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Interesting tidbits from around the web (September 8th):

• 10 Ways to Create a Better About Page for Your Blog – Making your about pages more useful
• iPhone App Dev Online Conference, brought to you by Think Vitamin – Think Vitamin is putting on a one day, online, iPhone Developer conference.
• State of the Art – Presenting the MiFi of Your Dreams – NYTimes.com – Third, the service price for this no-commitment, unlimited, portable hot spot is — are you sitting down? — $40 a month.<br />
  <br />
  via nytimes.com Wow. Who want's to buy my Verizon MiFi and take o …
• Ruby Summer of Code Wrap Up – Ninjas on a Penny Farthing – The final thing I worked on (and that is mostly complete, but still has a few bugs)<br />
  was an Ubuntu-based Virtual Appliance that makes it super simple for any user to get started<br />
  with rvm and h …
• One day sale made my paid app free, now I cannot revert! – Android Developers | Google Groups – Nothing — once free, always free. You can publish a new app, in a new package, that has a price.<br />
  <br />
  via groups.google.com Wow, sucks not to know this ahead of time. If you're an Android …
• Rails 3 in a Nutshell – rails3 in a nutshell in O'Reilly's "open feedback" publishing system.
• Sending or receiving email with Rails? Easy | Lead Thinking – Another "receive email from rails" solution. this one involving google app engine and remail-engine which costs ($0.0001/recipient w/ 2000 free).
• Receiving Incoming Email in Rails 3 – choosing the right approach « Steve @ DynamicEdge – A rundown of some options for receiving email in your Rails 3 app
• Cocoia Blog » iPhone 4 icon PSD file – PSD file for iPhone, iPad and the rest of the iOS suite, whatever that turns out to be.
• All the sizes of iOS app icons – Neven Mrgan’s tumbl – visual guide to iOS icons
• 12 Common CSS Mistakes Web Developers Make – css tips for web developers
• Design Optimization: Webbynode’s Front Page +45% conversion rates. | Vospe – via vospe.com Walkthrough of how Webbynode redesigned their front page to get a big boost in conversions. …
• GitMac – Git on a Mac, Made Easy – Another git gui client for mac, pretty but not sure what it brings that I'm not already getting with gitx
• MacUpdate September 2010 Bundle – 12 Great Apps for $49.99 – via mupromo.com Another MacUpdate bundle is out, 12 apps for $50. Looks like a no-brainer if you want Toast 10 Titanium (pays for itself and then some). Other good looking apps (to m …

Interesting tidbits from around the web (September 7th):

• stJhimy – Rails 3, Ruby and JQuery documentation into Mac OS Dictionary – via stjhimy.com updated osx dictionary files for rails 3, ruby and jquery. …
• Premium WordPress Themes | Elegant Themes – via elegantthemes.com Looks like another good, affordable source of wordpress themes. …
• Lone Star Ruby Conference 2010 Schedule – Confreaks, LLC – via confreaks.net Lots of "coming soon" videos, but they have a link to Glenn Vanderburg's "Real Software Engineering" that got a bunch of positive press on twitter during the ruby #ho …
• How I Used Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to Validate my Startup Idea | Ramblings of a Web Startup in Progress . . . – I am a big fan this whole “minimum viable product” philosophy. I’ve probably adapted it to my own interpretation, but basically I look at it as bootstrapping on crack, get your product out with …
• Google Wave Gets Server/Web Client – Linux Magazine Online – For everyone that thought Wave was in the ground, buried, there might be life yet. Wave in a box.
• UniversityTutor Races Past 200 Paying Customers – via startbreakingfree.com Brian share's his 2 year journey to more than 200 paying customers for his SaaS app. …
• Slaying dragons with git, bash, and ruby – Ruby Pond – An often over-looked feature when using git are the various hooks you have available. They cover pre-applypatch, post-update, and anything between or beyond. I suspect a lot of people may have …
• How to Make Client-Converting Pages That Sell | Jaime Mintun – via jaimemintun.com Tips on how to make a good landing page. …

In our latest series on BDDCasts we’ve taken a real world application, URLAgg and upgraded it from Rails 2.3.5 to Rails 3 (RC2, though we’ll trim the RC2 off to make sure everything still works soon).

