Read the latest from the team at LaunchWare. We'll discuss software development, what we've learned, and launching your next project.
Mike Denomy and Johnny Boursiquot have been doing a great job organizing workshops and small talks as we continue to improve Boston Ruby Group project nights…
We've recently been dabbling with creating command line applications with ruby internally. You can do some really cool things with tools like GLI and Formatador…
I've recently begun presenting an Introduction to Rails Workshop at BostonRB Project Nights. They've been a lot of fun and I plan to continue facilitating…
Hey, I'm @jmondo. I've been working at LaunchWare since February 2011. A year and a half later, I'm leaving LaunchWare to move out to the West Coast and explore…
At LaunchWare, we've been looking for the best way to locate an element on a page in an Rspec request spec. Sometimes there's just no getting around asserting…
On Tuesday, April 23rd, I gave a brief lightning talk about our most recent experiences with Rails Engines. There were some great talks and questions asked…
The Google bots will thank you for not duplicating content on the InterWeb. Introducing Roboto, a Rails Engine for providing environment specific robots.txt…
One of my favorite new tools is the Bourbon gem from thoughbot. It is a set of Sass mixins that greatly increases the speed of front-end development. While…
I was coding away this afternoon, and I introduced a destroy link to my codebase. It looked something like this: Every time I write something like this, it…
Don't be jealous that we've been integrating facebook and chatting with babes all day. Let me show you how the users of your app can share activities on…
As I work my way through User Stories Applied and begin to write my own for an upcoming project, I keep coming back to Bill Wake's INVEST acronym. It helps me…
There has been a lot of recent discussion about utilizing exception handling as flow control. It is my opinion that this is a bad practice, and results in code…
Congratulations to the organizers of Ramencamp, a new Boston conference for bootstrapping your startup. The content was amazing and it was a great crowd of…
Security is important. You don't want malicious users chatting on IRC about how they Pwnd your web application. If you're using Rails and you want to be secure…
I gave a quick talk at Boston.rb this month about VCR, a tool that can help make your integration tests more deterministic. I've been enjoying the tool quite a…
So you've got a solid idea, a nice niche, and a great web application that meets your customers' needs. Now it's time to get PAID. It is all about the…
Last Tuesday I gave a very quick talk at the BostonRB Meetup introducing mobile application development. There were some great questions at the end. You can…
Rendering emails locally is a pain. Rendering all the emails in your Rails app is even more of a headache. I frequently get requests from clients to send them a…
Every day starts the same. Open up iterm2, start up a tmux session and create 3 windows. One for working (generating models, opening up the Rails console, etc…
Has Ruby on Rails been good to you? Has the framework helped you get a job or start your consulting career? If so, I challenge you to give 3 percent of your…
This post is for all the recruiters, hiring managers, and human resource professionals hiring developers today. At some point, someone decided that it would be…
Rails 3 is coming! I've been doing a lot of thinking about how I can help clients get in a better position to upgrade to Rails 3 when it's ready for prime time…
The current system for developing conceptual applications is broken. Many early stage entrepreneurs clamor to find developers that can build their product on a…
I recently attended an excellent event put on by a few people from BetaHouse and TechStars. The premise was to meet and network with other entrepreneurs in the…
TechStars held a very enlightening information session at Andala Cafe this morning. Shawn Broderick did an excellent job conveying what TechStars is all about…
One tenet of Getting Things Done is to always have a tool that you can use to capture thoughts and actions as they pop into your head. I get crazy ideas in the…
Last night I spoke @ Boston.rb about everything that happens around code. Lately, I've been heavily interested in discussing the process behind software…
SCRUM is a great framework to adopt if you and your software development team wants to get things done. SCRUM works for us, so we encourage the people we work…
Are you looking for a web wrapper for the Amazon Advertising API for your Ruby on Rails Application? ramazon_advertising is a library that provides this. It…
I'm a huge fan of getting things done and constantly honing my productivity. I recommend that everyone should learn about different methodologies and blend them…
The 2009 Rails Rumble was a huge event! The results are simply stunning with great apps like Lowdown and hi.im. It really is amazing what can be built in 4…
The 2009 Rails Rumble was a huge event! I submitted a solo project this year for the 48 hour contest. TripTracker was born. Small Business Owners: Did you know…
Do you find yourself checking your email when you should be coding? Reading Reddit while your test suite runs? Finally, comes an app that is off to a great…
Happy Friday! This week's enlightenment brought you by the lovely JavaScript framework JQuery. If you like unobtrusive and functional javascript utilities, you…
Bezos on Business and Zappos - A MUST WATCH - this was perhaps the highlight of my week courtesy of The Ted. I think Jeff really nails it on what makes…
