peat dot org

We’re test driving a Joyent Accelerator to see if a small cluster of them could be a reasonable replacement for our current hosting infrastructure. So far, so good — very speedy, and it looks like it’ll be easier to scale when we need more horsepower. For those not familiar, Joyent’s Accelerators are Solaris containers, Sun’s OS-level virtualization technology.

There are only two snags I’ve hit so far:

Clutter. When you get an Accelerator it comes preloaded with webmin, apache, php, mysql, courier, and all sorts of other things that people might want. However, we’re just deploying Rails apps, so the cruft has to go. We’ve spent a fair amount of time getting rid of the clutter … it would be GREAT if we could simply buy a bare-bones Accelerator.

Compilation. The Accelerators are well equipped with Blastwave packages for GCC and related tools, but Ruby wants to use Sun’s compilers for building native extensions — pretty critical to things like Mongrel or acts_as_ferret. There is a posted workaround here, but it could be a pain to diagnose if you’re not familiar with how gems are built.

Otherwise, it’s all rock and roll. Kudos to Joyent for getting this service off the ground — despite it’s rough edges, it’s a great service.

“The newspaper business is based on a model of information scarcity.”

- Paul Gillin, 2007 New Communications Forum

Bummer for the big newspaper industry.

However, he asserts that small community newspapers will find a new life, as small run printing costs are going down, we have increasing access to publishing tools and services, and the content is much more relevant to the markets they serve.

White-knuckle startup times are back again. We’ve received full clearance to launch Chatter Mill, and none to soon: today, we’re unveiling at the New Communication Forum in Las Vegas. I’m pretty excited about it, but I’m a little biased. We have some sparse “glossy” marketing material up on our website, but I’d be happy to talk with anyone who’s interested in how anonymous communication can make a big difference in corporate culture. Hey, we’ll even give you a demo. Just ask.

Onwards!

The New Communication Forum is going to be interesting — the keynote is by David Weinberger, co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto. The schedule is chock full of podcasting, social media, blogging, and all sorts of other good stuff.

Things are getting under way. We’re all sitting together in a room, with representatives from some of the biggest companies in the world, who are keen to learn about these sorts of things, and that gives me a lot of hope.

Just a quick note — I’ll be in Germany from January 31st through February 12th.  It’s a working trip, so I’ll be available to respond to e-mails and whatnot; otherwise, please excuse my tardiness in responding to your inquiries.  Thanks!

One of my new years resolutions is to make environmental considerations a core part of how my company does business. I firmly believe that it’s our responsibility to leave the world a better place than how we found it, and I know the decisions we make as a business can have a bigger impact than what we do as individuals.

As a high tech company and consulting group, we consume a fair amount of electricity and fossil fuels in the course of doing what we do. We also buy and use a lot of computer and network infrastructure, which pound for pound consumes considerable quantities of energy and natural resources to manufacture.

The holy trinity of the green revolution is to reduce, reuse, and recycle — and I think we can add another element to the equation: offset. While we can ensure our high tech purchases are RoHS compliant and that our vendors offer recycling services, computers don’t grow on trees, and neither does the electricity that runs them. Purchasing offsets from reputable sources is a way to pay back those environmental debts, by financing the development of sustainable energy and raw materials.

It’s easy to calculate and buy green tags to balance our electrical and fossil fuel consumption — but I’m running into trouble finding information about how to offset equipment purchases. Anyone have a handy guide to such things?

Here’s something that has me thinking: the ACM code of ethics for software engineers.

I think the ACM has done a good job capturing the elements that define maturity and professional behavior in the software industry. It clearly spells out that getting the best results means interacting well with people who have different capabilities, interests, and goals than ourselves. This is a pretty fundamental principal which, unfortunately, isn’t taught in many schools, or demonstrated in high tech businesses.

The ACM code makes a lot of sense when you read it. It’s explicit about a lot of things we should consider implicit — and I guess that’s the point. If it were easy to “be a good person,” that’s all we’d have to write about it.

It’s difficult to behave 100% ethically in high pressure, unfamiliar, or otherwise challenging situations — but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive for it. Becoming a better developer doesn’t just mean learning the latest design patterns and languages — it also means building healthy communication with the other people we intract with: clients, customers, sales people, managers, administrative assistants, executives, and everyone else we deal with on a professional basis. That doesn’t mean inviting them over for marathon Wii sessions on the weekend; it means devoting a few spare cycles to thinking about others, and doing our best to build something together — becoming a better person.

2006 was a heck of a year for me. Getting married, leaving a friend’s business, starting another business, hiring and firing, renovating the house, supporting my wife’s decision to become an independent consultant, and coordinating critical technical services for several startups — a lot of high pressure, unfamiliar, and otherwise challenging situations. These are the sorts of things that make a guy think hard about things like ethics and professionalism.

So, here’s to 2007: growing, learning, and becoming a better person.

Cheers!

Just a quick recommendation:  if you’re looking for a service that will turn your Photoshopped web page designs into clean, fast XHTML pages … look no further than XHTMLized.com.  They provided friendly and prompt service, very fast turn around, clean cross-browser code, and great rates.  Highly recommended!

The International Herald Tribune has an article on a new breed of shopping comparison sites, competing against Shopping.com, ShopZilla, and PriceGrabber. From the article:

“Jellyfish, TheFind and MyTriggers … are taking advantage of what some executives say is increasing discomfort with the pay-per-click model, which has grown more expensive as marketers bid more aggressively for premium space alongside search results. On these new sites, advertisers typically pay only when someone actually buys something or when users view an ad, as will soon be the case with TheFind.”

Instead of cost-per-click, these new shopping comparison sites charge per conversion. Jellyfish, in particular, is doing something very cool: merchants bid for placement for specific products (like iPods or snowshoes), and a significant part of their bid is credited to the shopper as a discount on the item they purchase. It’s a good deal for merchants because they can control exactly what their conversion costs are, and it’s a great deal for shoppers because they save a little extra cash.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/04/technology/btecom.php

Well, Black Friday is right around the corner.  Over a third of the adult population in the United States is shopping online this year — that’s almost one hundred million people buying gifts on the Internet.

If you or your e-commerce clients are gearing up for the holiday shopping season, it’s not too late to get in on the action.  For example, check out our Google Holiday Package — give us an hour of your time, and we’ll put your best products in front of millions of shoppers.  It even comes with a cash back performance guarantee.

In fact, we offer performance guarantees for all of our marketing services, and incentives for web developers, designers, and agencies who consider outsourcing their search engine marketing efforts.

Sound interesting? Answer a short questionaire about your business, and let’s get the ball rolling.

I received an interesting e-mail a few minutes ago — looks like Google bought JotSpot, the company that hosts my wikis. My business more-or-less runs entirely on Google services, so hopefully this will blend right in with the rest of the tools I use on a daily basis.

Smart move.