I think it’s an interesting series because we take a non-trivial application, one that relies on quite a few external resources (gems and plugins), is well covered with specs and features and represents a realistic scenario for the upgrade.

The series looks like this:

• Move to bundler (we’ll face this in Rails 3, so lets make it work in Rails 2.3)
• Upgrade to Rails 3 and just get the console and server to run
• Get the specs to pass, part 1 and part 2.
• We made some bundler mistakes, we correct them here.
• Get the features to pass, part 1 and part 2.
• Move to AREL (published soon)

So what about the new format?

Producing screencasts is hard. If you don’t think it is, try to do one or two. Then have someone else watch them and give you honest feedback. It’s hard. I have a profound respect for Ryan Bates. As of the end of August 2010 he’s released 229 Railscasts and I don’t think he’s ever missed a week.

Istvan and I pair program on 99% of the screencasts we do right now. So we’re coordinating schedules across a seven hour time difference and post production involves at least 2 audio streams. Not to mention we block out a 2 hour time period to record and our episodes end up being epically long.

Moving forward we’re going to switch our format to include:

• Weekly short screencasts, 5-15 minutes, and focus on specific tools, tips and very narrow topics.
• Monthly longer screencasts that cover more complicated topics or pull together some of the shorter topics into a more complete example.

If you have specific topics you’d like us to cover, let us know. You can follow @bddcasts, @jschoolcraft and @ihoka for updates.

Interesting tidbits from around the web (August 28th):

• phronos’s rails_datatables at master – GitHub – Rails plugin for the jQuery Datatables library, makes life easier
• jQuery Sparklines – sparklines, coming to a page near you compliments of this jQuery plugin
• The Art of Momentum: Why Your Ideas Need Speed :: Tips :: The 99 Percent – When we lose momentum, we become vulnerable to distraction, self-doubt, and apathy. A look at how constant motion is crucial to idea execution.
• DataTables (table plug-in for jQuery) – pretty nice "data table" plugin in jQuery.

Interesting tidbits from around the web (August 21st):

• iPhone SDK Examples – iPhone SDK Example Code
• Twitter Streaming API + node.js + Appcelerator Titanium = Real-time tweet map – the appcelerator firehose (twitter streaming & node.js)
• Installing App Files with Appcelerator Titanium – persistence solutions with appcelerator titanium
• Making a combo-box in Titanium Appcelerator – code and video | cssgallery.info –
• Custom row for TableView in Appcelerator Titanium | cssgallery.info –
• Seven days with Titanium – day 2 – tables and pickers | cssgallery.info – titanium tables and pickers
• Seven days with Titanium – day 1 – windows, views, navigation and tabs | cssgallery.info – a look at titanium appcelerator's windows, views, navigation and tabs
• Appcelerator View RSS Feed | Two App Guys – quick rss reader tutorial using appcelerator titanium
• Devise 1.1 is out and ready to rock with Rails 3 | Plataforma Tecnologia Blog – why devise 1.1 will rock your rails 3 auths
• Yes, but who said they’d actually BUY the damn thing? – If you can't find ten people who say they'll buy it, your company is bullshit.
• Techneur – The Startup Idea Filter – idea a.d.d.
• CoffeeScript – javascript generator
• Underscore.js – Underscore is a utility-belt library for JavaScript that provides a lot of the functional programming support that you would expect in Prototype.js (or Ruby), but without extending any of the built-in JavaScript objects. It's the tie to go along with jQuery's tux.
• Where Do You Find Your Clients? – freelance switch poll asking you where you find your clients. tl;dr => word of mouth is the lion's share answer

Interesting tidbits from around the web (August 20th):

