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Combined with Manymoon this looks like a serious contender to pricey online project management services like Backpack. Lack of artificial user limits is what makes Google strategy such an attractive proposition.

Jive, SugarCRM, and Novell are all companies that are built around products that are open source. While 37Signals has released an application framework as open source, their applications, like Backpack, Basecamp, and Highrise are not open source. 37Signals is a great company with really good products, but I don't think they are the sort of company that Ballmer was referring to.

You make far too many assumptions.

That that url doesn't work only shows that either expose_php is off, or that the page isn't powered by PHP. Allegedly it did work at the time of that blog posting, and given that every single other 37 Signals website is powered by PHP, it seems pretty plausible that rubyonrails.com also uses PHP. Regardless, I don't particularly care either way about that point.

You attacked the original poster's method, saying that it would give false positives, which it clearly does not. I pointed out the flaw in your argument, and you assumed that that somehow meant that I agreed with the original poster, which I do not (I don't disagree either, however).

I'm not defending anything, I'm merely pointing out the blatantly wrong.

No worthwhile RoR web apps? Check out BackPack, BaseCamp, or TaDa List. Finally, RoR can do anything that PHP can do from blog engines to a photo gallery to web stores. So to say that Ruby on Rails can't create any worthwhile websites shows a lack of knowledge of the abilities that Ruby on Rails has.

I really didn't understand either before I decided to invest some time and try tutorials.
It's already been 15 years I've been programming (Logo :), Basic, C++, Fortran, Caml, Java, Ruby ...) and I now have the impression that I never really understood programming before having known rails.
So please, try it at least 2 hours, and you'll be amazed by how fun, efficient and beautiful it is.

Everytime I heard someone talking about REST, migrations, rake, capistrano, scaffolding, ActiveRecord, AJAX, routes & nice URL's, I just thought "Whatever! Those are just buzz/hype words without any meaning, and it won't change my programming life".
But it sure did, and I think noone can ever understand it before giving it a fair chance.

Thanks a lot DHH and keep up the good work!

PS: You might want to check http://backpackit.com/ if you look for a "real-world functionality".

Sure, I could carry stuff around on a USB drive (and for critical things where I can't rely on there being net access, I do so). Then you've got the issue of whether a given program is installed, or whether I'm allowed to use the drive (some public terminals on campus do not allow you to use USB drives, since they're strictly for checking e-mail and the like).

For 'mobile' people, having your data online and manageable on there is very attractive. With the exception of very elaborate work like research papers and such, pretty much everything I do for my classes is kept online somewhere.

I've used Mantis for years and it is wonderful - pretty easy to use, flexible, powerful, easy to install, just lovely. There are two things to bear in mind, though, out of the box it doesn't support time keeping of any sort (besides adding a custom field), and also its UI is a bit tricky to configure, it isn't templated so you have to jump into editing its core files. Its PHP & MySQL-based, though they've recently added a database abstraction layer so you can try hooking it up to MSSQL, PostgreSQL, etc.

Another one to consider is the hosted system Backpack, from 37 Signals, the folks you brought Ruby on Rails to the world. They've got a pretty powerful system there, available as a free account or paid if you need extra space, etc.

Damien

I'm a nurse and part-time sysadmin for the nonprofit I work for (I know, I know, I agree it's a bad idea, but no one more qualified has volunteered to come and do it for free). I've been using the Backpack ToDo list. I have a Thunderbird template on each computer that has the email for a backpack page and TODO in the subject line. In the body, the submitter has to put their computer ID, the problem, and either "urgent" or "annoying". Backpack is set up to SMS me when messages come in, and then I can categorize the ToDo's and set up a time to deal with it in my calendar.

My bosses all have access to the page, so they can confirm that I'm doing the work within a reasonable timeframe, and I can check on requests from anywhere.

I can't get through to the "Google Page Creator" to really check this out, but it sounds like a ripoff of the incredibly useful Backpack by 37signals which (surprise) uses Ajax as well (through Ruby on Rails).

The browser wars are completely pointless.

If that's the case, why did Microsoft fight so hard in the first one?

The point of the browser wars was to keep users on Windows. Microsoft was worried (rightfully so) that Netscape would begin to transition people away from the traditional locally-installed binary to web applications, and that such a change would greatly reduce the user's loyalty to a particular operating system since Netscape on Windows, Linux, or Mac would all work the same.

I believe the current buzz around AJAX is merely the beginning of the web-based application era that Microsoft feared enough to develop and bundle Internet Explorer for free.

Today, we have a truly free derivative of Netscape with far fewer bugs than Internet Explorer, cross-platform compatibility, and substantial mindshare among the people ushering in the web-app era. Combine this with a variety of cool web applications (Gmail, Planzo, Writely, Backpack, and many more), and you can suddenly see why if Microsoft's not worried, they should be - all of those will work on a Mac or anything else that runs Firefox.

Try Backpack. Ignoring all the imaginary buzzwords with which it complies, I've found it to be quite useful for sharing my links and information across multiple machines. The basic account is free but you can pay for other features like file hosting. You can also make pages public if you want.

Delicious and Backpack do not serve the same purpose, but the latter is still nice for managing information. Neither Yahoo nor Google have purchased it as of right now, so you don't have to worry about annoying Flash ads or annoying text ads respectively.

How will it improve user experience if the users cant find pages on your site, because search engines can't index them, because you jumped on the AJAX bandwagon, and abused the concept by implementing it ALL OVER the front-end of your web site.

