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Derek
You need to be in the Bay Area. You shouldn’t be in the Bay Area.
You need to work crazy hours. You shouldn’t work more than 4 days a week.
You need to raise as much money as you can. You shouldn’t raise money.
The topics above never seem to get old and I think it’s unfortunate.
Just run your business the way that feels right. The majority of your time during the week is spent working. Whether you’re working for yourself or for someone else, if you’re not working the way you want to, it won’t last.
Posted in Scout | no comments
Derek
Scout, our server monitoring and application, is now available for public consumption.
Scout is for the 95% of us that either gave up on installing & maintaining monitoring applications or used the old fashion monitoring method – an email from a customer when your web application is down. I’m not calling you out, it’s simply that monitoring used to be more painful than
not monitoring. We think Scout changes that in a beautiful way.
Scout makes it easy to bring all of your data together – from the monitoring standbys (url monitoring, server load, memory usage, etc) to modern day analytics (the number of user accounts on your web application, unique visitors, inbound links, etc). It’s all done through an easy plugin system that you configure through our web interface – you never have to login to each of your servers and install or edit monitoring scripts. You’re not limited to the plugins we built – you can roll your own with a couple of elegant lines of Ruby code.
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Derek
We’ve used Scout for several months internally. Along with Colloquy, Google Docs, Basecamp, and Skitch, it’s one of the few apps I use every day.
We think this makes Scout a better service – we’re not watching Scout from a third-person perspective. However, sometimes things sneak through – the type of things that don’t bother you after using an application for months but can be hurdle to others when getting started.
There were 2 nagging issues that stood out in the Scout user experience. I’ll cover how I addressed the first one here.
Read more... 
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CBQ
The success of our Scout monitoring tool’s Beta has been amazing. We appreciate all the feedback we’ve received so far.
We’ve decided to spin-off a separate product based on Scout. It’s called Skraut. Just as Scout can monitor a server to know when it’s in trouble, Skraut can monitor your significant other, to know when you’re in trouble.
We hope you like it. Remember to signup for the Beta program, launching soon!
Skraut – Sneaky People Monitoring Software
Posted in Keeping it Simple, Ruby on Rails | 1 comment
CBQ
If you’re just getting started with testing (and general test-first or test-driven development) in your Ruby and Ruby on Rails applications, you have a couple of choices.
You can go with Ruby’s Unit::Test, built right in to Ruby, and built-in to Rails with unit, functional, and integration test suites setup for you.
Or, you could setup Rspec with Mocha, and implement a form of testing called Behavior Driven Development or BDD.
Both approaches serve the same goal: better, tested code, easier code to maintain, and in general, just better practices.
My advice is to start with unit tests, and then move to Rspec later.
Read more...
Posted in Scout, PlaceShout, Business | no comments
Derek
We recently sat down with Geoffrey Grosenbach for the Ruby on Rails Podcast and talked about Scout, PlaceShout, working as a remote team, and balancing client work with internal projects.
Listen to the Podcast
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Andre
Hotspotr -- my community-driven WiFi hotspot site -- announced a content-providing partnership with LightPole today. You can read the press release over at http://lightpole.net/press/index.html.
Hotspotr lists over 8,000 user-contributed WiFi hotspots. LightPole provides a mobile client you can use to browse Hotspotr from your mobile phone using an interactive, maps-based interface:
You can download the LightPole mobile client for free from the Hotspotr homepage.
Separately, Hotspotr is also taking advantage of the Google Maps streetview functionality. For locations where streetview is available, you will have the option to browse the 3-d streetview imagery:
See an example at the Dolores Park Cafe in San Francisco.
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Derek
We thought you’d like Scout – but we didn’t expect to reach our 100 account limit in about an hour and a half.
We’re already collecting feedback and gearing up for the next launch.
Don’t worry if you didn’t get in this time – we’re collecting lots of feedback for our full launch.
If you’re need some more help getting Scout configured, have some feedback, want help writing a plugin, or just want to chat about Scout, drop by our public chat room or forums.
Thanks, and stay tuned for the launch!
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Andre
Staging environments are the perfect excuse to dig into new server configurations, and to play around with tools like Deprec. I have covered the gruesome technical details of the process over at Andre on Tech:
Overall, I'm impressed with how much deprec does for you. I had my staging environment setup in a few hours. Enjoy!
Posted in Scout, Presentations, Atlanta | 3 comments
CBQ
Last night, I demoed Scout to a room-full of Rubyists at the Atlanta Ruby User Group Meeting.
I would love to share all the wonderful feedback, but instead, I’ll share some of the excellent questions (and more elaborate answers) that were asked of Scout:
What are the security pitfalls, i.e. can someone simply write a ‘rm -rf’ plugin?
To answer that, let’s look at the architecture of Scout first:
- You install the tiny Scout client (which is a Ruby gem) on your server.
- The client connects over https (always) through a 256-bit secure, encrypted connection (the same encryption your bank uses).
- Scout never logs in to any of your servers.
- All communication is initiated by the client.
- The client downloads a pre-loaded plugin plan, consisting only of plugins of your choosing, so it cannot run plugins you didn’t explicitly authorize.
- The server also uses that same secure encryption for all communication. Individual accounts are protected.
- Client keys (uniquely generated) can be revoked at any time, disabling the client.
The security measures needed for Scout are the same as for any other software. In fact, in some ways, it’s easier to be more secure – the plugins are relatively few lines of code and easy to review. For a more closed environent, you can create a copy of the plugin code and host it on one of your own servers (a plugin is plain text).
Is Scout open source?
The Scout client is completely open source. The gem is a normal Ruby gem, open for development, and distributed under the MIT and/or Ruby License (whichever you prefer). The Scout Plugins people write are also completely open, in fact, they are surrounded and fostered by a community that encourages branching, fixes, and general open-ness.
The Server, where you aggregate your data, do reporting, and in general, collect information about your account is not open-source. We maintain the server, and keep all your data safe and sound.
When does it launch?
We’re doing the plumbing now – account subscriptions, a new home page, privacy policies, backup procedures, etc. We’ve recognized that lots of people are anxious to get going and we’re working to get it ready for public use as fast as possible.
