The Napkin ~ A Blog By Highgroove Studios

Highgroovers are fans of Sinatra

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 10:30:00 EST

Both James Edward Gray II and Matt Todd were quoted in Satish Talim of Ruby Learning’s Poll: 20+ Rubyists are using Sinatra – Do You?

Sinatra is a Ruby framework for quickly creating web applications with minimal effort—a DSL for the web. We use Sinatra for several client projects, and it is also an integral part of Scout.

Check out Sinatra Documenation
Learn more about how Scout uses Sinatra

Scout Goes Deep! and Robust! and More!

Tue, 26 May 2009 23:21:00 EST

Scout got a major facelift today, to show off all the new features we’ve launched over the past few months.

To learn more about many of the new features, including:

Deep Rails Instrumentation
Triggers and Trends
The New Daemon-based, Robust Agent
The Improved, Easier API and Developer Resources
and our new Pricing Model

head on over to the Scout Blog to read all about it.

Now with deep Rails Instrumentation, triggers, a more robust agent, and more

Rails Marketecture Diagram

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:56:00 EST

I’ve updated my course material for the class I’m teaching at the Big Nerd Ranch next week. We’re teaching Ruby and Ruby on Rails in a 7-day, intensive course for those new to programming and those who want an in-depth exposure to Ruby before diving into Rails.

I wanted to share this diagram I made for the new Rails 2.3.2 architecture—a mix between Marketing material and Architecture diagram that I’m calling a “Marketecture” diagram:

In addition to talking about Rails’ semi-new focus on RESTful controllers, there’s even a section on Test-Driven Development with Rails with the new TestCase libraries.

Highgroove's Lessons from the Road

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:23:00 EST

Derek and Andre learned a thing or two about sponsoring and presenting Scout at the Golden Gate Ruby Conference this weekend.

Being a product owner ourselves (and developers on many web-based products for lots of companies), we know that the marketing and sales side of a product is half the battle.

Read Lessons from our First Tech Conference and vote +1 in the comments if you think Derek could stunt double for the ShamWow guy.

ProPublica Launches Eye on the Bailout

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 23:05:00 EST

ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.

Yesterday, NPR’s Marketplace aired a segment featuring their “Eye on the Bailout”—a Ruby on Rails application to track the $1.1 trillion taxpayer-funded bailout. Behind this Rails app is a one smart development and investigative team. The app is fully RESTful (allowing developers to pull and syndicate bailout related data in several formats), and it also pulls in feeds from several different news sources.

Highgroove was all too eager to help, but the real credit goes out to the amazing development team, led by Dan Nguyen and Scott Klein.

Read the segment on Marketplace.

Link: Eye on the Bailout

Highgroove on the Ruby on Rails Podcast

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:52:00 EST

Geoffery Grosenbach interviewed the Highgroove Team for the latest Ruby on Rails Podcast, released last Friday.

We talked about the technical aspects of the upcoming refresh to our Ruby on Rails Monitoring service, Scout.

Learn more on the Scout Blog or Listen to the Podcast.

Back from Mountain West Ruby Conf

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:58:00 EST

James and Dana are back from Mountain West Ruby Conf, and the videos of their talks are up:

http://mwrc2009.confreaks.com/

James said of the conference:

“The talks were very high caliber, the venue great, and the hosts generous. This conference also proves that not only does a single-track conference still work, it’s just plain better.”

Scout's Big Changes

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:34:00 EST

Re-blogging the news from Scout—we’re sponsoring the Golden Gate Ruby Conference and demoing some very tasty updates to Scout.

Stop by and say hi to Derek and Andre in the booth. I don’t know which one of them will be the booth-babe, yet.

4 Reasons to Prototype Rapidly

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 08:33:00 EST

Here are 4 reasons for prototyping applications first. By prototyping, I mean an emphasis on building working applications rapidly:

1. It is much easier to edit an existing application that to try to dream one up with nothing visual and interactive to work with.

2. Too much planning leads to over-complication. Sometimes you can be too smart for you own good. “What if the user wants to do X or Y.” Don’t guess, find out.

3. A working application that can be tweaked beats a theoretical application that is perfect (and either sucks when it’s “done” or never sees the light of day)

4. A Prototype forces you to focus on the core functionality, that makes or breaks your idea. Trust us, the logo is not your killer feature.

Credit is due to our good friend Mike Landman of Ripple for Reasons #1 and #3.

Startup Riot 2009

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 09:52:00 EST

Highgroove is attending Startup Riot 2009 tomorrow. We’re excited to be attendees this year (last year we were presenters on Scout).

If you’re attending, be sure to say “hi!” to Matt and I!