There is a time and a place to use AJAX. Some people do not understand. Oh well.

I think you need to read this article to better understand the time and place to use AJAX... http://alexbosworth.backpackit.com/pub/67688

Good Luck!

I still don't understand why you're willing to pay $120-$150 per year for a JavaScriptOffice.org lease, plus ($30/month for T-Mobile Hotspot access, $3/hour for Internet cafe access, etc.), but you can't be bothered to tote a cheap laptop around. You don't have to "look at a laptop" while sitting in business class; put your $500 Dell laptop in a case and throw it under the seat in front of you.

I agree that having business documents everywhere is attractive, but computers are just too cheap to make the economics work. I started playing with Backpack the other day for web-based note management, and it may yet prove to be the first of this huge "JavaScript Office" trend, but right now I don't see any reason to use Word and Excel rewritten in JavaScript for a significant charge.

1. Meebo http://www.meebo.com/ - AJAX instant messaging
2. Protopage http://www.protopage.com/ - AJAX sticky notes and bookmarks
3. Backpack http://www.backpackit.com/ - AJAX todo lists
4. TimeTracker http://www.formassembly.com/time-tracker/ - AJAX time tracking
5. Delicious Director http://johnvey.com/features/deliciousdirector/ - AJAX delicious bookmarks browser

Populicio.us pointed me late last week to voo2do, and I am impressed.

Shameless plug for Brett Walker

Why take notes on a keyboard?
- handwriting 25 wpm, borderline legibility, cannot edit/restructure/search
- typing 70-80 wpm, completely legible, can edit/restructure/search

And if you ask why does one need 70-80 wpm, you've never tried to keep up with Dr W's immunology lectures! I do admit to taking more selective notes by hand, simply because it's slower. But if I have to capture a high rate of information-flow, keyboard is best.

Keyboard is frequently a Treo600 with PalmOne keyboard. I can then email notes to myself or to my Backpack page http://www.backpackit.com/ for immediate backup.

I also use an internal Wiki, for keeping ongoing expanding notes. Current favorite is DokuWiki http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:dokuwiki: installation's elementary, and it stores info as readable flatfiles.

Re pen and paper: After years of recording on 3-ring paper, reshuffling, refiling and losing, I got religion and now make a point of (almost) never writing anything that I mean to keep on a single piece of paper. It all goes into notebooks, tens of notebooks. BTW, check the permanence of the ink, if there's any chance you'll want them longterm. I recently retrieved some old letters and notes from my parents' basement. The turquoise ink I so loved back then? - It was faded almost to unreadability.

I just discovered this the other day, but try out Backpack. Essentially, you could set up individual pages for all of your projects, post notes, add a todo list, post reminders, share the pages with your coworkers, etc.

Been playing around with it for a while now, there's a fair few sites using it

• Strongspace a secure online file storage/sharing area
• BackpackIT a personal and small business information manager
• Basecamp a project and task management site

Plus the (small) site I'm working on for a friend Slap My Belly

Anyone have a real-world example of Rails scaling to a large project and lots of traffic?

While theres no sites i know off with massive traffic that run rails, theres a few large projects. TextDrive run StrongSpace which is basiclly online storage using SFTP and RoR. Also theres a few from the creators of RoR, BaseCamp, BackPack...

Sorry about that... the URL for the shared version of that page should be:

http://mboffin.backpackit.com/pub/66066

I just had to solve this exact problem. I had to record a potentially 3-hour commencement and did not want to rely on 1-hour DV tapes. I researched what it would take to get my laptop to be the video capture device. I wrote up my result in my Backpack.

Direct to Disk Video Recording

I hope you can find it useful.

I just had to solve this exact problem. I had to record a potentially 3-hour commencement and did not want to rely on 1-hour DV tapes. I researched what it would take to get my laptop to be the video capture device. I wrote up my result in my Backpack.

Direct to Disk Video Recording

I hope you can find it useful.

Made by the awesome folks at 37signals, http://backpackit.com/ is what you need. It's a wiki without the wacky. Use your browser to edit it and keep lists and notes with it too.

An alpha framework? I'm not sure that an alpha framework is responsible for so many great apps IN OPERATION. Basecamp [www.basecamphq.com] services 10K+ customers, if I recall correctly. Don't be fooled by its 1.0 status. I've seen many 1.0 apps with less behind them than Rails.

I use BackpackIt to make to-do lists. At home I use a program called Paraben Daily Organizer for reminders. Recently I've started using the online calendar provided by my ISP as part of its webmail service. My ISP's calendar and BackpackIt are quite handy because I can access them from any computer on the Internet.

To name just a few really busy rails driven sites:

http://www.basecamphq.com/ Tens or thousands of users

http://www.backpackit.com/ Thousands of users

http://www.43things.com/ Big enough for Amazon to care

This is of couse ignoring all the private rails apps used internally by some pretty decent sized companies.

Rails scales amazingly well on lighttpd with fcgi Apache with fcgi does a pretty good job as well.
You can run it on Linux, FreeBSD, Windows Server 2003 and just about any other respected(I use the term loosely with WS2003 on the list) server operating system.

• Backpack
• TaDa Lists
• BaseCamp

Backpackit from the guys who brought you Basecamp HQ and Tadalist. Just launched a couple of days ago, it needs a little work but given their reputation I'd say it'll be the best EVAR! in a very short time :)