How to Start a Two-Bit Operation: Small Business Tips » Ruby http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog From start to small business. Learn and live vicariously. Sat, 24 Apr 2010 16:22:43 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Competition is a good thing – keep track of it http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/competition-is-a-good-thing-keep-track-of-it/ http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/competition-is-a-good-thing-keep-track-of-it/#comments Thu, 05 Oct 2006 15:49:49 +0000 Justin http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/2006/10/05/competition-is-a-good-thing-keep-track-of-it/ I just saw this free tool called Competitious on TechCrunch and it looks like it might be pretty handy for anyone looking to keep tabs on their competitors.  It’s pretty simple, but it’s probably a good start for most people.  Before this, we’ve been using a variety of spreadsheets offline and online (google spreadsheets), RSS feeds and sporadic browsing.  Competitious basically tries to consolidate those activities into a nice slick (ajax-ified) interface.  It’s free to signup and use and you can create multiple projects and invite people to have access to your project.  Here are some of the core features:

  • Track news clippings and blog posts about all the competitors in a project
  • Get a username/password protected RSS feed of the news (this gave me an error when I tried it but I’m sure it’ll get fixed soon)
  • Create features and feature groups and view how all the competitors stack up on a big competitive matrix
  • View basic traffic data and stats from alexa for each and compare them graphically (via alexaholic)
  • Collaborate through commenting and "clipping" news stories into comments

If you’re curious, like Menuism, it’s built on Ruby on Rails.  Check it out.

- Justin

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]]> http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/competition-is-a-good-thing-keep-track-of-it/feed/ 1 The Ruby on Rails bible, version 2 http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/the-ruby-on-rails-bible-version-2/ http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/the-ruby-on-rails-bible-version-2/#comments Sun, 07 May 2006 03:30:25 +0000 john http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/2006/05/07/the-ruby-on-rails-bible-version-2/ Just a heads-up that a new version of Agile Web Development With Rails has been released as a beta. If you have even the slightest interest in playing with Rails, you should get this book because it’s got all the info you’ll need to get off to a great start. We’ve had copies of the first version since we started coding and they’re now extremely worn out from all the abuse (or love, depending on your perspective). The new version covers all the great features added to Rails in the latest 1.1 release, including:

  • RJS – ridiculously simple updating of multiple page elements from a single AJAX request
  • migrations – a simple way to allow incremental updating of your database without disturbing the rest of your app
  • Capistrano – a fantastic utility for one-click deployment of your changes to your production server(s)
  • RESTful interfaces

We definitely plan to check out this latest version; you should too. :)

-JL

]]> http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/the-ruby-on-rails-bible-version-2/feed/ 1 The cat’s (halfway) out of the bag… http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/the-cats-halfway-out-of-the-bag/ http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/the-cats-halfway-out-of-the-bag/#comments Thu, 04 May 2006 07:32:29 +0000 john http://twobitoperation.com/blog/2006/05/04/the-cats-halfway-out-of-the-bag/ And her name is Ruby. Ruby on Rails, to be exact. After “working” now for a few months in near total secrecy, it’s time we shared some of the technical details of how we spend most of our time. We’re still not ready to share what exactly we are doing, but we want to be able to discuss how we are doing it. And a large part of the how is Ruby on Rails.

What is Ruby on Rails? Ruby is an interpreted, object-oriented programming language, and Rails refers to the web development framework that DHH and others at 37 Signals extracted from their Basecamp product. Ruby is a simple-to-learn, yet powerfully expressive and flexible language that can lead to really elegant (or really ugly) code. Combine this with Rails, which provides a very supportive MVC architecture, and you have a fantastic starting point for building any sort of web application in a short amount of time.

Since Justin and I had only minimal experience in building websites, we wanted to go with a technology that was easy to learn and be productive with, and had a large community of users from which we could get a lot of support. Ruby on Rails fit that bill, and we couldn’t be more happy with our choice. Along with many helpful websites, the following two books got us up and running quickly; I’d highly recommend them to anyone interested in Ruby on Rails:

So consider this fair warning; from now on we’ll be geeking out occasionally with Ruby on Rails-specific issues and solutions that we encounter. Of course, the best way to follow along is to try it yourself. :)

-JL
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