I'm going to regularly post links, discussions, and tips I've found helpful every Friday. Version 2.3.3 of Ruby On Rails is Released - includes improvements to…
Our design partner, Jon Follett will be conducting the workshop "Visual Design for Web Sites and Web Apps" for UPA Boston on Saturday, August 01, 2009 from 9:0…
under_construction is a jQuery plugin that hides or overlays elements of a design that have not been implemented yet. The best part is that it is done…
Jon Follett and I led a discussion on how designers can integrate with Agile development teams at a recent Refresh Boston event. I've really come to enjoy and…
Enlight's own development partner, Jonathan Follett, will be presenting his thoughts at an upcoming New England Web Developers' Association Meeting in Hudson…
Last night I did a talk on Thinking Sphinx at Boston.rb. The slides are below. Evan's blog post with the benchmarks can be found here. There are links to other…
The first issue of Rails Magazine has been published. It looks like there is a lot of great content from some great authors. I wrote an article about my switch…
Jon Follett and I did a lightning talk on swooping in to save projects from epic failure at Ignite Boston 5. It seems to be a topic that the audience had an…
A few weeks ago, I open sourced a tool I often use when developing new products. Meet under_construction - a JQuery utility for hiding/overlaying elements of a…
In testing my helpers, I discovered a nil.rewrite exception due to ActionController::Base.initialize_current_url not being called. This occurs when using url…
For a while now, I've been looking for a solid framework to make assertions around my client side code. In my move from prototype to jquery, I've begun to use…
Goodbye exception_notifier and a cluttered inbox! Kudos to Thoughtbot for rolling out hoptoad: the app error app. It's a web service that your app can talk to…
I recently wanted to share RSpec examples with a business user. For some reason, it was kind of hard to find information on how to get a nice listing of all the…
Fast and Easy Selling. That's what we set out to make happen last quarter. Well I've been very busy over the last few months. I'm very proud to present Gazelle…
Take A List Apart's annual survey. I'm a huge fan, and the results are usually compelling! A List Apart Survey
So I'm thoroughly annoyed that a fieldWithErrors div wraps around a field that fails validation. I added a file called field_with_error_fix.rb in config…
I found this today - kudos to Carlos Brando for putting together an awesome reference! It's a summary of all the new features rolled into Ruby on Rails 2.…
What a cool day. Here's a quick summary of everything I attend: Jeremy Kemper's keynote - Rails 2.1 is getting released! Awesome changes to migrations (no more…
Man, am I beat! RailsConf was a lot of fun and I learned a lot. Day 3 was a bit shorter and I ran a little late. But here's some of the highlights from the…
So today I attended: Keynote - Joel Spolsky is pretty entertaining, but I didn't get a lot of substance out of his talk. He touched upon keeping users happy and…
So I'm a big fan of David Allen's GTD System. For a long time, I've been looking for a personal information system that could help me get the job done. I've…
There's a lot of debate going on around these two blocks of code. Why am I opting for the top instead of the bottom? Because there's no documentation for the…
I might be getting a little geeky on everyone here, but I have to share something very important to programmers. I recently noticed this in a recent Rails…
Kyle del.icio.us'ed me this article and I really dug it. Work has been really crazy lately - we've been ramping up development efforts so both coding and…
So Kyle convinced me to purchase MarsEdit. I'm definitely digging it and I'm hoping it will help keep me motivating in post regular updates here. So, this is my…
Most Rails developers know of PeepCode but I know only a few that have actually purchased a screencast from them. I'm really happy that they've reintroduced…
I was pleasantly surprised last week when I was at a Boston Web Innovators Group session. At the same bar, there was a consortium of various Northeastern user…
So I use Trac a lot. I love their search mechanism - you can easily pull up a ticket, changeset, or report by typing #(Ticket Number), [(Changeset number)], or…
Dev House Boston 3 is now open for registration. Last year, I helped a team build a component that searches Amazon for album information via web services. Of…
I've been away for a while but it's been with good reason. We've been working hard on launching www.secondrotation.com, and the company is really excited about…
The guys at Particletree published a really cool article on what technology is behind four popular web applications. While the applications are different in…
There are many great sites that publish educational material for the Ruby on Rails framework. Of note, Ryan Bates does a great job with Railscasts. I think…
I'm at the Ebay Developer conference and they just unveiled a new community for developers to showcase their projects. What's really cool is their development…
Well its that time of year again. Dev House Boston is now open for registration. Last year, I helped a team build a component that searches Amazon for album…
Too cool! The team over at FreelanceSwitch.com built a calculator for you to determine your hourly rate. It asks you questions about your budget for office and…
So I haven't had an opportunity to write in a while because I've taken a new full time position with a startup in Waltham, MA. The job entails architecting and…
With my new job, I've been delving into some great tools in the Ruby on Rails Community and I wanted to share some of my thoughts on them.
