CouchDB

March 06, 2008
Yet another product that's been lying around but was highlighted here at eTech which I can wait to write about: CouchDB.
CouchDB is a database aimed for Web development and AJAX applications. Key features are:

- Uses JSON format, similar to XML. Easy to read and write.

- HTTP API, obviously.

- Views: Filter, Collate, Aggregate (powered by Map/Reduce).

- Replication and conflit resolution.

- Bonus features: comes with Lucene for fulltext search. You can search JSON structures.

This projecto was accepted for the Apache Software Foundation and has an Open Source license.

And it's written in Erlang using non-locking MVCC and ACID compliant data store. I have excellent references for Erlang for fault-tolerance and scalability, our current XMPP server is ejabberd. It also uses the Mozilla's Spidermonkey engine for javascript engine.

Very nice. More on the wiki.


Tags: etechconf2008



Fireeagle

March 05, 2008
I'm information overloaded and keeping a couple of draft posts to polish when I have time but this is worth mentioning now(). Fireeagle just started sending invitations to everyone. Tom Coates is presenting the project as I write. "Fire Eagle is the secure and stylish way to share your location with sites and services online while giving you unprecedented control over data and privacy. We're here to make the whole web respond to your location and help you to discover more about the world around you".
Although it seems a response to Google's MyLocation on the surface, it's actually a lot more, it's open and you can use it in your website through provided APIs. Dopplr will be the first Website to use Fireeagle.

Something to keep an eye on.
Also, I've been busy posting websites as I grab them. Check my bookmarks RSS feed.





Debugging Hacks: What They Never Taught You About Solving Hard Bugs

March 04, 2008

Hard core grade presentation for programmers. How many of you spent days, weeks or even months fixing the weirdest, unreproducible bug in your app ? I have a few times.

This is presented by Marc Hedlund (blog) from Wesabe.

Short story for an elaborated and fun tutorial, it all goes around detailing this simplified high level procedure to track and eliminate bugs:

1. Revert any changes you made loking for a quick fix.

2. Collect data from each of the components involved.

3. Reproduce the bug and automate it.

4. Simplify the bug conditions as much as possible

5. Look for connections and coincidences in the data.

6. Brainstorm theories and test them.

7. When you find a fix, verify it against the report.


8. Check you haven't created new bugs
You may need to do it repeatedly. You may decide that the cost is too hight. It may take several poepple to final close it but this approach almost always work.

One of the attendees mentioned the holly grail of bug tracking: logfiles. Log everything to files, with detail. The overhead and costs are minimal these days. Have your servers time synced to the second. Users do provide weak reports on the problems, logfiles will be your best friend at the worst times. I couldn't agree more.

Suggested books by Marc:

- Why programs fail. A guide to Systematic Debugging. Andreas Zeller.

- The pragmatic Programmer. Andrew Hunt, David Thomas.

- How to solve it. A new aspect of mathematical method. G. Polya.

- How Doctors Think. Jerome Groopman, M.D.

- Emotions Revealed. Recognizing Faces. Paul Ekman.

- And of course, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The complete Sherlock Holmes. Vol 1.

I'll try and get the tutorial later.


Tags: etechconf2008 tutorial



eTechConf2008 starts

March 03, 2008
Right so eTech2008 just started. I'm attending the  Live, Vast and Deep: Web-native Information Visualization tutorial with Tom Carden and Eric Rodenbeck.
I'm maintaining 3 feeds of data from eTech:

- This blog feed, from my live blogging at the event. RSS here.

- The Photos feed, taken from my iPhone.


At the end I'll also post a nice OPML feed with all the relevant blogs I'm gathering either from speakers or interesting people attending. Stay tunned.





eTech 2008

February 16, 2008
So, here we go again to San Diego for the 2008 edition of my (by far) favorite conference. eTech's program was a bit disappointing when announced a few months ago but as time went by it turned itself into one of the most interesting ever, check it out. So good that I had the decline a rather tempting invitation for another conference in the same week. Sorry Nuno.

The thing about eTech that I love most is that, for those of us who live from and to the Internet, the ultimate unpredictable invention created by man, this is as close as you can get to a glimpse of the future. Your levels of inspiration boost. And you get to see the industry developing eTech's prophecy for the upcoming months, with scaring precision. Hopefully your business, at your scale and with your stack of problems, will run in a better direction too.

Also, eTech's diversity is amazing. It's not just coding and Internet, it's the social behaviours, the hardware, the content, games, finance, hacking, art, biotech, you name it, but in the end I feel we're all geeks and nerds presenting and attending and relating all sessions to the one thing that we're passionate for: Technology. Well, Tim O'Reilly puts it better.

Anyway, expect some blogging from San Diego. eTech has a huge online coverage, both from O'Reilly and the blogging community, so I'll skip the obvious and focus on the specifics that I find most worthy. Posts will be in English this time, sorry.


Tags: etech 2008 sandiego etech2008 ETech08 ETechConf08



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