El equipo Bell & Whistle. Falta uno más!

Ha llegado la hora. Bell & Whistle busca programador con dominio de iOS para formar parte de nuestro talentoso equipo. El candidato ideal es una persona curiosa, motivada, que le gusta trabajar en equipo. Se ofrecen excelentes condiciones de contratación y la oportunidad de desarrollo de carrera en una empresa que se encuentra en pleno crecimiento.

Específicamente, buscamos a alguien con experiencia de Objective-C y Cocoa. Idealmente, ya has publicado por lo menos una app en la tienda de iTunes. Como programador, estarás a cargo de cranear conceptos nuevos con los diseñadores tanto como los programadores. Podrás ser parte de los proyectos más inovadores y de un equipo que trabaja con clientes alrededor del mundo.

Priorizaremos aquellos perfiles que posean marcada iniciativa para resolver retos técnicos, y que sea creativo tanto como responsable.

Requisitos excluyentes:

• Alto conocimiento de programación en Objective-C y Cocoa
• Conocimiento del UIKit Framework
• Deseable conocimiento de Ruby o PHP
• Manejo de control de versiones, de preferencia Git
• Excelente capacidad para resolver problemas
• Deseable conocimiento de inglés

Ofrecemos:

Remuneración de acuerdo al nivel de conocimiento y un excelente ambiente laboral, que incluye horas flexibles.

Beneficios:

• 4 Semanas de vacaciones al año
• CTS
• AFP
• Seguro de salud
• Ingreso a planilla previa evaluación preliminar

Si te sientes identificado/a con el perfil envíanos tu CV indicando remuneración pretendida y links a ejemplos de tus proyectos: jobs@bell-n-whistle.com

Acerca de Bell & Whistle

Bell & Whistle es una agencia de diseño y desarrollo con oficinas en Nueva York y Lima. Nos orientamos al diseño y desarrollo de aplicaciones web y dispositivos móviles. Elegimos proyectos que de alguna manera nos presente retos nuevos, ideas innovadoras o que simplemente sean chéveres. Somos un equipo chico, con un rango muy amplio y mucha motivación para sacar adelante proyectos que rompan esquemas.

Los esperamos!

Priorizaremos aquellos perfiles que posean marcada iniciativa para resolver retos técnicos, y que sea creativo tanto como responsable.

Requisitos excluyentes:

-       Conocimiento avanzado de XHTML y CSS2
-       Experiencia en webs accesibles y usables
-       Conocimiento avanzado de Javascript y framework jQuery
-       Saber maquetar en HAML y entender fundamentos de programación
-       Manejo básico de Photoshop e Illustrator
-       Excelente capacidad para resolver problemas
-       Deseable conocimiento de inglés básico/intermedio
-       HTML5 y CSS3 es un plus

Ofrecemos:

Remuneración de acuerdo al nivel de conocimiento y un excelente ambiente laboral, que incluye horas flexibles.

Beneficios:

-       4 Semanas de vacaciones al año
-       CTS
-       AFP
-       Seguro de salud
-       Ingreso a planilla previa evaluación preliminar

Si te sientes identificado/a con el perfil envíanos tu CV indicando remuneración pretendida y links a ejemplos de tus proyectos: jobs@bell-n-whistle.com

Acerca de Bell & Whistle

Bell & Whistle es una agencia de diseño y desarrollo con oficinas en Nueva York y Lima. Nos orientamos al diseño y desarrollo de aplicaciones web y dispositivos móviles. Elegimos proyectos que de alguna manera nos presente retos nuevos, ideas innovadoras o que simplemente sean chéveres.  Somos un equipo chico, con un rango muy amplio y mucha motivación para sacar adelante proyectos que rompan esquemas.

Específicamente, buscamos a alguien con experiencia de Drupal y WordPress. Conocimiento de Magento sería un plus.

Priorizaremos aquellos perfiles que posean marcada iniciativa para resolver retos técnicos, y que sea creativo tanto como responsable.

