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Ruby on Rails 1.1 Released

Looks like Ruby on Rails 1.1 has been released, filling in some of the areas that I feel it needs covered in order to drive further adoption.

Rails is the framework upon which Basecamp is written- a framework that abstracts some of the "AJAX" approaches that have their following among developers. It remains to be seen how an AJAX, or ROR site can be made to perform well in search engines, since so much of their content is contained in modifiable DOM stuff.

Scott Raymond has a month-old page describing the many features available in Ruby on Rails 1.1, a rather technical read but if you're interested in this post you're probably going to grok the listing. I'm pretty impressed, especially with the new idea of using an entirely Ruby-based way of dynamically generating Javascript which is sent to the browser over AJAX calls. This is a technical way of saying "your web app can use Javascript  without you having to write any Javascript" in many cases.

I'm quite tempted now to take this for a test drive. Integration with Scriptaculous, a nice approach to dealing with databases, and a seemingly elegant separation of model, view, and controller make RoR an appealing package.

Apple's 30th Anniversary Approaches: Top 10 Guesses

We're just about two weeks away from April 1st, which this year is the 30th anniversary of Apple Computer. Knowing that Apple loves using auspicious occasions like anniversaries to launch new and exciting products, what might we encounter this year?

Since April 1st is a Saturday, it may be that they will make an announcement on the Friday before, or the Monday after.

Top 10 Guesses

Here are my top ten guesses, which are just that - guesses - and are in no particular order. Some of these are completely off the wall, yet almost plausible (a crucial ingredient in urban legends):

1. Intel-based iBook
2. "Asteroid" is released and we discover what it really is
3. iTunes Movie downloads
4. Video iPod with touchscreen interface
5. Apple Tablet or PDA
6. iPhone
7. Wireless iPod
8. FrontRow enhanced and packaged for separate purchase
9. Apple buys EyeTV/elgato
10. MacTV - Large LCD TV with Mac built in

Technorati Tags: apple, macintosh, itunes, ipod

Origami Update

Quick update to the previous post: Origami's price will probably range between $600-$1000, but Bill Gates believes that a $500 price point could be achieved with careful selection of components.  Yikes, I wonder what that could mean... how carefully do you select components to make something less expensive?

The battery life is to be something like 3-4 hours of use, so it's not too different from an efficient laptop. No huge advancements in power consumption or battery life were made with the UltraMobile PC, as had been rumored.

Still, I will likely be quite tempted when I see them on the store shelves.


Technorati Tags: origami tabletpc

Origami Revealed: The Ultra-Mobile PC

Here it is: the Origami Project from Microsoft has been unveiled, and it's pretty consistent with the rumors. It's similar to a Tablet PC except with a smaller, handheld form factor that's too big to be a pocket computer but a bit more compact and portable than a tablet. And it runs the full install of Windows XP, eventually to include Vista.

The MS site is light on details, but it gives two  models pictured on the page with the promise of more to come.  Powered by the Celeron M, we may one day see Linux running on these devices. They have decent hard drives, around 60 gigs, and USB connectivity as well as WiFi.

I have to admit that if the pricing is good, I may be tempted in spite of my preference for Mac OS X.




Technorati Tags: origami, winxp

Slashdot Incorporates Social Tagging

From the horse's mouth:

"We're going to build the next generation of moderation on top of tags. That means we're going to poach your namespace. Some tags will have a substantive effect on the system right from the start (or very soon). Our article tagger will know about tags like "dupe" or "typo". When we roll out tagging on comments, we will teach it "troll" and "informative". These tags can have a meaning in the system. And when you come up with ways of using tags that we haven't anticipated, we will bring them into the system.

Currently open only to Slashdot subscribers, these tags are apparently going to be observed closely for any emerging behaviours, which could be integrated in to the Slashdot system! Slashdot, perhaps due to its popularity, is subjected to frequent complaints about its moderation system. I personally find that in the right topics (i.e. non-flame topics) the moderation system is fairly robust. But to see where they take this, using tagging to influence and augment content moderation, will be pretty exciting.

CmrdTaco goes out of his way to spell out that this is highly experimental and he doesn't know what direction it will take. But he states in no uncertain terms that the tags will be used meaningfully, as opposed to other systems where anything goes.

The full blurb: http://slashdot.org/faq/tags.shtml