Youarehere You are here: Home 2009

31-Dec: a new Javascript article published on DevX.com

I have published a new article on the programming portal DevX.com , whose title reads JavaScript and jQuery: Web Apps as Highly Interactive as Desktop Apps. The article demonstrates how to leverage the power that comes from JavaScript, jQuery and modern browsers to deliver a new class of web applications, that behave and look like desktop applications, fueled by drag-and-drop, mouse selection, panning, zooming, and more.

11-Nov: a new Javascript article published on DevX.com

I have published a new article on the programming portal DevX.com , related to Javascript. Here is the synopsis for the article: “Characterized by some dubious design decisions, ambiguous syntax rules, and a troubled history, JavaScript could have been dismissed as a second-class scripting language useful only for animating web pages. However, JavaScript has matured into one of the most ubiquitous and pervasive programming languages today, currently powering complex and highly interactive web applications. With JavaScript so widely distributed and so closely tied to the user experience, JavaScript skills are mandatory if you develop web applications nowadays”.

10-Nov: Borg added to the Ruby Application Archive

Borg has been added to the Ruby Application Archive ( RAA ). Here you can find the RAA Borg Project page .

02-Nov: Borg 2.0 is out!

As you may see from the completely new look’n’feel for the website, a new version of the Borg CMS has been released! This is a major rewrite of the Borg framework that preserves all the existing functionality and adds a lot of new features. A detailed post about the new features will arrive soon, along with the instructions to download the source code from the new SVN repository.

16-Apr: Borg now supports Google Talk chatback

A new feature is now available on Borg is available! Borg is the software which is responsible for this whole site and it’s based on Ruby On Rails. Check this link for further info. You can now integrate a live chat on your pages using the Google Talk Chatback feature.

29-Jul : Death of an infrastructure

Ok, this is a potentially long story. I usually don’t write them because it takes me too much time to consolidate my thoughts on paper (keyboard), and anyway most of the people won’t consider this. But, what the heck, if Joel Spolsky can write about pretty much everything, I can do it as well.

29-Jul : Rhizosphere!

Rhizosphere is amongst us! Rhizosphere is my most recent project and is an innovative approach to help you navigate and filter through your data. Lightweight, web-based, intuitive, its purpose is to provide a simple but effective way to flow through your data, isolate them, filter them and help you locate that information that you know it’s there, but it’s lost amidst the noise.

15-Jun : Railtrackr Tags browsing is live

I’ve released a new version of RailTrackr that includes tag browsing capabilities. Watch this introductory video and play with it on www.railtrackr.com !

24-May: OpenSocial article on DevX.com

DevX.com has published my latest article, an introduction to OpenSocial and how to write OpenSocial aware gadgets and applications. Read the full artile OpenSocial: the power of social networks in your applications , or see my full list of articles for other topics.

13-May: Train Power!

Today I was at the Google office in Amsterdam, to shadow a training session directed to some of my users (aka, the users of the project I work on). Even though the training wasn’t directed at me, I learned an important lesson. Use the trains!

16-Apr: OpenID and Rails authentication on DevX.com

DevX.com has published my latest article, an introduction to OpenID and how to integrate OpenID authentication with Ruby on Rails 2.0. Read the full artile OpenID and Rails: Authentication 2.0 , or see my full list of articles for other topics.

17-Mar: Closing down Gullery and replacing with Railtrackr

Loyal to the good practice of eating your own dogfood I have removed from this site my old Gullery image viewer and replaced it with my own Railtrackr . Now the link images.battlehorse.net points to my Flickr photosets.

16-Mar: RailTrackr.com is now live! Developers welcome!

RailTrackr, a web 2.0 Flickr photo browser, is now live and available to everybody on Railtrackr.com ! In addition to that, a new development website has been started to support Railtrackr. Railtrackr is currently opensource and will remain so. Developers are very welcome and I invite you to join the project at Railtrackr Devsite (hosted on assembla.com). The project page on this website won’t receive further updates and will point to the new development website.

12-Mar: RailTrackr article has been published on DevX

DevX.com has published my latest article, an introduction to Ruby on Rails 2.0 that uses RailTrackr as a sample application to describe the topic. See my full list of articles for other topics.

10-Mar: RailTrackr: Rails 2.0 meets Flickr!

RailTrackr is a brand new project I’m working on. It is a Rails that merges together rails 2.0 with Flickr APIs to provide a stunning visual experience to navigate Flickr photosets.

23-Jan: Photos from the Las Vegas and other places.

Go and visit my images gallery . I’ve added some photos from the weekend (19-21 Jan, 2008) I’ve spent in Las Vegas, Grand Canyon and Death Valley with my colleagues. We’ve probably spent most of the time driving (we decided both to the Grand Canyon and from Vegas back to San Francisco), but it was definitely worth!

15-Jan: Gullery and Photographs

At last I’ve been able to install Gullery on my hosting. That means that from now on you’ll be able to access a lot of photographs here on images.battlehorse.net. I’ve just added some photos from my current stay in California. Integration between Borg and Gullery is under planning.

01-Jan: Happy new year!

Happy new year. Welcome in 2008! Use the links on the right to navigate previous blog posts, since there’s still no interesting news for 2008 …

27-Jan: A new Borg version: Web 2.0 Tagging!

A new version of Borg is available! Borg is the software which is responsible for this whole site and it’s based on Ruby On Rails. Check this link for further info.

09-Jan: Looking for mail?

Have you ever tried looking for a very popular term on different search engines? You can learn very interesting things. In addition, if you try searching for a popular service which every search engine owner also offers, your results will probably be even more fun. For example … mail . Both Google, Yahoo and Microsoft ( and many others ) offer both the search engine and a free mail account. Let’s see what their search engine answers when you search just mail ...

07-Jan: Mountain View, day one

Hi, fellow readers! January is going to be a month full of events. I’ve just arrived in Mountain View, California, where I’ll spend the full month with my Google colleagues to do some training and get in touch with the rest of the team ( my team is partially located in Dublin, where I work, and partially, mostly actually, in Mountain View ).

12-Jan: Winter in Mountain View

This is the kind of winter temperature that I like :-) , 14 degrees celsius in January. Sunny. No coats needed. Update: more images here .

Battlehorse!