the bitt blog

The Bitt has Moved

2006-06-08T23:06:00.000-07:00

Visit The Bitt at http://www.thebitt.com

The Google Paper by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page

2006-06-07T23:07:00.000-07:00

The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine

Pixoh - Edit Pictures Online

2006-06-07T09:17:00.000-07:00

Just came across pixoh Seems like a very good app for anyone who needs quick photo editing.

Dabble DB - Worth Watching

2006-05-29T21:13:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting web app to help turn spreadsheets into web apps.

Dabble DB seems liek it's worth watching.

SNAP - A NEW WAY TO BROWSE YOUR SEARCH

2006-05-17T19:42:00.000-07:00

Bill Gross, from idealab, has a new version of Snap.com up and running. Looks interesting, but he may need to figure out how to make it faster. Bill is a great guy - he invested a lot of time and money into my last start up. I hope he does well

So that's how they make Accords

2006-05-15T13:01:00.000-07:00

The mousetrap game applied to car manufacturing.

Bait

2006-05-15T12:59:00.000-07:00

Be Careful Out There

Amazing

2006-05-15T12:55:00.000-07:00

Check out this guy - how does he do it? Chris Bliss's amazing jugggling act.

Campfire - group chat

2006-03-14T15:35:00.000-08:00

Campfire is a group based chat application. It works kind of like IM, but it is optimized for three or more people. Neat idea. They can handled 2-60 people. You can share files, look at images and check back on old chats (wow - someway to keep people accountable for what they chat about). The same guys built Basecamp and Backpack. They work at 37 signals

Songbird - Integrated Media Browser

2006-02-08T11:03:00.000-08:00

Songbird has released a windows version 0.1 proof of concept. A great new toy. Just wish they had more bandwidth so I could find out more about adding services.

ROR in 14 pages

2006-01-14T18:43:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick overview of Ruby on Rails in 14 pages.

Multiple Record Forms for Ruby on Rails

2006-01-03T22:32:00.000-08:00

********************UPDATE**********************************
I have moved to a new blog location and moved my blogger posts to http://thebitt.com

I have also created a zip file of multi-record app which you can find at http://thebitt.com/2006/01/03/multiple-record-forms-for-ruby-on-rails/

**************************************************************

I have been experimenting with creating a new goal management application using Ruby on Rails. The first challenge has been creating a signup application that takes account information and account owner information and then updates both an account and an user model. I couldn't find any examples on this that I could understand so I thought I would put up a short example of a working app.

First the database - two tables Account and User

Account has two fields
- id
- name

User has four fields
- id
- first_name
- last_name
- account_id

The models

Account Model

class Account < ActiveRecord::Base
 has_many :users
 validates_presence_of :name
 validates_uniqueness_of :name
 validates_length_of :name, :maximum => 100
end

User Model


class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :account
  validates_presence_of :first_name, :last_name
  validates_uniqueness_of :first_name
end

The view


<h1>New account</h1>
<%= start_form_tag :action => 'create' %>
  <%= error_messages_for 'account' %>
  <!--[form:account]-->
  <p><label for="account_name">Name</label><br/>
  <%= text_field 'account', 'name'  %></p>
  <!--[eoform:account]-->

  <%= error_messages_for 'user' %>
  <!--[form:user]-->
  <p><label for="user_first_name">First name</label><br/>
  <%= text_field 'user', 'first_name'  %></p>


  <p><label for="user_last_name">Last name</label><br/>
  <%= text_field 'user', 'last_name'  %></p>
  <!--[eoform:user]-->
  <%= submit_tag "Create" %>
<%= end_form_tag %>

<%= link_to 'Back', :action => 'list' %>

The controller - Signup

class SignupController < ApplicationController

  model :user
  model :account


  def index
    new
    render :action => 'new'
  end


   def new
    @account = Account.new(@params['account'])
    @user= User.new(@params['yser'])
   end


  def create
    @account = Account.new(@params['account'])
    @user = User.new(@params['user'])
    @account.valid?
    @user.valid?
       if @account.valid? && @user.valid?
         name = @account.name
         @account.save
         @account = Account.find_by_name(name)
         @account.users << @user
         flash[:notice] = 'Account was successfully created.'
         redirect_to :action => 'new'
      else
         render :action => 'new'
      end
  end
end

I haven't figured out how to consolidate the validation error messages - If anybody knows how please let me know.

100 things we didn't know this time last year

2005-12-30T10:42:00.000-08:00

BBC News on what we didn't used to know.

Personal Fund Raising Pages

2005-12-23T19:17:00.000-08:00

Firstgiving.com is a online tool for running fund raising campaigns. Good to know about if you have a good cause and need a platform to use for raising money.

Firefox 1.5 and Performancing

2005-12-23T10:43:00.000-08:00

I'm testing out Firefox 1.5 and Perfomancing. This post is coming right out of my browers. I'm really liking this.

Attensa - RSS reader get venture funding

2005-12-06T09:06:00.000-08:00

I think I'm going to check out Attensa.

Attensa for Outlook is an RSS reader that brings up-to-the-minute news and content from Websites, blogs and Podcast sites directly into Microsoft Outlook.

They just got $9M in series B money. They must be on to something.

Web 2.0 Application List

2005-12-02T09:40:00.000-08:00

eHub is a constantly updated list of web applications, services, resources, blogs or sites with a focus on next generation web (web 2.0), social software, blogging, Ajax, Ruby on Rails, location mapping, open source, folksonomy, design and digital media sharing.

Features for your outliner

2005-12-01T06:45:00.000-08:00

About this Particular Macintosh provides a good overview of various features found in outliner tools.

Rails RJS Templates

2005-11-30T10:46:00.000-08:00

AJAX just got a lot easier

http://www.codyfauser.com/articles/2005/11/20/rails-rjs-templates

Really Simple System to System Integration

2005-11-23T10:29:00.000-08:00

Microsoft has just released a 0.9 version of Simple Sharing Extension (SSE) that extends RSS and OPML to allow for combining multiple feeds into a common feed and to synchronize data between the feeds.

A great example would be contact synchronization. I have a list of contacts and I share that list via RSS. Other people could maintain their own list of contacts and share that via RSS and by using SSE we could have one combined list. The contacts could also be updated by anyone in the group and my contact list would get updated. Security is an issue that will need to be resolved, but the applications look very interesting.

Here's an excellent example of using this for enterprise application integration.

Podcasters and Bloggers Please Help with Blog Quake Day

2005-10-25T10:03:00.000-07:00

Podcasters please join the bloggers in Blog Quake Day. Add something to your podcast that lets people know how they can help.

Taking inspiration from the massive donations bloggers were able to collect for Katrina relief efforts, DesiPundit is calling for a BLOG QUAKE DAY on Wednesday, Oct 26, 2005.

Bloggers are requested to make a small post about the earthquake, and direct your readers to a suitable avenue for donating to the relief efforts.

You can direct your listeners to

Blog Quake Day

South Asia Earthquake Support

Quake Help

South Asia Quake Help

South Asian Quake Relief

South Asia Earthquake Support

2005-10-09T14:24:00.000-07:00

Just set up a blog to help provide information about the quake in Pakistan.

http://southasiaearthquake.org

BlinkList

2005-10-08T20:52:00.000-07:00

BlinkList - an interesting new way to organize your web

Less as a competitive advantage

2005-10-08T20:46:00.000-07:00

An interesting take on how less can be better. Sounds like a book on the way

We Won

2005-10-08T20:42:00.000-07:00

My son's soccer team won today 1-0.