rails-konferenz.de is a one-day German Rails conference taking place at the NH Hotel in Frankfurt am Main on November 3rd. They have sessions on localization, testing, backgroundrb, and more.
If you speak German and have Frankfurt within reach, you should check it out.
John Nunemaker wrote to tell me that the University of Notre Dame has picked up Ruby on Rails and is using it for their forum site. About the implementation, he writes:
The live webcast area is using rjs and such to capture live notes taken by viewers and update live photos from flickr without interrupting the stream of the video. The site takes advantage of Rails page caching and has a small admin area which updates the various sections of the site.
Cool stuff! Have you seen Rails in use in academia elsewhere? Tell your story in the comments.
After getting all inspired by Kathy Sierra’s keynote at the RailsConf last week, and reflecting on the requests I’ve received for a Capistrano-specific mailing list, I decided it was time to do something about it.
(Btw, you can read more about Capistrano in the manual.)
So, I started a mailing list for Capistrano. Currently, it is intended for any and all discussion related to Capistrano—sharing recipe files, relating success (or horror!) stories, posting patches, discussing tips and techniques, etc. So if you use Capistrano, or want to be using Capistrano, go ahead and sign up! You can join by sending an email to capistrano-subscribe@googlegroups.com, or by using the Google Groups web interface at http://groups.google.com/group/capistrano.
Let the good times roll!
After months and months of deliciously teasing screenshots, the real deal is now out for the world to see. The official Ruby language website has been redesigned. And what a wonderful design it is. Congratulations to the visual identity team and the contributors. It’s truly a work to be proud of.
RailsConf Europe is imminent. Come next Thursday and hundreds of Rails programmers will descend on London for two days of talks, tricks, and perhaps a pony show.
Despite an initially slower opening (compared to the 1 week sell-out madness of the Chicago fair!), RailsConf Europe has indeed managed to sell out the slated 300 seats and then some. All in all, I believe we’ll almost be pushing 400 people including speakers, staff, and all attendants. That’s pretty fantastic!
I’m especially pleased to see the final schedule too. Mostly because it looks very little like the Chicago one. We have different headliners like Kathy Sierra and Jim Weirich and the individual sessions are also completely their own. It’s great that we’ve been able to fill no less than four tracks with excellent content.
So a big thanks and congratulations to all who decided to go. I’m sure we’re going to have one heck of a show.
Crazy Egg lets you find out which links are popular on your page and presents the information in easy-to-understand heat maps. It’s incredibly well designed and a fantastic idea.
At 37signals, we’ve already picked up on a few themes of usage that’ll change the design on some of our signup pages.
There’s lots to love about Crazy Egg. They don’t call their initial release Beta, they dare charge real money for their product, and they offer a very simple product that’s just really darn useful.
Oh, and it’s all done with Rails. Crazy. Egg!
Tim Bray has announced that Sun Microsystems has hired Charles Nutter and Thomas Enebo, the developers behind JRuby. Tim’s announcement has a FAQ that probably answers many of the questions you have. My favorite bit:
Is Sun responding to hype? Yes, if by “hype” you mean a genuine groundswell of interest in the developer community.
Congratulations to Charles, Thomas and Tim. It’s exciting to see Sun supporting this project, and it will be interesting to see what they produce.
Adobe’s Mike Potter brings the cherry news that an officially-backed Rails SDK for Flex and the rest of the company’s RIA suite is now available.
Derek Wischusen from Flex on Rails gives us the scoop on its content:
Currently, the SDK contains a sample demonstrating: (1) Intergrating with a database, basic CRUD, and rails migrations. (2) Uploading and downloading files. (3) Downloading data directly from Flex and sending data to a new browser window directly from Flex. (4) a simple Directory Explorer. The last sample uses WebORB for integrating Flex with Rails.
Great news. Flash is on the fast track out its ghetto image and its exciting to see Adobe care about integration with the world around it.
Chris Wanstrath has a very nice detailed article on how to control and use sessions. Lean how to turn them on and off and which stores are good for what.
LiteSpeed Web Server is a commercial product that offers a free version for private and commercial use. With release 2.2, LiteSpeed Technologies has embraced the Rails community and provided built-in support for deploying Rails Applications.
According to their website, they are “the world’s best performing Ruby SAPI and easiest Ruby on Rails application setup”. I put their claims to a test in a couple of screencasts for your viewing pleasure.
If you haven’t checked out LiteSpeed yet, give it a try.