a beaming Dutt shook hands with policemen and, overcome with emotion, even hugged a constable.

He then waved to the small media contingent camping outside the prison gates since overnight before speeding off in a car to the airport.

Producer and close family friend Bunty Wallia told IANS from Pali Hill: "He needs to spend time with his family and rest. He may speak to the media who have extended tremendous support throughout his ordeal."

Dutt's senior counsel Satish Mane Shinde declined to comment on the future legal steps the actor is contemplating. "Whether Sanju will start working on his unfinished projects will be decided later.

"For now, the most important thing for him is to spend time with his family, which he is doing now."

Clearly eager to get into his home, the actor told journalists outside his residence that he would speak to them after making a few telephone calls and after catching up with family and friends.

Dutt was sent to jail July 31 after the special TADA (Terrorist and Disruptive Activities) court sentenced him to six years rigorous imprisonment for illegal possession of arms given to him by the accused in the 1993 Mumbai bombings. He was moved to Yerawada Jail in Pune Aug 2.

In Pune, the actor had taken up carpentry as jail labour and even earned a few hundred rupees. He was paid about Rs.20 a day.

Dutt's release may, however, be shortlived because once the TADA court hands over the copy of the judgment of his conviction passed Nov 28, 2006 under the Arms Act, he will have to go back to jail.

But that has not dampened the sprits of his die-hard fans.

"Today's homecoming is a Rakhsha Bandhan (a celebration of brother-sister relationship) gift for his sisters. We are really happy for the family," said Sampat Bhosle, a fan from Nagpur outside the Dutt residence.

"Whatever little time he has he will want to spend every minute with his family and friends, and I am very happy for our Munnabhai. I have faith in god that he will get through the next (legal) fight," Bhosle told IANS.

Dutt's interim bail will also bring a relief, temporary though, to the producers he had been working for before being jailed.

He has three films on the floors and is expected to be back on the sets soon.

Dutt had started "Dhamaal" a month before the verdict and had been shooting double shifts to complete the film before going to prison.

Other unfinished projects include Sanjay Gadhvi's "Kidnap", which has Dutt in the main lead. Shooting for Sanjay Gupta's "Alibaug", in which Dutt is also co-producer, had to be cancelled after he went to jail.

XML is a Markup Language

Duh John... Why waste your time blogging the obvious?
XML is a wonderful tool, but tools are designed for specific purposes. You may be able to use them for other tasks (I've been know to use a cordless drill to pound in a nail), but tools are most useful when applied to the tasks for which they were designed (Don't get me started on Swiss Army Knives).

What Markup Languages are good at:

Markup languages were originally created to add formatting information to raw text.

Markup languages let you take a raw text string such as:

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

and render it as something much more pleasing to the eye such as:

The quick brown fox ^{jumped over} the _{lazy dog}.

Markup languages are really quite simple to understand. They let you delineate sections of text and specify the attributes that should be applied to each section of text. That's pretty much all there is to it.

HTML and XML are two of the best known markup languages. In HTML and XML sections of text are delineated by start tags <> and end tags </>. In HTML the set of tags is pre-defined (although they seem to add new tags on occasion). In XML you define your own tags. In both HTML and XML most tags can have multiple attributes... for example a <FONT> tag can specify the font style, weight, color, etc.

Programs that render text that is marked up with HTML, such as your favorite Web Browser, generally ignore markup tags and attributes that they don't "know". This behavior goes back to the original purpose for markup languages: Use markup to change the way a string of text is displayed (or printed).

The raw text in an HTML document generally makes sense by itself. Markup changes the way that text is presented... but it does not change the words. Better to display the words without formatting them properly than to alter the words.

Programs that deal with XML do not have a hard and fast rule on how to deal with markup tags and attributes that they don't "know". The raw text in an XML document does not necessarilly make sense by itself. XML is often used to add meaning to a section of text... For example, a tag called <ADDRESS> probably has nothing to do with formatting text... it probably defines a block of text that should be "used" as an address by the reader of the document.

For this reason, if the meaning of an XML markup tag or attribute is not "known", then the entire section of text should often be ignored.

XML has a "standard" mechanism for defining the rules that a specific XML document should follow (XSD: XML Schema Definition). For example, some tags should only be used in sections of text that are delineated by another tag. This feature is very helpful if the format of the XML document is very important to your application.

That's pretty much all there is to say about markup languages in general, and XML in specific.

If you need to add formatting information or meaning to raw text, then a markup language is a great tool. If the markup tags are likely to change over time, then XML is a great tool.

What Markup Languages are not good at:

Markup languages are not particularly good programming languages. Markup languages are great when you need a lot of adjectives. Unfortunately, when writing a program you need a lot of verbs:

If Bob Is Late Then Fire Bob.

<IF> <PERSON> Bob <ARRIVAL> Late </ARRIVAL> </PERSON> <THEN> <PERSON> Bob <ACTION> Fire </ACTION> </PERSON> </THEN> </IF>

Yuck!

People do insist on designing XML-ish programming languages (like BPEL ), but it's really not a good fit.

Markup languages are also not a particularly good choice if you need to efficiently transmit or parse documents that are highly structured and the structure never (almost never) changes. In many cases, the tags in a marked-up document can take up more space than the raw text in the document. If the structure of the text never (almost never) changes, then it's much more efficient (from a programming standpoint) to have a "map" or "index" for the document rather than to embed markup tags in the document.

It's very efficient for a program to parse a document where you "know" that an "address" is a;ways 40 characters long and always starts at character number 5:

Name starts a character 1

Address starts at character 5

Phone starts at character 46

Bob,4001 First Street Culver City California,5124655567

It's less efficient for a program to scan through a document looking for an <ADDRESS> tag:

<NAME>Bob</NAME><ADDRESS>4001 First Street Culver City California</ADDRESS><PHONE>5124655567</PHONE>

If the format of your data never (almost never) changes, and you really, really need to be able to efficiently transmit and parse the data, then a markup language is not your friend.

XML is a Markup Language:

If a Markup Language makes sense in your application, then XML is a great tool.

'Nuff said.

Cancelled: August 25 system maintenance

Last night, our engineers were able to implement the upgrades that were originally scheduled for this Saturday's maintenance period. Therefore, we've cancelled this weekend's system maintenance and your accounts will be accessible without interruption.

Posted by Judy, Inside AdWords crew