Apparently, Safari’s implementation of the XMLHttpRequest object doesn’t support HTTP methods other than GET and POST. If you try to use anything else, say SEARCH, then it’s silently converted to GET.

I guess this is supposed to protect me from doing something wrong, but really it’s just not trusting me to know what I want to do. I hate this. And it’s not as if this is a technical issue. All Safari has to do is insert the string into the HTTP request, just as it’s already doing for GET and POST. There’s no new logic to handle arbitrary methods.

Not suprisingly, smarter browsers, say Firefox, aren’t quite so inhibited.

This has put a bit of a crimp in my plan to write a calendar Dashboard widget that pulls data from Outlook using WebDAV. I can work around this, but I’m not sure if it’s worth the effort. Stupid Apple.

I’ve been thinking about useful, but non-existent, web services lately. What I want is a REST interface to my Outlook calendar (i.e. “the one I’m forced to use at work“) that serves up vCalendar data. (Actually vCalendar isn’t XML, but there looks to be an XML version. I would prefer that, as I could always transform XML to standard vCal using XSLT.) I will then take that data and write a nifty Dashboard widget to display my next appointment on my Macintosh.

I know there must be some way to do this. I’ve seen products that sync calendar data with Outlook, but the files I found on the Microsoft web site weren’t too helpful in getting me started. I couldn’t tell if I need use Windows to communicate with Exchange using some special protocol, or if I can do it from Linux using standards. Ah, Microsoft.

I am on the look out for a top notch evangelist for my team at eBay. If that’s you, or someone you know, contact me.

The eBay Developers Program enables third party programmers to write applications that use the eBay platform. We have an amazing set of web services (over 100 API calls) and want everyone to use them. Not only do we expose almost all of eBay, we do it big time, serving up billions of API calls every month.

Your job would be getting the word out to new communities, getting them excited about the possibilities, and helping them build all sorts of cool applications. In my opinion our platform is particularly interesting because eBay is so dynamic — people are always listing, bidding, and buying. Our web service is more than just search results, and it’s read/write, not read-only.

The official job description has all the details. (That’s job “5731” if the link breaks.) Also, apologies in advance to my fellow Mac and Linux users, our brain-dead job site only works under Windows IE. (It also works under Firefox on Windows, but that doesn’t extend to Firefox Mac or Linux. However, you may be able to spoof your user-agent string.) Please don’t read anything into this and apply it to my attitude towards developers.

One of the cool things about Web services is seeing people use them in unexpected and non-traditional ways to do cool stuff. For example, one of our developers, BIAP, just launched a trial service in Austin that lets you use eBay on your TV.

They’ve hooked up our API with a Time Warner DVD settop box. Unlike other “interactive TV shopping” experiences, this product is more than just finding products to buy. You can actually keep up-to-date on all your eBay auctions. For example, you can arrange to automatically see a pop-up notification on your TV set when you’re outbid on a listing, and rebid just by hitting the “B” key on the remote. (Or not, if you find that kind of thing annoying.)

If you’re like me, and don’t live in Austin, but still want to get a look, check out their demo.

Earlier this year, Dan wrote a different type of DVR program — one that lets you search eBay using your TiVo and buy fixed price items in our media-related categories. His was just a proof-of-concept, but we’ve open sourced the code, so feel free to check it out and hack on it.