Read more about the press release here at TechCrunch. As of today, there is no documentation or word on how exactly one creates an application for the new platform, but you can contact them to recieve more information!

- 5 years relevant web development experience
I’ve worked a ton with the web, I’ve done everything from ColdFusion to my current favorite, Ruby (and Rails). I have a lot of experience working with JavaScript and XHTML/CSS, very comfortable doing frontend and backend development, as well as database work (although, I don’t want to use the term DBA). If you’d like to see my portfolio, contact me directly.

- Did I mention I love Ruby?
I have done a lot of work with Ruby in the past couple of years, I was highlighted on the RailsEnvy podcast a few weeks ago for a modest open source contribution I made called SmartMonth. I’ve worked on some medium-sized rails deployments, and am looking to grow my portfolio.

- Plays well with others
I love working on small, motivated teams. I always enjoy adding (and learning) from the synergy of a great team. I also test all of my code (quite thoroughly) and won’t break “the build”.

- UNIX Aficionado
I love UNIX, and its my deployment environment of choice, I’ve got a lot of experience working with Capistrano, and am very adamant about automating things wherever possible, and documenting things thoroughly.

- Entrepreneurial-Minded
I have a passion for growing things, I am a very dedicated team member, and am also very aware of the needs of startup-oriented businesses, I’ve worked with a few startups at this point, and have gathered a decent amount of relevant experience helping companies and products grow.

If I sound at all interesting to you, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line, or if you know someone who might be interested in hiring me, please forward my information along and I’ll send you a Christmas card.
Thanks everyone!

So, I decided to do a little bit of research on the ActiveRecord::Migrator class to see how I could approach programmatically executing the migration outside of the standard rake task, so I could build my own custom migration rake task for my plugin.

It turns out, there are a bunch of functions you can utilize to build your own custom migration tasks for your plugin, that I wasn’t immediately aware of. Here is how I did it:

namespace :myplugin do
  desc "migrates my plugin's migration files into the database."
  task :migrate => :environment do
      ActiveRecord::Migrator.migrate(File.expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/../db/migrate"))
      Rake::Task["db:schema:dump"].invoke if ActiveRecord::Base.schema_format == :ruby
  end
end

I simply saved that block of code into my plugin’s /tasks folder and named it custom_migration.rake. Next, I went to the root of my application and ran rake myplugin:migrate, and huzzah! it worked!

Nothing too amazing, and I actually based this entirely on the vanilla db:migrate function. The first line of the task essentially tells the ActiveRecord Migrator to search through my plugin’s db/migrate folder for any migration files it can find, and then brings all of them up! It would be nice if the vanilla db:migrate supported a MIGRATIONS_PATH constant so we could just use the same mechanics and build on top of them, rather than essentially re-write them just to do this.

OR better yet, wouldn’t it be nice if rails db:migrate actually scanned our plugins directory for migration files as well? That sounds like the best option to me.

Now, I am not sure if this is “the ruby way” to handle this problem, and as I stated earlier, Rails Engines is probably the way to go if you have a much larger plugin you are designing, but for me, this seemed to work just fine.

Limitations

There are some limitations to that custom task. For instance, if you were to run db:rollback, it would not be aware of the migration files that I have previously run that live within my plugin, you’d have to build another custom task to manage revoking the migrations you installed. Also, if they end up changing the way you actually migrate migrations, you might be screwed. But, alas, here is hoping for that MIGRATIONS_PATH constant!

• fundamental strategies of analytical design
  
• evaluating evidence used in presentations
  
• statistical data: tables, graphics, and semi-graphics
  
• business, scientific, research, and financial presentations
  
• complexity and clarity
  
• effective presentations: on paper and in person
  
• interface design
  
• use of PowerPoint, video, overheads, and handouts
  
• multi-media, internet, and websites
  
• credibility of presentations animation and scientific visualizations
  
• many practical examples

It should definitely be a day of fascinating study, and I encourage anyone who is invovled in user interface design and/or user experience design to sign up for one of his courses.

