Dear SVW readers, I received this note recently from the developer of a new approach to pinging, I haven't tried it out yet but it looks like a novel approach that fixes a few issues. -Tom

From Chris Simpkins:

Hi Tom,

I am a developer of a new XML-RPC ping application called Pong that allows authors to directly notify blog tracking services about updates to their weblogs and feeds from their desktop.

The application is free and available under an Apache 2.0 license. Pong was designed for ease of use and rapid transmission of pings to the tracking servers.

By decentralizing the ping process to a user's desktop, the messages are sent immediately to all tracking services that the user selects. Weblog authors no longer need to deal with delays in their posts as blog authoring software or hosting services attempt to forward pings. They no longer need to open a browser and navigate to multi-service ping relaying sites in order to send these notifications.

And most importantly, control over when and where these pings are sent is placed in the hands of weblog and feed authors, not a centralized service that makes this determination based upon business partnerships and financial incentives (this is happening, see these BusinessWeek and WSJ articles).

Pong utilizes the extended XML-RPC protocol (for services that support it) to transmit both weblog and feed URL's. The user simply points and clicks the tracking services that they would like to ping and, with the push of a button, the pings are sent.

This is followed by immediate confirmation of the success of transmission based upon responses from the respective servers. There is no need to search for the XML-RPC URL's of individual tracking services or configure an application to use them.

Pong is currently available for both Windows and Mac OSX. On both of these platforms, it is portable on removable media so it can be used to ping from wherever the weblog author posts.

I would like to invite you to try Pong. It's free and is presently undergoing beta testing by members of the blog tracking companies included in the application as well as by over 300 weblog and feed authors who have downloaded the application in the past week since it was released.

I look forward to any comments or suggestions that you have and would greatly appreciate any publicity that you would be willing to provide for the project through a review on your weblog or by forwarding this e-mail to individuals who may find the application to be useful (or both!).

Here are the URL's that you need in order to learn more about Pong and download the application:

Website: http://pongpong.org

Beta download: http://beta.pongpong.org (location of the latest beta version)

Quick Start Guide: http://www.pongpong.org/quickstart.php (five minute guide to running Pong)

Screenshots: http://www.pongpong.org/screenshots.php (sexy!)

Weblog: http://www.pongbuzz.com (updates on the development of Pong and news on the tracking services that follow weblogs and feeds)

Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/pongbuzz

Thanks for your help,

-Chris Simpkins

Developer of Pong



If you are interested, here is more information on the development of Pong:

Maintenance of a real-time, searchable blogosphere is dependent upon communication between weblog authors and the blog tracking services that index the content of these publications as they are published. For the majority of tracking services, this is accomplished using an XML-RPC based ping mechanism that transmits the URL of the updated blog (and more recently, feed URL) to the tracking server in order to prompt the server to evaluate the specified file for new content.

To date, weblog authors have had to rely either upon automated mechanisms in blog authoring software and blog hosting servers, or manual ping relay via multi-ping web services (such as Ping-O-Matic) in order to transmit these notifications.

The former approach is limited by the lack of user notification of the success of the pings. Interested authors have to manually check that the update to their site has been indexed.

The use of centralized servers via the latter approach has become increasingly inefficient as a result of the increasing demand placed on these servers by the extremely rapid growth in the number of weblog authors over the last several years.

Perhaps most concerning has been the recently substantiated rumor that deals are being struck to determine when and where pings will be sent from some centralized services that automate the handling of these notices for weblog and feed authors (see Wall Street Journal and Business Week). This information has largely been witheld from the authors of the very publications that are generating profit streams for these companies.

While my primary concern throughout development of the application has been for the weblog author, the application stands to benefit the recipients of pings as well.

I have discussed various phases of the development of the application with members of the top blog tracking services (including Bob Wyman at PubSub, Ian Kallen at Technorati, Greg Gershman at Blogdigger, Nick Gerakines at Feedster, Chris Frye at FeedBurner, Jeff Barr at Syndic8, Shane Adams at Blo.gs/Yahoo!, and Greg Reinacker at NewsGator) and their feedback has been incorporated into ping lockout intervals that are indvidualized to each service.

This mechanism limits the practice of 'spam pinging' that has increased the burden on tracking servers. In turn, this helps to prevent users' URL's from landing on blacklists that are not indexed based upon abuse of the ping service.

In addition to this check against ping spam, the application also validates all URL's entered by the user for an appropriate http protocol format (to prevent innappropriately entered URL's from being trasmitted) and tests the user's site and feed for an http response code that indicates the presence of a valid webpage or xml feed prior to transmitting the ping(s).

Limitation of unnecessary pings benefits the tracking services because their servers are relieved of having to process the forwarded ping, determine whether the file exists, and scan the site or feed for updates.

These are costly tasks, particularly when multiplied by the millions of unnecessary pings that are presently transmitted to their servers. To give you an estimate of this figure, Matt Mullenweg (co-developer of the Ping-O-Matic service) has estimated in the FeedMesh Yahoo group that approximately 70% of pings handled by Ping-O-Matic are generated by spam pingers.

The Ping-O-Matic site reports that they have sent over 400 million pings, so this represents an extremely large number of unnecessary notifications. Ultimately, limitation of unnecessary pings will benefit authors and readers by maintaining updates that are as close to real-time as possible as the demand on this system of notification grows.