I’ll be playing around with various bits and pieces including mobile ajax and probably some Python for S60. I’ll blog any useful tips I can, although some of the details of the code will have to remain confidential for now.

Perhaps this will be the kick that finally give this blog some direction.

Technorati tags: hobo, rails, rubyonrails

Just what is Capistrano? * A deployment environment * Borrows heavily from rake * But much more * Just released v1.2 this morning

New features * Restricting scope via HOSTS and ROLES * The invoke task * The shell task - highly experimental

capistrano-ext * watch_load * uptime

Other improvements * Connecting in parallel * Support for pid-based spawner/reaper setups * setup, update_code, rollback_code work on all servers * :except clause to mirror :only

Technorati tags: railsconf, railsconfeurope, railsconfeurope2006, capistrano, rubyonrails, jamisbuck

How to build a RAGI app: * Install the gem * Add a ‘handlers’ directory * Create an AGI server * Flush (flesh?) out the handler * Configure Asterisk to call the AGI * Run Asterisk and Rails

What can I do? * Make and receive calls * Play sounds: DTMF tones and audio files * Connect to conference calls - connect third parties together * Get channel information * Get user input: DTMF, audio recording * Set Asterisk session variables * Record stuff * Audio ‘helpers’ - TTS using Festival * Set caller id * Put them on hold - use music or other sound, avoid dead air * Run Asterisk functions (’applications’)

RAI - Where we are going * It’s a fork of RAGI * Voice is just another format, uses responds_to * Session bridges between web and phone

Lots to do * Debugging * Test library for AGI/Telphony * Build out the call control DSL * Move the templates to the view (from the controller)

http://rai.idapted.com

VoIP providers will usually allow you to set the caller id, BT may require an undertaking.

In the UK you can send SMS over land lines via SS7.

RAGI has VC funding and wants to be the MySpace of telephony.

Technorati tags: railsconf, railsconfeurope, railsconfeurope2006, asterisk, rubyonrails, ragi, rai

• If you saw a man drowning and you could either save him or photograph the event… how would you tag it in flickr?

• Not rational

• Help users have a higher resolution experience

• It’s not about the tools, its about what users do with them.

• Nikon website is all about taking better pictures, the user manual is all about battery. Cf. glossy brochure v. b&w user manual.

• Legacy brain

  • it thinks your still living in a cave
  • it has a crap filter
  • chemistry: fear, sex, babies, puppies, faces

• Conversational beats formal - increase retention, recall and ability to problem solve with what you learn by up to 40%.

• Talk to the brain not the mind

• Compelling picture

• Clear path

• Easy first step

• Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

• Don’t break the flow

• Don’t Make Me Think!, Steve Krug

• Make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard

• UX Spiral: … Motivating benefit -> Interaction -> Payoff -> …

• The more they understand the less they need to memorise.

• Community - people with a passion want to connect and connecting builds passion.

• Be nice. There are no dumb questions, and no dumb answers.

• T-shirt first development

• Our brains are wired for stories… especially stories about people

Technorati tags: railsconf, railsconfeurope, railsconfeurope2006, kathysierra, uxd

9:40 DHH * Slides in textmate

• Rails 1.2 as beta gem today
• Dependency changes
• Big change in routing - should mean “the incident” won’t happen again
• Last major 1.x release

• Lots of deprecations - ready for 2.0

• SimplyRestful

• Full set of HTTP verbs
• Be good web citizens
• The big change is to allow us to focus on bigger issues
• Conventions for controllers:

    map.resources :posts do |p|
      p.resources :comments
    end

• New scaffolder (not shiny like Streamline, still hideously ugly by design) supplement not a replacement for old scaffold
  • $ ./script/generate resources_scaffold posts
  • produces a controller, a model and a migration for the model

    # GET /posts
    def index
    
    # GET /posts/1
    def show
    
    # GET /posts/1;edit
    def edit
    
    # POST /posts
    def create
    
    # PUT /posts/1
    def update
    
    # DELETE /posts/1
    def destroy

• out of the box scaffoldding will work with xml as well as html, just stick an .xml on the url
• Posts.xml returns <posts><post>…</post><post>…</post></posts> [Shame it’s not RSS/Atom :-(]
• ActiveResource builds on top of HTTP like ActiveRecord builds on DB. Class is singular url is plural. All your models are exposed as a RESTful API.
• Use .xml on POSTS to, use responds_to.

• ActiveResource is not shipping with 1.2, available as an external gem, it may ship with 2.0. Using it at CD Baby.

• SimplyHelpful - views by convention, available as a plugin now

    <div class="post" id="post_45">...

becomes

    <% div_for(@post) do %>...

and similarly for page[...], partials, form_for etc.

* Will be in Rails 2.0 * New functionality should be developed as a plugin first, rather than patches against the trunk.

Technorati tags: railsconf, railsconfeurope, railsconfeurope2006, DHH, rubyonrails, rubyonrails1.2, rubyonrails2.0

Looking into open sourcing the code. Agreement in principle.

Launch likely to be around a low-profile factual program. BBC Single sign on will be required to contribute.

He has built some prototype interfaces in proce55ing:

• textual tags scaled to segments
• plus ‘most interesting’ photo from Flickr for each tag

Also little Odeo-ish Flash widget for syndication - but some people are unhappy with hosting BBC content offsite, due to concerns about lack of control over the context in which it is presented.

Will post his slides on his blog.

Technorati tags: xtech, audio, radio, bbc, tagging