So I ask the question, why are we still supporting this browser, 7 years later?

Everyone who is still using IE6 does so because we allow them to. We still add “degraded” support for the browser, we still make alternate stylesheets, we still make a ton of hacks that only work for the redheaded step browser. I dare you, tell me one time you said the word “happy” and “IE6″ in the same sentence! Enough is enough.

The Line in the Sand

I am proposing we set a day to “turn off the lights” for IE6. Much like our government has decided that on a specific day, over-the-air analog broadcasting will go away. Why not do the same? That glorious day, everyone who supports the “lights out” concept, will actively limit IE6 users from accessing their sites and applications. Now, I am not saying lets just let things degrade and look unprofessional, I am saying turn it off completely. Its a rash move right? Does that potential user base you are shutting out scare you? Not really. It doesn’t scare me. Take a look at the global statistics for its use, we are talking about a very small minority of people. But it is still enough to count, and for some reason we still support this aged code.

How can we ever hope to as a community of engineers hope to better ourselves and the things people are using if we have to worry about this sort of legacy. There is nothing beautiful about what it takes to support even the simplest of CSS techniques in IE6, and it just doesn’t make sense for us to keep wasting important dollars on it.

Now, the irrational part of me says, as soon as I hit publish, I am going to block IE6 traffic from ever viewing my blog again. But lets face it, that is not a solution that is going to help people understand the reasons they need to move, nor is it going to make you as a person look very wise. I want to set a date far in advance for existing websites, and for all new and upcoming websites and services, already have it off. Lets say, 10 months from now? That gives us a long time to be able to warn and let people know that they need to upgrade or move to a different browser. I mean hell, by the time that 10 months is up, we should be seeing IE8 in the wild, isn’t that a good enough reason?

Ramifications

Okay, lets be more realistic, the only people who are really stuck with IE6 are the people suffering in cubicles run by IT departments that are either lazy, stuck with legacy issues, or just uneducated about the real reasons to upgrade their company.

Well to that I say, too bad. You have had 7 years to decide what to do about this problem, and I think its unfair for developers to have to pay the price. Why should be have to bastardize our software, and invest a large sum of our time and money into something that has not even been updated since 2004?

I am definitely impressed by companies like 37signals and Apple who are putting their foots down when it comes to their products. Don’t think of it as an exclusive, elitist club, but a very important reason to educate and explain to people (well in advance) why it actually hurts their experience of the web today to be stuck in the past. Going forward our company is going to be following this mantra, educate and upgrade. I am entering a market demographic that will most likely be stale and out of date, but I still say its unacceptable, we as the developers need to help people understand.

Am I crazy? How do you feel about it.

November marks an entire year of incorporated business for my company, Panoctagon. It has been an absolutely amazing ride, I wouldn’t trade any of the past experiences I’ve had for the world. I have worked with a lot of extremely talented people, I have learned and done a lot of things that have nothing to do with software engineering (which has been a lot of fun), and I can say we survived the first year.

We spent a lot of time honing our skills as a group, defining some pragmatic approaches to not only software but our business practices, and have become a pretty efficient group. I am happy about this.

So, what have we been doing? Today I am proud to announce the launch of our first software product, Happening. We have not officially released it into the wild yet, its still got some rough edges and polish that needs to be applied, but its nearly there. Happening is an event management and publishing solution for education. What do I mean by that? Technology in education often is crap. Talk to people who use it, they never have anything good to say about their tools. Ridiculous overhead, costs way too much, and requires a lot of hands on training.

We decided to build an affordable, easy to use, hosted service that attacks the age old problem of managing and communicating events for schools; event calendaring, if you will.

Happening is more than that, though. There are two very important markets for us, the first is the administrative people inside the institutions who have to do all the monotonous data entry, using the advances in technology that we in the consumer web take for granted, we hope to provide an unparalleled experience that is robust and intuitive. Might I also add, you won’t be needing weeks of training, that is our #1 goal. I spoke with a few different schools we are working with on this project and they all pretty much responded “how much training will you be offering us”, and I responded “I a product that hasn’t even been completed yet, is going to have a huge learning curve and weeks of training attached to it, we’ve failed”, and that has been our mantra, from day one.

