AmpliFeeder Preview
Mark Krynksy over at lifestreamblog.com has written a fantastic preview of my new open source lifestreaming platform: AmpliFeeder that pretty much sums the project up entirely. The plan is to get the self hosted version to release a quickly as possible with the other versions ( including the hosted version ) rolling out towards the summer.
Mark provided me with some invaluable feedback that has pushed the release back a little, but the app will be so much better for it. From a technical point of view, the initial release is 90% jQuery and only 10% ASP.NET so knocking out alternate platform versions will be a breeze. I’ll keep this site updated with developments as they break but if you want to contact me instantly I’m always on Twitter @jonpauldavies. Here are a few more exclusive screen shots of what is to come.
Dabbling With Ruby on Rails 2.0 + Other News
I did a massive amount of Ruby on Rails development when the first wave of Rails hype hit about 4 years ago for a project that required it. I enjoyed working with the framework but to be honest it didn’t knock me out. I’ve been toying with learning Django recently and thought I’d check out how it compared with Rails. The interesting thing that came out of my investigations is how much Rails and it’s ecosystem has changed.
Rails 2.0 is quite a different beast to the original rails and the amount of plugins and gems now available is simply amazing. It looks so good that it’s put me off Django and I’m investing quite a bit of time picking up rails again. Windows Rails used to be rubbish, but now we have E-Text Editor, a perfect clone of the popular Mac only TextMate – the Rails dev weapon of choice. I’ve also invested in the PeepCode library and can recommend it highly.
I’ve not been blogging much as I’ve been working hard on my new application, AmpliFeeder that I’m going to release as open source in the coming weeks.
This blog is moving too. I’m getting rid of Mosso as a hosting provider as the exchange rate and reliability problems are just making it impossible to continue with them. Mosso is cool in principal but has always failed to live up to expectations in my opinion. I’m moving it to Clook a host that seems to be highly regarded in the Wordpress arena. I’ll let you know how it pans out.
