keeran.com

Flow: Still happening, we’re going for an intense dev session at the end of Sept to get it somewhere presentable.

Life: Not much going on due to so much bloody work! Moved into a new house, trying to find the time to get it decorated.

Business: Strength to strength, recruiting more Rails developers towards the end of the year.

Misc: Have registered at www.railsrumble.com – you should too!

I can’t believe how quickly this year is going! Hopefully this will be the last pointless diary post in a while ;)

We’re still working on Flow. We were meant to get a blog up by Christmas, but we’ve all been so busy it just had to get put to the side.

This must be a problem for many web producers out there (designers, developers, entrepreneurs etc) trying to get a project off the ground without any kind of seed funding. While it is achievable to ship new products in a short amount of time, as we have seen with companies like 37Signals and Carson Systems, there are always going to be times, certainly in the early stages, where Real Paid Work must take priority.

To make sure we continue making progress we have decided to devote time where we get together and work on nothing but Flow. We had our first Flow day last week, and I must say, I’m impressed by how much momentum we have managed to regain in such a short time. We’re having another session soon, so I’ll aim to have the blog presentable by then so we can write more about it.

We are also getting our teeth into Rails 1.2 – lots of new toys to play with (finally learning what REST is all about, other than knowing I don’t get enough) so when our new site goes live, expect to hear our thoughts on the new release :)

It’s been a long time coming (we really should have done this 5 years ago!), but we’ve finally sorted out a forum for the regulars in #webdev on Quakenet.

www.webdev-uk.com launches!

Pop in and say hello, we’re just getting things started over there. :O)

I’m not sure if it’s because we don’t see a lot of them in international news, but the Australians always seem like they’re doing the right thing.

Denyerec just pointed me towards this article which describes how the Australian government have done their homework on the numbers involved in online piracy and its effect on the entertainment economy, totally decimating the ‘facts’ excremented by the likes of the MPAA and RIAA.

Isn’t this how governments are supposed to work? The people are clearly fed up with the extortionate prices of this industry, so some of them download copyright material from torrents or other P2P networks. The industry currently doesn’t support a widespread model where people can pay reasonable prices. Why would they, they’re onto a good thing – taking advantage of the global market and profiting massively as a result. So the government step in and punch back for the people. Is this common?

Any comments on genetic tendancies of thievery will be ignored. ;)

Safety in numbers. Knowsit

37Signals have decided to make the content from their (previously $19 a pop) Getting Real book free for everyone.

Read it here

It’s a great move to generate even more buzz about who they are and how they work – I guess ~$400K was enough for them!

At least this solves the problem I was facing when trying to get clients to read the book, or buying bulk licences for the PDF - I can just send them to the site now.

Is this going to be a trend for self-publishers? Early adopters pay a small fee for the PDF and get a head start on the game, everyone else can get a taste 6 months later? I bet if 37S decided to release another book next week they would see the same number of sales, if not more, as a result of the publicity of releasing Getting Real for free.