Happening is not just about the administrators though, its also about the parents and students, and redefining how they interact with the event information that they care about. Happening is going to change the way parents and students consume event information through their schools, and I am excited to see how things changes things for them.

Lastly, I have to ask this, If you know someone who works for a school who might be interested in a service like ours, please feel free to contact me or forward me information to contact them. We are very excited about what we’ve been up to and want to get schools just as excited.

Also, I’d like to thank my team, our advisory board, and my family and friends for their continous support and advice. We would not have made it this far without you all, and I hope we can make this into something great for education.

Flashback, it definitely seems more cultish now, right?

Jon Stewart, take it away.

Comments are so turned off, I don’t want to even bother.

Heck of a speech though, eh? :)

Credit: here.

Well, it turns out, The good people over at Apple Core, LLC agree that these things were important and have created a nice utility for making these dreams a reality! Here are some of my favourite features:

• access AppleTV hard drive via FTP (woohoo!)
• ability to play DivX movies
• ability to surf the web with safari
• integration with IMDB
• integrates with iPhone “Remote” application seamlessly!
• does not void my warranty!

It was easily one of the best $50 I’ve spent in a while. It creates a nice bootable USB stick, just restart the device and go! It has also not conflicted in any way with the other core functions of AppleTV, and yes, it works with the very latest firmware (2.1).

If you have an AppleTV, I definitely recommend this upgrade.

Speaking of SmartMonth, I have a couple of cool optimizations I plan to make in the new week, so stay tuned if you are interested!

So what does it do? Basically, it makes date month values more meaningful by adding a new Month class that can do complex(ish) calculations against the days of the month for you. It also allows you to treat a Month as an enumerable container, allowing you to iterate through the days of the month like an array.

Lets peek at some example snippets:

Getting The First Tuesday of September 2009

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    Month.september(2009).first_tuesday #=> Date object
    Month.new(9,2009).first(:tuesday) #=> Date object

Getting Every Friday in August 2008

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    Month.august.every_friday #=> Array of Date objects
    Month.new("August").every(:friday) #=> Array of Date objects

Getting Every Thursday and Saturday in June 2007

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    Month.june(2007).every_thursday_and_saturday #=> Hash of Arrays of Date objects
    Month.new("June",2007).every(:thursday,:friday) #=> Hash of Arrays of Date objects

Getting The Last Monday in April 2005

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    Month.april(2005).last_monday #=> Date object
    Month.new("April",2005).last(:monday) #=> Date object

Enumerating Through the Month of August 2008

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   month = Time.now.month #=> Month object of the current time requested
   month.each do |day|
     day.to_s #=> Week day name ie: Saturday, Sunday, etc.
     day.to_i #=> Date value in context of the month ie: 1..31
   end

Other Odds and Ends

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  Month.april.size #=> total number of days in that month
  Month.august.next #=> returns a month object populated with August
  Time.now.month #=> returns the current month in context to the #now response
  Month[5] #=> May Month object access as array index
  Month[:april] #=> April month object access as hash key

So, as you can see, it saves a lot of time and calculations and keeps it easy for you to treat months as essentially a container! Really useful for doing complex calculations against dates.

If you would like to use my plugin, feel free, I’ve released it under MIT, and its located at my github account. Please give me some props if you do, or send me a line.

If you are interested in my rdoc documentation, check our company’s documentation server. Let me know what you guys think!

Lately, my company and I have been looking into the benefits of switching to Git for source code repository management. Its currently the new “hotness” of the hacker world, and with some of the claims that I’ve read, its pretty hard to ignore.

Linus Torvalds has made a few references to how much he hates tools like Subversion and CVS, and he has a lot of interesting reasons for feeling the way he does. I don’t agree with everything, but then again, I am not writing a kernel. Subversion has worked great for me and my team in the past, but we are definitely starting to envy some of the Git advantages.