Congrats to the people over at Gapminder for getting nominated for a webby. Check their site out because not only is their message so important, but their…
I just took the web design survey over at A List Apart. You should too. I found the questions about age and how it impacts your career track really interesting…
I stumbled upon Administaff while talking with a small business client on Friday. It really turned me on to the whole idea of a PEO (Wikipedia Article…
While doing some research on PEO's, I came across SBTV (Small Business TV). There seems to be lots of relevant content for small business owners. I'll…
So my Irish pride got the best of me and I missed last month's BarCamp 2. Kyle pointed me toward WebCamp which is set to happen for June 16, 2007. I'm planning…
Kyle and I took some time to submit our Compeet idea to YCombinator for their annual funding run. It was the type of thing that started out as "let's give it a…
At long last, EnlightSolutions.com looks like a professional website. Please check out some of the new features and content. I'd like to thank Jae Barclay for…
A new friend invited me to a networking event in the North End sponsored by Mayor Menino's OneIn3. It was a great event at the Living Room - lots of younger…
How do you start it? Why do you start it? Mark Taw has posted a great article on why most businesses fail. He's got some great tips for getting started at the…
So BarCamp Boston 2 is set for March 17th in Cambridge. I presented a Ruby on Rails talk at BarCamp Manchester a few month back, but Rajiv is already doing a…
I found a great article on obtaining a small business credit card. I was always been concerned that credit cards that I've held in previous companies affected…
How do you do it? Do you prioritize it over other business activities? I was struggling with consistently getting good posts up - especially when I was going…
So I've been so busy I haven't been able to post about how my retreat went 2 weeks ago. It went really well, but I did fall short on my objectives. Here's a…
So I haven't posted in a while. I've been very absorbed in my daytime job and at home. That's not to say the business has suffered - I've picked up a few…
So I jumped in to today's activities well-rested and motivated. Now, I'm a bit tired, but I think the results of my work today has really made some headway on…
Rick Roberge raises some great discussion questions in a recent article concerning customer loyalty. In the world of Information Technology, I place an…
I spent last Saturday coding in Cambridge at the first DevHouse Boston event. Thanks to Shimon Rura for organizing and Permabit for hosting. It's where a bunch…
I just posted a quick page about me. Thanks to Simon Clay Michael for suggesting it. I realized it was quite silly to have a blog without any contact…
I've been developing some content and marketing material for my site. I found myself thinking long and hard about what exactly I offer to my customers. It…
I use Remember the Milk for all of my task management activities. It's a great help to anyone that is looking to implement David Allen's GTD System. The…
I recently attended BarCamp Manchester. It was my first BarCamp and it was an amazing experience. There were lots of interesting speakers and conversations. I…
In Guy Kawasaki's first chapter of "The Art of the Start" there was a question that I've really been asking myself the last few days. I think I just motivated…
I did a bit of brainstorming today on my business plan. From my previous exploits, I've found that a company without a business plan lacks direction and…
I was looking for a quick, free photo editor for Mac OS X. IPhoto is just horrible. I found a decent program from BeLight Software called Image Tricks. I really…
I've absolutely fallen in love with Podcasts. Here's why: I spend a lot of time on the road and I feel like driving is an absolute waste of valuable time. My…
Guy Kawasaki had some very profound pointers when it comes to technology marketing these days. Remember Geek is not Good Enough? This is exactly what Guy is…
Get it now! If you're unfamiliar with it, Mozilla Firefox is an outstanding web browser used by many web professionals. The new version includes some usability…
I'm a huge fan of Lifehacker. They keep their content fresh, and it's always interesting and helpful content. They recently mentioned a program called AntiRSI…
It goes by many names - FID, EID, EIN - whatever the abbreviation it is, this magic 9 digit number is to your company what your social security number is to you…
In the initial stages of setting up your business, a good accountant and a reliable lawyer will be vital to your success. Ensure that they have the necessary…
It's easy, it's safe and it's smart! It's easy In the parts that follow this article, I'll show you how to do it. Many people are intimidated by the idea of…
There was a very interesting survey on CIOInsight a few weeks back that has some implications on how software startups should do business. The gist of it is…
Ever feel like there's not enough time in the day? From previous endeavors, I've learned that you simply can't commit to something if you don't have the time…
Welcome to Enlight Solutions' blog. For about a week now, I've been developing a business that is going to specialize in software development and consulting…