The installer provides exhaustive built-in documentation, describes every step and suggests solution for every unmet requirement like “please install Apache headers with apt-get install apache2-prefork-dev”. Other guys and we all can learn a lot from mod_rails about how a perfect installer looks like.

At the end of the installation process it asks to put three configuration lines into apache configuration file although it does not tell how. According to online documentation the requirement is that these lines should be only executed once.

So my solution (in Debian way) is to

• create new passenger.load file in /etc/apache2/mods-available
• create a symbolic link to it a2enmod passenger

Google App Engine is very different to Amazons’s approach.

• it serves code, so no virtual machines
• for web applications only (based on WSGI). WSGI is the de facto standard interface between a web server and a web application or framework in the Python world
• App Engine includes Python runtime (version 2.5.2)
• pure Python, no C extensions allowed
• includes non-relational data-store. Something that feels like tuple spaces?
• plus usual administration stuff

You can start the most scalable HelloWorld application in the world with the following lines:

from google.appengine.ext import webapp
class MyHandler(webapp.RequestHandler)

There will be nothing Google specific in the web part of your application. It is WSGI-based so you can host it at Google or within your own Apache HTTPD through mod_wsgi.

The bigger concern is this special data store, for which no open source replacement exist.

So you can not use a relational database with such distributed system like App Engine, but if you use this Google Datastore then you trapped into a dependency, that can not be removed easily. And introducing an additional abstraction layer for data access is not the way to success with a dynamic programming language, fast development and being happy.

No, I am not talking about preparation for a date or for an interview. I am still talking about a prototype I am working on. Even if you told that there is no need for special styling and a professional web designer will prepare something two weeks later, and the application should simply work, so it is possible to play around a bit with it.

And because you love the semantical nature of the html you start with a pure html with this scientifical styling. That means no styling at all. But even if you are not a professional designer, exactly like me, you should take one or two hours to create some basic stylesheet to make the user interface pretty less ugly.

• create a rails layout and a partial for the navigation
• put all the items into the menu (even if you are going only to implement one use case / function in your prototype), it will give the page some structure
• use the color schema of the customer Powerpoint presentation for your CSS
• adjust the display attribute for relevant elements

For example, if you want the main navigation to be shown in one row at the top of the screen and you have implemented the menu as unordered list <ul> then put something like

ul.main_menu li {
    display: inline; 
    background-color: orange; 
    padding: 4px;
    font-weight: bold;
}

into your CSS file.

I am working with two experienced Java- and J2EE- developer there, however they did not have any Ruby- or Rails- experience. So my task for this week is to create a prototype and at the same time to spread some Ruby but especially Rails knowledge among developers.

So after tree days:

• we have discussed the requiremnts and the problem domain with the project owner
• everybody has his devenv, mysql running
• new developers are confident in the usage of rake, scaffolding and script/generate in common, named routes and routing debugging
• every developer created (and commited) his part of the model, along with rudimentary (adjusted scaffold-generated) user interface
• we have put some lookup-data into db data migrations
• we had an internal show and decided to make some changes on the workflow and the user interface

It is unbelievable, how much you can achive with learning/teaching Rails provided:

• people are open to the new concepts
• the motivation is high and there is a practical problem at hand

Lets have a look at my two and a half year old Thinkpad T43.

• on the desktop you use day for day the same tools you need on the server as soon as you deploy your application
  • tomcat, rails and glassfish are installed exactly the same way you will install it on the server later
  • you get no culture shock if you have to use ssh, bash and vi on the server

• the system is highly customizable: you can completely redefine your keyboard including CapsLock and other modifier keys or do less important but funny things like making your keyboard light flashing when a new email arrives
• extremely easy installation of desktop, office or server applications, you are always only one sudo apt-get install program-name away. Compare it to any Windows based 8 step installation wizard

However, there are some disadvantages regarding hardware support,

So the official season start at the local wind surfing club in two weeks has obviously to be postponed… I have a cold anyway :-(

Now to the actual problem. At our company we have started using Google Groups for internal (not customer related) technical discussions. It is possible to setup a private discussion group at Google, that is only accessible to users, that are explicitly listed. And Google Groups provides an Atom feed containing recent group messages. So far so good. Unfortunately I was able to access the feed neither from my favorite web aggregator, nor from my Mozilla Thunderbird Feed Agent. After some debugging I've found why.

Can not agree to most of them, even for enterprise. But I have my very personal list of problems with Google Apps, although I think all of them are solvable:

1. If you use a google apps account you can not use most of the google services, like web history or my places on google maps. It works, if you create a new google account with your google apps id as secondary email address. The concept of gmail account vs. google account is pretty tricky, so it took 4 posts for a google employee Steve to explain the point ;-).

2. No IMAP access to mails. IMAP is the standard for accessing emails stored on the server. Standards are great for accessing stuff in, you know, the standard (uniform) way. I know, gmail web interface with its incredible full search capability and usability is really great. But for some special cases you really wish the standards:

   • checking for the mails on your mobile phone even in sleep mode
   • some sort of automatic processing of emails
   • using non browser mail client uniformly for multiple accounts

3. Google apps uses completely different URL structure than gmail. So all the great gadgets and widgets, that make the integration with mail so pleasant, are not aware of it and do not work:

   • Gmail for mobile application does not work
   • the gmail widget of netvibes aggregator shows recent mails but the links do not work
   • mail notifier in the google toolbar does not work

Besides that I am a big fan of google apps and looking forward for google to fix the problems. Eventually google apps should leave the beta phase.

The adoption for the enterprise in Europe could primary fail on google conspiracy considerations but it is another story…

In a software project you have the requirement to develop new features while keeping the holy green build. This requirements are often contradictory in a bigger project (with 200 developers for example, like one I am currently working for).

And here is a proxy script I have put on my web server, that aggregates multiple iCal sources.

The main google calendar UI is great and you can select multiple calendars to see them at once. But unfortunately not in the embeddable version - you can only show them individually. And even iGoogle on google.de does not work properly. I mean it shows the month, but it does not show any appointments, as lot of people noticed.

And from the functionality aspect I saw nothing comparable to my black paper based organizer. I was even thinking about buying a six-hole-puncher to implement ;-) some extensions or even simply to extend the useful life of my organizer.

So called Web 2.0 solutions were getting better and better and most of them are trying to support open standards like iCalendar or provide information via RSS or Atom feeds. So I found the solution of my dreams.

It would be also a great platform for enterprise applications, be it web applications, service oriented system or anything else.

Regarding long term trend I agree with the following explanation, I recently went across:

What is Jython?

Jython, lest you do not know of it, is the most compelling weapon the Java platform has for its survival into the 21st century:-)

But if you are interested in internet surfing, I have some tips for you too…