Its indisputable that Git makes it unbelievably easy to branch and tag your repositories, hands down. The bigger and more integrated my codebase and team is getting, the more of crucial of a feature that is to us. Decentralization is not a big deal to me. Frankly, I never am really “off the grid”, so most times I just do git commit followed by a push.

Fortunately for us, Unfuddle supports Git now, so its easy for us to use our existing project management tool with this new technology, at no extra investment! But, I have to take a moment to say, GitHub is definitely pretty killer. Unfuddle’s support for Git is new and will improve over time, but I am very very impressed with how well GitHub has nailed the integration. The biggest reason for me to move (some) of my code to GitHub is for the public aspect of it. From this point forward, I will be posting my company and I’s open source contributions there. Mostly because Unfuddle doesn’t provide external access to projects in the same way, which is actually sort of strange in my opinion.

Maybe in the future I will be so inclined to product an Unfuddle-Git bridge to keep my repositories (edit: there is one already, why isn’t this a part of GitHub yet?!) synchronized, for projects I plan to open source. Overall, I am pretty happy with Git, I think my initial impressions of it were tainted by the “growing pains” I experienced while trying to get it to work with Unfuddle. Seriously, with GitHub I was up and running with the repo in under 2 minutes!

You can check out my repositories here. There is one project there now that I haven’t talked about too much yet, mostly because I just built and released it in the last 72 hours. More on that soon!

There was one startup in particular that really stood out to me as a product that is truly pushing the envelope, especially in a world of facebook++ mentaility when it comes to consumer internet products. That product was Apture. Apture is all about creating rich and interactive media linking. At first, I was like “wtf is that”, but their expertly-crafted powerpoint skillz made it very clear.

In essence, its a tool that allows you to make your links in your blog far more interesting, what do I mean by that? Well, since I have recently enabled my blog to use apture, via the wonderful wordpress plugin they provide after their 3 second sign up, let me show you. :)

It has all sorts of integrations with places and things that people use most often on the web, so for instance, if I were to tell you I live in Albany, CA, I could provide a simple little map right here on my page (click the link to see what I mean). Now, when you click on that link, you’ll notice a Google Map appears, I’ve also annotated that link with another link to a wikipedia article of my favourite local pizza place!

Cool or what? Now check this out.

Anyone who knows me knows that I love The Mars Volta and Radiohead, they are definitely my two favourite bands. Now, if you click on both of the band names, you can see the cool sorts of things that Apture does for you, with very little effort at all!

Really the only downside to this product is the centralization aspect, if their servers go down, so do my links :(

I am able to create these links on the fly, and make them as inter-connected as I choose! Apture is definitely one of the coolest web tools I’ve seen in a while and I encorage my fellow bloggers to try it out for themselves!

If you’ve been following my blog, and talking to me with any regularity, it is no suprise I quit the day job and started my own company almost 10 months ago now (wow). I am happy to report I am still standing, for the most part. It has been an absolute challenge in so many ways, and every single thing I’ve learned along the way have been important to put me on the road that I am heading towards now, at quite a rapid pace.

I’ve gone into business with my brother, and although we see eye to eye on many things, at times, we disagree, which I think is healthy. One of the things I heard somebody mention during the conference is “never go into business with family”. I have always wondered in the back of my head, did I do the right thing? After this past week, I really feel like I have. The reason why it works so well for me is knowing that no matter what sorts of fights and challenges we are faced with, at the end of the day we are still brothers, and we have a common, builtin respect and love for each other, which is not something every founder can say about their co-founder.

Its hard to imagine that we’ve been doing this for the last 10 months. We’ve seen growth, albeit modest, but still, growth nonetheless. We’ve been working with a close friend of mine in defining the first product my company will release by the end of the year, and we are all very very excited that its almost worth hearing about.

