Blog

Having nothing more to say, here are some news worth notice:

• In the video world, BBC is opening is archive to UK public, and now you are able to download nearly 80 news reports (from the fall of the Berlin Wall to Tiananmen Square) and create something unique. Another great idea from BBC, like backstage;
• Still on the video world, it seems that Microsoft is helping Entertainment Group to deliver Vongo, a new movie download service that allows consumers to view full-length studio films, concerts and TV shows. The site is open only to Windows users and US customers, so you have to use a US open proxy to be able to access it (tip: I used this free proxy, 208.21.64.4 port 80);
• From ArsTechnica, GNU liberates VoIP with a new open source telephony stack. In my humble opinion, this could be the push needed for total interconnection between different VoIP providers: this could be the lingua franca for VoIP.
• A beautiful piece of technology, Retrievr, allows you to search for photos in Flickr by making a sketch of what you want. Really nice and well done;
• As everyone else, I'm waiting for AllPeers, a new Firefox plugin. This could lead to a all new P2P ball game. For now, you can take a peek to some screenshots here;
• And finally, transform your iPod\*, iPod mini or iPod nano into a full-fledged video recorder/player with the new iSee 360i. You have to see it to believe it.

I've just finished my first Ruby on Rails web application, and these baby rocks! It's true that you can develop 10 times faster, and it's so simple that you can do it from day one. What follows is a summary of my RoR investigation, from curiosity to my first working RoR web application.

I decided to study more deeply about Ruby on Rails some time ago, and now I had the chance. First, a visit to the official website, a jump to the screencasts section, and watched the screencasts. Seeing is believing, so you have to watch how to make a blog with RoR in 15 minutes (with installation), and how to make a filter for Flickr in 5 minutes (with CSS).

Next, some documentation, which I recommend reading it in the following order:

• Rolling with Ruby on Rails, part I
• Rolling with Ruby on Rails, part II
• Really getting started with Rails
• Four days on Rails

After these, I was really excited, to I just had to try it for myself. I have a Mac, and I was not willing to compile anything, so I started looking for a no frills package. Found one, Locomotive. Ok, free download, one application, double click and its on. Locomotive is integrated with TextMate, so I decided to extend a little further my investigation and also try it. A trial download, one application, double click, no frills. By the way, TextMate looks promising (more in some days).

Opened a terminal window (tip: open it from Locomotive, it will take care of all the environment variables for you), create a dummy database with sqlite (comes with Locomotive), did some script/generate scaffold xpto, edited some files, and voila, my first web application in RoR.

It's really easy to program in RoR, and still maintain a lot of power. It's a very well organized framework, clean and helpful. And if you are sick of doing always the same things, do yourself a favor and take a couple of hours to try it.

Everybody is trying to make a list of important things for 2005. Well, I was to, but decided to simply label it the “2.0 year”. New business models are building from the peer-to-peer social model found in the net, and from the ability to explore the long tail of the market. In the first, digg became bigger then Slashdot, del.icio.us was bought by Yahoo, and wikipedia and folksonomy became part of our lexical.

On the second, iTunes Music Store proved to be a huge business success, eBay paid several billions to have Skype, and everyone is trying to take a piece of the AdSense pie. Maybe the best presentation summarizing all this, was made by Brandon Schauer, check is sources (in the PDF) for further reading.

But this year was also the year of Ajax, JavaScript frameworks and mashups. The web is now easier to use, easier to develop, and the API business model is growing rapidly, as stated by the growth of the mashup matrix. For an excellent example of a mashup, take a look at BlockRocker (GoogleMaps + Amazon + Craigslist).

Well, 2005 was a good year, hope 2006 be even better to everyone.

If you have difficulties sending big emails (up to 1 GB) try DropSend: it comes with an application for Mac & Windows.

Back to work, just to find out that I have +1600 feeds and +400 mails to read. Meanwhile, some news are to important to be kept unnoticed. Please the forgive me the lack of opinions, I'm running against the clock here:

• Yahoo bought del.icio.us, and is experimenting with behavioral ads;
• Skype launched is version 2.0 (now with video)
• Dion released is "The Best Web 2.0 software of 2005" list;
• Still in the Web 2.0 context, ZDNet has writes about new services and business models;
• And finally, after all the work I had with my calendar solution, Rui points out Chandler.