• Doing the Little Things to Please Clients | FreelanceFolder – the little things you can do to please clients, and stand out from the rest
• visionmedia’s git-extras at master – GitHub – GIT utilities — repo summary, commit counting, repl, changelog population and more
• github’s gollum at master – GitHub – github's making their git based wiki available
• 5 Site Metrics Every Small Business Should Track : Technology :: American Express OPEN Forum – 5 metrics I should be tracking with google analytics.
• My friend the Rails console – Part II « Silence is Foo – more fun with the rails console
• 36 Things You Can Get Your Virtual Assistants To Do For You To Make Your Life Easier. | JoelsNews.com – another list of things you can get your VA to do
• Using a Client Welcome Packet to Get Off on the Right Foot – also heard of this as client on-boarding, this post even has a list of things you might want to include
• ku’s CreateLink at master – GitHub – chrome alternative to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2617/
• fortuity’s rails3-subdomain-devise at master – GitHub – An example Rails 3 app with subdomains and authentication (using Devise). With a tutorial.
• Skinny daemons | Head Labs – daemonized ruby process inside thin webserver
• Integration Testing Resque with Cucumber –
• Why aren’t you using git-flow? – Jeff Kreeftmeijer – git-flow. new to me.
• Just What Developers Need to Know | Use The Index, Luke! – Database performance for developers
• Email Sucks. 5 Time Saving Tips. – picked up on lifehacker, there's an interesting way to cull unknown yet still important email from the rest (email bankruptcy)
• Thinking in jQuery id-itis – first comes div-itis then comes id-itis? how to tame id-itis…
• 10 Common Mistakes Made by API Providers – ReadWriteCloud – interesting list of mistakes for API providers to watch out for
• Why Social Media Monitoring Tools Are About to Get Smarter – Mashable's take on what's next from social media monitoring tools
• Styling Buttons and Toolbars with the jQuery UI CSS Framework | Filament Group, Inc., Boston, MA – Button and toolbar styling with jQuery UI CSS Framework.

Interesting tidbits from around the web (August 11th):

• Cloudkick | Cloud monitoring and management tools – cloud monitoring and management saas
• Setting up a Hudson Continuous Integration Testing Server for Ruby(and Rails) | Tommy Chheng – quick walk through on setting up hudson ci server for rails
• AdGrok | Search engine marketing for the masses. – guided search engine marketing as a service
• How persuasive is your website’s copy? A simple, five-step checklist | Design Shack – some ideas on making your site copy more persuasive
• The Zero Dollar, 5 Minutes Market Research – Marc-André Cournoyer’s blog – quick tip for finding new business ideas

Interesting tidbits from around the web (August 9th):

• The Effective Marketing Plan, Part II: Target Market Analysis | The Netsetter – part 2 in the Effective Marketing Plan series
• Google Apps OpenID with Rails and Devise – casperfabricius.com – extending devise to allow google apps accounts to log in to your rails app
• Community Supported Agriculture – LocalHarvest – might be too late to get started with a CSA near me this year, but I'll definitely check out later harvests/next year.
• The Effective Marketing Plan, Part I: Your Marketing Plan Outline | The Netsetter – part 1 in a series on creating a marketing plan
• PHP, Javascript, ASP.NET and Java – CodeCanyon – css and code snippets, sister site to themeforest.net

Interesting tidbits from around the web (August 8th):

• Securing Memcache in 2 Minutes – On the Path – Some advice on securing memcache
• astrails’s dotvim at master – GitHub – vim configuration options and plugins specifically tailored for Rails development Chris mentioned in his TM -> vim article.
• The Great Vim / TextMate Debate: Opinion #56 – Chris Lewis – more from the switch from TextMate to vim camp. Chris has some suggestions to make life easier for switchers.

Interesting tidbits from around the web (August 6th):

• Son of Grok » Blog Archive » (Almost) Primal Poppers – everything is better with bacon
• olauzon’s tempatra at master – GitHub – A Sinatra application generator providing Blueprint CSS, jQuery, Haml, Sass, Compass, RSpec, Cucumber, and Capybara.
• WeeChat, the extensible chat client – another text based irc client, feels a bit like irssi
• Upstack – Products – Looks like another crowd sourced design platform.
• Auto-scale your Resque workers on Heroku | Verbose Logging – interesting post on how to get resque to auto-scale workers and how to get it all working on heroku
• Redis To Go | Resque with Redis To Go – Setting up resque with redis to go
• Komodo Media » Blog Archive » Social Network Icon Pack – huge set of social networking/media icons.
• matej’s MBProgressHUD at master – GitHub – MBProgressHUD is an iPhone drop-in class that displays a translucent HUD with a progress indicator and some optional labels while work is being done in a background thread. The HUD is meant as a replacement for the undocumented, private UIKit UIProgressHUD with some additional features.