enoptix

So you have data that one day might go into an RDMS but the next day might go into file store? Do you constantly migrate old data between the two stores? What is the use case for this? Not being snarky, I'm genuinely curious. We use more than one datastore but that data usually stays put once its committed to one format. RDMS for most of the app, Redis for quick lists and cacheing. Flat files when necessary. But those models don't change their store ever unless its a major overhaul.

Yes, exactly. We use request specs to test regular HTTP requests to regular pages or our API. And then we use feature tests with Capybara and PhantomJS to load the app, click through it, and make it loads as it would in a customer's browser. This covers most of our application. And then we use regular unit tests for anything not customer facing, such as background jobs. But these unit tests make up only a small fraction of our test suite.

Is swapping out the database layer so common you really need a complicated abstraction like the Repository model he mentioned? We've been running an app for 3 years and have never dropped ActiveRecord or Postgres.

I echo his sentiment. Integration testing, especially when you have a JS frontend, makes much more sense. I never saw the point of controller tests and making sure a controller assigns variable @widgets with [widget] and all that nonsense. An integration test will identify all those problems and then some.

What are the SEO implications of this? I tried looking at their site (since they built it with their tech) and at the FAQ but couldnt find an answer. Is the content pulled via AJAX after page load? Or is it pulled server-side on the initial request?

Much better memory usage and (for us at least) better concurrency. We could only run 4 unicorn workers on a single dyno. But with Puma we run 16 threads with ease.

For cab service, Uber rides are serviced by already existing metro cab companies. The Uber cabs in here in Chicago were already licensed cabs, but now they can get dispatched via Uber. How is that any different from say, a cab company deciding to dispatch its drivers with their own in-house iPhone app? Do you think that would that be allowed under these regulations?

Very interesting concept! How do food & restuarant laws apply in Europe? I know here in the US, restaurants need regular inspections by the local board of health. And restaurant is defined as "a facility that prepares and sells food directly to consumers for immediate consumption."

Presumably if people are paying the host, that host is now operating a restaurant. I can already see the food lobby going crazy over this one in the US.

Is this anonymous copy-and-paste medium how people start to deal with their problems now? What happened to just talking to people or making tough decisions? I've seen more of these posts in the last year than I have in my entire time on HN.

I'm sorry you are having a tough time but you need to either 1) have a hard talk with your co-founders about your business model. present facts. make your case. they will listen.

or

2) if they dont, walk away and start something new. you mention you are a few years out of college. you could also go take all the technical experience you have gained over the last year and get another job. Make a decision on your own.

But really, the notion that a bunch of internet strangers will be able to give you some miracle advice is absurd.

the second image uses the word "exile" several times. Exile is typically associated with being cast out from one's group. The _why saga was before my time as a Rubyist but I always thought he vanished, i.e. left on his own accord.

Was there an "exile" event that I am not aware of? Or does anyone know what he's talking about?

You can also specify a meta robots tag inside the page HTML. If you want to block a lot of pages, your best bet would be to add it to your master layout or template. You get the same effect of blocking on robots.txt but without exposing a list of blocked pages.

The downside is that Google will still crawl the page and use your bandwidth, but the page won't be indexed.

Hah, this is great. Reminds me of an old quote from bash.org (who remembers QDB? it was like like the youtube of IRC)

http://www.bash.org/?111338

http://www.serpi.co

Serpico is the SEO/Backlink Intelligence product that we just launched. Feel free to contact me at the email in my profile.

I wasn't looking to answer any questions with regard to ethics. For your situation, I would want to know if you went on to purchase other X-Files episodes (or other works starring the cast members from X-Files). This would tell us whether or not your piracy was a net gain or loss for the studios.

That being said, I dont think there is a realistic way to build what I was suggesting.

I wish it were possible to have some sort of multi-channel funnel view of people who pirate content. Did they pirate a song and then proceed to buy the album? Did they pirate a the first movie of a series and then later legally purchase the rest of the series? Do they just pirate content and never purchase anything?

I think these are interesting questions. Who wants to build something to answer them?

I think in this case, it does.

Off-topic but what are you using to serve up images on your site like that? Is it a custom script or an OSS solution?

Have you looked into SEO? Organic search can be a great source for quality traffic/customers

I hadn't seen that article before. It was a great read. Thanks for sharing.

Personally, I have no problem with profanity. I swear when I'm with friends and occasionally during meetings with my immediate team at work. It does help people relate to you and makes for a more casual atmosphere.

However, in the context of a large meeting, formal presentation, or conference, I always avoid using profanity.

I don't think its so much about who is offended and who isn't but more so about maintaining a sense of professionalism. I truly believe in a formal setting there are much better ways to get your point across than to resort to profanity, methods that will help maintain an image of credibility, intellect, and thoughtfulness.

I attended the Analytics Partner Summit a few weeks ago and this issue was brought up. It was speculated that they don't have enough support personel to handle customer problems across the globe.

You have to remember they are going after enterprise clients so expectations of service are very high.

I question the accuracy of these numbers. Hitwise, Quantcast, Comscore, etc, all use sample data and extrapolate their numbers based on these figures. Often the data is gathered using toolbars that are installed as part of another software package.

I work in search marketing and I can't tell you how many times Comscore or Hitwise has said a clients web traffic has taken a dive, even though the real on-page analytics are reporting the opposite. It's very frustrating that people take these numbers at face value.

I work at an search marketing firm and we've been piloting this with several of our clients over the last few months. Really awesome stuff here. You get a deep look into the conversion process across all of your different marketing channels.

How is PageTrawler or "content auditing" different from regular crawling of a website? I ran a website through and the output was basically the same as any off-the-shelf web crawler.

Dotcloud is down

ditto on this. I'm up to 9 instances of various types and pretty comfortable with everything. I hope the pricing is reasonable.

This is great news! I've been using Dotcloud at my job for about a month with an RoR app. We used to be on Heroku w/ Amazon RDS. And I needed a separate EC2 instance for stuff like phpMyAdmin and other misc scripts. We outgrew it quickly when we needed more control over Resque. Now with Dotcloud, I can run everything under one group with fine-grained control when I need it. Its awesome!

The only thing I am missing is Memcache and MongoDB support (but it looks like thats coming soon ;D ). Also, an invite for personal use would be awesome!

I'd love to see Chicago up there if you get around those limits.

Actually already using this, works great!

Thanks for the input, I'll stick with Heroku for now!

This is very interesting. There are a lot of brand-sensitive client types such as healthcare organizatons and higher education who would love this. I do have one question though.

According to Wikipedia's list of software and search engines that support OpenSearch, only Google Chrome is on the list. [1]

Google as a search engine is not listed. The screenshot in the article is also in Chrome.

I wonder if this feature is supported in Firefox or IE.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSearch

edit: tested in Firefox, it works. this is great!