by cbq
The New Atlanta Office
As Highgroovers slowly trickle in to our brand new digs at the Stoveworks, I'm happy to report that this "Iteration" of the office is awesome.
How did we go from having no office (a few years ago) to this?
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by chris
Finish Weekend Finished
This past weekend, Highgroove and Mailchimp helped Collective Idea bring Finish Weekend to Atlanta.
Instead of a 'Startup Weekend' which is a pretty common occurrence where people bring ideas to start something with, everyone showed up with projects-in-progress and the goal of launching something by the end of the weekend. For me, this meant a big backlog of updates to a rack of servers and updates to some Rails and Drupal sites (as well as pairing with someone else here to beat Diablo III on Normal difficulty), but for other people it meant everything from a brand new company website, to migrating old PHP code to a new Ruby on Rails backed site, to a minimum viable product release of hydrogen: a command line tool for managing WordPress installations.
Read on for more of what we did and what we learned.
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by chris
Finish Weekend ATL
Highgroove Studios is proud to be helping Collective Idea bring Finish Weekend to Atlanta this June:
We've all heard of startup weekends. Many of us have participated in one. Coming up with a new idea is easy, so is getting started. Finishing is hard. Finish Weekend helps you get it done. Come finish those projects you've put off to the side. Maybe you just need a bit of web help, a logo, or some code written. We'll help you finish.
Head on over to finishweekend.com to register, and then come join us the first weekend of June to get your project launched.
Startup Weekend in Atlanta kicked off last night with over 116 participants, and 48 pitches, eventually forming into 18 teams. The concept behind Startup Weekend is to start something up -- a concept, business, or idea, over the weekend. It's centered around technology, with people dividing themselves into categories like: "business folk", "designers", "developers", and other niches. Yup, there was a technology lawyer, there too.
What kinds of ideas are being worked on right now?
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The Beltline Bikeshop App, Bike Spot, is LIVE and available to install on your iOS device!
If you know us, you know we love bikes here at Highgroove. Any cyclist in Atlanta has encountered the 'parking' headache of looking for a spot, much less a rack to lock to while getting around on two wheels. Bike Spot is a bike rack locator designed to track, record, and locate bike racks around town.
Sounds awesome, right? "But how can I use it?" you ask.
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Last Wednesday CBQ and I attended Startup Riot on behalf of Highgroove. We heard 3 minute pitches (and 3 minutes of questions from an expert panel) from 25 startups. This is easily the biggest event in the Atlanta startup community; missing it is not an option and sponsoring was a no brainer for us. We love working with startups, since we used to be one. Read more to learn about how we sponsored this event, and what we got out of it.
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by jonathan
Debugging Ruby Tools
New albums drop on Tuesdays, why not drop some nifty knowledge as well?
Today, I had the pleasure of attending an Engine Yard webinar, Debugging
Ruby Systems. In this webinar, the always sharp Aman Gupta (twitter, github), reviewed his
favorite tools for debugging ruby and rails applications.
The webinar recording isn’t yet up and even though the slides will eventually be posted,
I figured it would be worthwhile to post my notes so here they are. For my
next post, I’ll cover which tools helped me diagnose and resolve an
outstanding issue in one of our current applications. Stay tuned!
All credit for good goes to Aman. Any errors are mine. Most of these tools are linux specific. Enjoy!
Last night, I demoed Scout to a room-full of Rubyists at the Atlanta Ruby User Group Meeting.
I would love to share all the wonderful feedback, but instead, I’ll share some of the excellent questions (and more elaborate answers) that were asked of Scout:
What are the security pitfalls, i.e. can someone simply write a ‘rm -rf’ plugin?
To answer that, let’s look at the architecture of Scout first:
- You install the tiny Scout client (which is a Ruby gem) on your server.
- The client connects over https (always) through a 256-bit secure, encrypted connection (the same encryption your bank uses).
- Scout never logs in to any of your servers.
- All communication is initiated by the client.
- The client downloads a pre-loaded plugin plan, consisting only of plugins of your choosing, so it cannot run plugins you didn’t explicitly authorize.
- The server also uses that same secure encryption for all communication. Individual accounts are protected.
- Client keys (uniquely generated) can be revoked at any time, disabling the client.
The security measures needed for Scout are the same as for any other software. In fact, in some ways, it’s easier to be more secure – the plugins are relatively few lines of code and easy to review. For a more closed environent, you can create a copy of the plugin code and host it on one of your own servers (a plugin is plain text).
Is Scout open source?
The Scout client is completely open source. The gem is a normal Ruby gem, open for development, and distributed under the MIT and/or Ruby License (whichever you prefer). The Scout Plugins people write are also completely open, in fact, they are surrounded and fostered by a community that encourages branching, fixes, and general open-ness.
The Server, where you aggregate your data, do reporting, and in general, collect information about your account is not open-source. We maintain the server, and keep all your data safe and sound.
When does it launch?
We’re doing the plumbing now – account subscriptions, a new home page, privacy policies, backup procedures, etc. We’ve recognized that lots of people are anxious to get going and we’re working to get it ready for public use as fast as possible.
A Presentation on with Screech Powers, Cesar Milan (The Dog Whisper), Sean Penn, and guest Ruby celebrity (and Atlanta native) Obie Fernandez. Despite the antics, Capistrano is a powerful, yet simple, bona-fide, big-boy tool. It sure does make our life easier. We like it so much, we’ve made it our goal with Slingshot Hosting to get your Ruby on Rails application up and running with our customized Capistrano Recipes, so you can focus on development.
“Capistrano – Atlanta Ruby Users Group PDF”(editor’s note – pdf removed)
by derek
Atlanta and Silicon Valley
Atlanta Technology Executive (and recent friend) Scott Burkett blogged recently on what Atlanta can do to emulate the entrepreneurial environment of Silicon Valley. Having lived in both areas, I’ve had a chance to meet and work with many remarkable entrepreneurs.
I think Scott hit many of the comparisons between Atlanta and Silicon Valley on the head. Atlanta is full of smart engineers, isn’t as forgiving to entrepreneurial failures, and like Silicon Valley, does a great job celebrating entrepreneurial heroes.
However, I don’t think the key to sparking innovation in Atlanta is tied to things like tax exemptions, venture funds, and cheap office space. When a company can start worrying about those things, they are already on their way. Innovation comes much earlier on in the process.
What are the biggest differences I’ve seen between Silicon Valley and Atlanta?