Requisitos excluyentes:

-       Conocimiento de programación orientado a objetos
-       Alto conocimiento de PHP
-       Deseable conocimiento de UNIX, SQL, XML
-       Preferible conocimiento de algunos frameworks. Entre ellos: (Zend, OsCommerce)
-       Experiencia con MySQL, PostgresSQL
-       Manejo de control de versiones, de preferencia Git.
-       Excelente capacidad para resolver problemas
-       Deseable conocimiento de inglés básico/intermedio

Ofrecemos:

Remuneración de acuerdo al nivel de conocimiento y un excelente ambiente laboral, que incluye horas flexibles.

Beneficios:

-       4 Semanas de vacaciones al año
-       CTS
-       AFP
-       Seguro de salud
-       Ingreso a planilla previa evaluación preliminar

Si te sientes identificado/a con el perfil envíanos tu CV indicando remuneración pretendida y links a ejemplos de tus proyectos: jobs@bell-n-whistle.com

Acerca de Bell & Whistle

Bell & Whistle es una agencia de diseño y desarrollo con oficinas en Nueva York y Lima. Nos orientamos al diseño y desarrollo de aplicaciones web y dispositivos móviles. Elegimos proyectos que de alguna manera nos presente retos nuevos, ideas innovadoras o que simplemente sean chéveres.  Somos un equipo chico, con un rango muy amplio y mucha motivación para sacar adelante proyectos que rompan esquemas.

Previously I created a basic to-do application using Rails 3, so we’ll use this as our starting point. The application is on https://github.com/BellandWhistle/rails3-todo-app. In a future post I’ll show you how to create this by yourself, but for now my goal is to show you how to integrate rails with faye.

TO-DO App Review:

In this application you can create projects and tasks inside projects, with each task having a state like initial, in-progress, verify, done. The app uses ajax to create and update the tasks.

This app works fine for a single person but when several users try to use it at the same time, it’s not reliable. If I update a task, other people using the app won’t see my changes. They’ll be working with the wrong information. That’s where faye comes in. The idea is to subscribe people on the same project so they can see the changes other people make in real-time. So let’s do it!

Setting up the project:

$ git clone https://github.com/BellandWhistle/rails3-todo-app
$ bundle install
$ bundle exec rake db:create && db:migrate
$ bundle exec rake db:seed
$ bundle rails s

Go to http://localhost:3000/projects. There are some tasks (Things to check for rails 3.1) created in the initial state. If we change the state this will remove the current task and add it to the new state list.

Faye Installation:

Add faye to your Gemfile. It requires eventmachine, em-http-request, rack, thin and json, which should all be automatically installed.

gem 'faye', '0.6.1'

*Faye gem version 0.6.0 has a bug with Firefox, so I’d recommend using 0.5.5 until the 0.6.1 release. (Update: faye 0.6.1 was release on June 6th).

All Faye clients communicate with a central server that processes the request and sends the response to the subscribers.

Create a file faye.ru in root app:

require 'faye'
faye_server = Faye::RackAdapter.new(:mount => '/faye', :timeout => 45)

run faye_server

We’re using rack to run the faye server and mounting the application on /faye so it’s accessible through http://localhost:9292/faye to interact with the server if we run it (this will run on port 9292 by default).

$ bundle exec rackup faye.ru -s thin -E production

Finally, if you go to http://localhost:9292/faye.js you’ll be able to see the faye client script.

Using Faye on Rails:

Let’s use faye client on our views and add faye client on the application layout:

<head>
...
<%= javascript_include_tag 'http://localhost:9292/faye.js' %>
</head>

On projects/show.html.erb, create a new faye client pointing to the faye server and subscribe it to the project path.

<% javascript_tag do %>
  $(function() {
    var client = new Faye.Client('http://localhost:9292/faye');
    client.subscribe("<%= project_path(@project) %>", function(data) {
      // do stuff here when receives the data
    });
  });
<% end %>

When a user updates a task, we have 3 options:

1. Use faye client to update the other clients. If the operation doesn’t need to store data I’d recommend this option. In our case it’s essential to communicate with the other clients only when a successful operation happens so I’d probably use this option for a chat.