I’ve never believed in that whole “stealth mode” startup bullshit. In most cases, I’ve never made anyone sign an NDA to find out what I’m up to, quite the contrary. I am excited to tell people what we are doing, because I love to see what they think about it, ask them from their prospective, its very eye opening! The reason I don’t say a lot about what I am doing, even at this very moment, is because we are still forming the concept to be “widely consumable”. Until today, we didn’t even have a true name for the product, just a codename!

What I can say is, its not directly related to the consumer internet. No, I am not building the next Twitter, I am not building the next Facebook, and I am not changing the way people work with spreadsheets. I am doing something to help a market of people who, I feel, have been ignored in the rebirth of internet technologies.

Its a modest goal, I want to help people by giving them what they are asking for…its the true entrepreneurial spirit. Hopefully, in a couple more weeks, I will actually have a cohesive “pitch” thats worth telling people about, I am looking forward to that, very soon.

I’ve never played with OmniFocus before, and some people will call blasphemy right about now, but hear me out. The attraction to Things is its simplicity. It doesn’t get in your way with its opinion of how you should manage yourself, it just lets you tell it what you need to do, and its up to you to get crazy with it.

I love that! A tool that simply does what I want to do, the way I want to do it! CulturedCode, the company behind Things, has also released a fantastic Things iPhone app that brings the love on the road with you, awesome! It can’t sync with the desktop YET. Sync capabilities are coming within the next week, and I am very excited about that.

But I didn’t write this post to basically tell you why Things is so great, actually, quite the contrary. I think there are some big gaps in quality in Things, and I am hoping that CulturedCode hears me and maybe takes my thoughts into consideration. Maybe. :)

So, shall we begin?

Web Service Integration
What do I mean exactly? Look at a tool like Evernote. Seamless integration, your information is constantly synchronized. Not with ad-hoc wireless hacks, not with iPhone tethering, not with MobileMe, through good ol’ internets. Why would this be cool?

• Other applications could have access to your tasks! Think Basecamp or Highrise, How cool would it be if a third-party could synchronize too! Not just your Thing-suite.
• Centralized backup! If my computer tanks, or my iPhone is stolen, the data is off my hard drive and in the clouds. Speaking of clouds, how much could it possibly cost to support the userbase with S3? If all the data really is XML, how much space could each user take up, exponentially?
• Alternate, Service-based Revenue Stream! I’d GLADLY pay $10 a month to have this capability. No question, I wouldn’t even think twice about it, and I am sure I am not the only one who thinks that.

iPhone App: Include Proximity Capabilities
I have to say, this is a really neat feature of the OmniFocus iPhone app. It gives you your contexts based on how close you are around them, if you define a proximity (via address or something). I would love that!

iPhone App: Voice Notes
Sometimes the last thing I want to do is type on my little screen, I just want to take my “open loop” out of my head and make it go elsewhere, quick and easy! I know, this kind of thing gets dangerous when I talk about web integration, suddenly you’ve got larger file overheads, but compression algorithms can make this not a big deal, per se.

More In-Depth Syncing
What I mean by that is, if I “schedule” a task in Things for a specific day, or even a due-date. It should create a Calendar entry for me in iCal that corresponds. Obviously it has a concrete date (and sometimes a time), that is easily translatable to a calendar event.

That is all that is coming to me right now, really the biggest thing in my mind is web service integration. That would be killer, on so many levels. I really think thats the missing peice to this whole system, in my eyes…its also missing from OmniFocus (I think?).

Either way, Things is definitely worth taking a look at if you are into GTD, and have a mac.

Here is an excerpt that totally blew me away:

As the public CEO, I failed, and it was a very public failure. In fact, I was labeled one of the biggest failures ever. How bad was it? I had people laugh in my face when I introduced myself for years after the company closed. It happened as recently as a year ago. A couple of people asked me what it felt like to be one of the best-known failures in the U.S. Most just walked away from me. One woman told me to my face that I was a loser. I could go on and on, but you get the point: I became a symbol for something greater than myself, and we aren’t talking puppet envy here.

