I updated Drupal's atom feed module to optionally insert Yahoo! RSS ad units. It applies to HEAD, DRUPAL-4-6, and DRUPAL-4-7. I had intended to add the feature to the core RSS feed, but I didn't see a simple hook or function to insert text from a contrib module.

I would much rather use Google Adsense to try out RSS ads, but I didn't qualify for their beta group. I'm also a little hesitant to keep the Y! units in my feed since every time I loaded the feed in a reader, every entry had the same ad. Adam Kalsey reviewed the Y! RSS units and identified some implementation problems that concern me, too.

Today I was also asked, at work, to create a way for users to store their username and password in a database so, by clicking a link, they could login to Microsoft Sharepoint. The problem is Microsoft Sharepoint uses a 401 header for basic HTTP authentication.

Just to be sure, I re-read the Apache documentation on the 401 authentication header exchange and I just don't see a way for a third-party server to automatically login a client. I'd need a HTML form, with cookie-based login, to do the javascript-triggered login I have in mind. The only option I found to override the 401 authentication with a HTML form looked like such an ugly hack, I don't think I would even try it unless I had Deepfreeze loaded on the server.