2. Send request to rails server and if the operation is success, create a faye client on the server and send the response to all the clients:

#Using Faye client on server

require 'eventmachine'

class TasksController < ApplicationController
  ...

  def update
  ...
    if @task.update_attributes(params[:task])
     client = Faye::Client.new('http://localhost:9292/faye')
     client.publish(project_path(@project), 'text' => 'Update html view!')
    else
     #show errors
    end
    ...
  end

  ...
end

But this approach has a problem, it requires eventmachine for subscribe and publish. In this case I don’t see the need to publish async. But the advantage is that if the connection fails it will try to send the request again.

3. Use HTTP interface to post messages. I like this solution because in our case we are not subscribing (in the server) so we don’t need async to publish, we just have to make a post.

#Using Faye HTTP interface

def update
  @task = Task.find(params[:id])
  if @task.update_attributes(params[:task])
    message = {:channel => project_path(@task.project), :data => { :task_id => @task.id, :task_state => @task.state}}
    uri = URI.parse("http://localhost:9292/faye")
    Net::HTTP.post_form(uri, :message => message.to_json)
  end
  render :nothing => true
end

And handle the data on the view:

<% javascript_tag do %>
  $(function() {
    var client = new Faye.Client('http://localhost:9292/faye');
    client.subscribe("<%= project_path(@project) %>", function(data) {
      var task_view = $('#task-'+ data.task_id).remove();
      $('#'+ data.task_state + '-tasks').append(task_view).fadeIn();
    });
  });
<% end %>

Authentication: One thing to keep in mind is that our current application is not safe because any person can make a post to our channel. We need to add an extension to protect against this. If you want to take a look to extensions, visit the Faye site or look Ryan Bate’s screencast about faye.

You can download the whole project here: https://github.com/BellandWhistle/rails3-faye-example

That’s it! It’s really easy to use faye to communicate with other clients, so give it a try and let us know how it goes in the comments.

Created by Seth Goldstein and Billy Chasen, Turntable is still in a private alpha, so you can only log in if you have a Facebook friend already logged into the application.

It’s a fun mix of SHOUTcast + Chat + Sharing Tools. And the GUI, OH MY!! Adorable. You get to pick a cute avatar from a variety of options, but some of them are locked until you collect enough points to select them. To collect the coveted points, listeners have to like the song you are playing in any given ‘room’. If a lot of the listeners don’t like your song, it gets skipped. Great, democratic approach to music selection.

I really like the graphic details of the interface. The speakers bounce while the music is playing, the laptops showcase your computer’s OS, and the lighting in the graphics is pitch-perfect. They really nailed it. I just love it.

They use @font-face for the name of the song and artist, if the name of the song is too long, it scrolls like a marquee, and you know what? THAT’S THE BEST MARQUEE I’ve seen in a long, long time (and on a website that doesn’t suck.)

The one thing I will say is, it’d be really nice if there were more ways for users to win points. Users should be able to win some massive points for getting friends to join, or maybe just a couple points if they play good songs on the site for a few days in a row. Right now it seems like a very one-dimensional system, but hey! it is is a private alpha, so I get it.

I’m sure the project will evolve and become even more fun in the near future, but so far, SO GOOD!

And if you have another minute, could you please tell us what it might take for a famous person to talk at a school with slightly less pedigree?

The Ever-Delightful, Amy Poehler at Harvard

The Deeply Personal, Denzel Washington at UPenn

The Surprisingly Tech-Savvy, Tom Hanks at Yale

The Sound Sage, Bill Clinton at NYU

After months of being swamped with client projects, we finally got our act together long enough to launch our company site. I for one am most excited about the part where I will no longer have to come up with lame explanations for why we, a digital agency dedicated to building complex platforms, didn’t have even the simplest portfolio site up. No more pdf’ing work samples, quoting adages like “You know, the cobbler’s children…”, or hoping that no one would actually arrive at our bare splash page.

But here we are. Thursday May 19th, 2011, launching this site. We have detailed plans to keep it up to date with our latest projects, insights and diversions. Additionally, we’ll be tapping incredible, creative and bright minds to contribute on a regular basis. (If you would like to learn more about contributing, drop us a line.)

We would absolutely love to hear your thoughts, feedback, suggestions, praise, etc. It’s been a long time coming and we hope it is worth the wait.