That is pretty intense. What a reputation (or lack thereof) to have in a very public way. Thinking about my company and our current growth and blessings, I can’t even imagine how she must have felt. Its almost a gamble, right? Entrepreneurs put themselves out there and really try to change the world in some way, and whichever way their scale tips, really does effect something much greater than themselves.

Julie has moved past her problems and has moved on to her new role as CEO for SmartNow.com. I’d like to take a moment to say congratulations to Julie Wainright for having a pretty amazing amount of determination to do better for herself, and I wish her the best in her new venture.

Congrats, Julie!

Here is a list of conferences I’ve been to and will be attending this year:

Start Conference (August 7th, 2008, $200)
This conference is located in San Fransisco, CA (at the fort mason center). Its all about Entrepreneurs and startup-y topics. Should be a lot of fun! Not too expensive either!

Start is a one-day conference in San Francisco designed for smart, talented Web people to take hold of their ideas, follow their dreams, and start their own companies.

You’ll hear from founders of successful startups, and learn from investors, lawyers, and others who can outline potential pitfalls. They’ll give you practical advice, tell their horror stories, and maybe lend you a little inspiration. If you’ve ever dreamt of taking the plunge, don’t miss this chance to hear from the experts!

Google IO (May 28th-29th, 2008, $400)
This was a fun concert. I am hoping my entire team will join me next time. I learned all about a ton of Google technologies, and even some more generic topics such as AJAX and web optimization techniques. This is a really fun conference (at the San Francisco Mascone Center) that will definitely be around next year…probably even bigger than the last! They treat you like you work for them while you are there, all meals free (and good), tons of candy (free), bean bags everywhere, pool tables, and an amazing after party (open bar) with video games and a concert by Flight of The Conchords…it was fantastic!

Google I/O is a developer gathering focused on pushing the boundaries of web applications using Google and open web technologies. Google engineers and web development leaders will lead you through two days full of in-depth breakout sessions on the latest technologies, hands-on Code Labs, and informal Q&A at Fireside Chats.

LinuxWorld (August 4th-7th, 2008, Free!)
The attraction for me to this conference is the free price tag. Its absolutely free to just walk the gigantic expo hall, which is always filled with free handouts, software, knowledge, and fun! One year I got to ride a mechanical bull that was running on a linux-powered USB stick, I won an iPod Shuffle for my efforts :).

Next year, I hope to attend either RailsConf 2009 and/or RubyConf 2009. I’d like to see how one of these goes, maybe…if I can swing it…a conference overseas? That would be fun! We’ll see.

As we began to do more work with clients and move into new areas of work, we started to rely on our phones a bit more. We also had run into the need to send and receive faxes more than I think we should (anyone heard of e-mail? :)). Basically, it became clear to us that we needed to figure out some sort of phone solution.

At first, I was hesitant to buy into the whole concept of VoIP, even though countless people had recommended it for startups. We don’t have the fastest internet, and our stupid router didn’t support QoS until very recently, so that was another big deterrent to the idea for me. Altough, I was not able to find a conventional phone service that I thought made decent fiscal sense…AT&T wants a pretty hefty commitment for even the simplest plans, I just wasn’t happy with the idea of it. And also, what about PBX type features? Extensions would be nice, how about voicemail? $$$

So, this was becoming a mess for me, once I decided to bite the bullet and find a VoIP provider, which ones are legit? Packet8? Vonage? (short answer, no). I happened to stumble upon a company named Aptela, and started looking into their features. Call trees, extensions, digital faxing (what a concept!), unified messaging, the whole gamut basically. For a very affordable price! We dove in and decided to give them a shot, its something like $60 bucks a month for everything mentioned above.

The system only works with IP phones, so we purchased a couple of $100 Polycom handsets, plugged them in, and suddenly…the stars had aligned and we had a working phone system! To be honest, I was completely amazed with how easy it was to setup, and how great it sounds, even while dowloading large files! (thank you, QoS). Aptela is a fantastic service, so far I have had absolutely no complaints. Everything is 100% web-based and works just fine on my mac, as it should.

So long story short, If you are looking for an affordable, solid VoIP solution, I recommend Aptela!