Entries tagged: ruby on rails

We’re looking for Ruby on Rails developers in Europe!

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Okay, not really… but we’re really excited to see the news that Obama has, “highlighted his ambition for the development of high-speed passenger rail lines in at least 10 regions.”

image from nytimes.com

As you know, we’re big fans of traveling by Rail. You can read the article on nytimes.com.

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The team at Planet Argon introduces the survey for people who deploy Ruby on Rails applications! That’s right, we’ve decided to collect, organize, and share valuable information about how people are managing their deployment process.

We invite anyone who is involved in the deployment management of Ruby on Rails applications to participate in the Rails Hosting in 2009
survey, which will be close on February 1st. Sometime thereafter we will publish the results, along with the anonymous raw data, for use by everyone in the community—including our competitors. Here at Planet Argon, it is our mission to strengthen and improve our hosting-related products and deployment
services based on real feedback from the trenches. So please, if you have a few minutes to spare, take our survey and help us take a giant step into future of Ruby on Rails hosting.

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By popular demand.. we’re happy to announce that we’ve just rolled out monthly subscription plans for Boxcar, our professional VPS hosting solution for Ruby on Rails applications. That’s right! You can now order a new Boxcar on a month-to-month basis for just $99/month.

Our team has been building a completely new account management and billing system for the past few months and just launched the initial version. Our aim was to get the essentials out to our customers and work with them to learn more about their goals for managing their Boxcars. Over the next few months, we’ll be building automation tools to simplify the process for deploying Ruby on Rails applications to your Boxcar. Be sure to stay tuned and follow Boxcar on twitter as we’ll be posting information there as we launch these changes.

For more information, visit railsboxcar.com or contact us.

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A week ago, we quietly opened up the process for accepting new orders for our brand new hosting solution for Ruby on Rails. Here is what we sent out to all those who signed up on the Rails Boxcar mailing list.

Rails Boxcar is here!

We’ve been busy getting everything setup and tested for our newest hosting solution for Ruby on Rails. Boxcar, a pre-configured virtual server for hosting your business-level Rails applications, was developed out of our observations of how our Rails hosting customers are deploying their applications. Boxcar was designed to support the best-practices for Rails deployment.

How, you ask?

Unlike a typical VPS, we’ve pre-configured Boxcar to allow you to follow just a few steps to get your Rails application up and running as quickly as possible. We’ve also given you more control over your environment to install additional packages, gems, and programs.

We don’t want your Boxcar to box you in… except when you want it to.

Boxcar will provide you with more privacy. Your application will be completely separate from other customers’ applications. You will also get excellent performance as you will not be competing for memory usage or disk space with other customers, which leads to more stability for your application.

Don’t feel lonely!

All Boxcar customers will have access to a community-driven documentation project, aimed at helping everyone share tips
and tricks for configuring and maintaining your Boxcar.

Ready to hop on our train?

For the initial launch, we’re offering 6 and 12 month plans, both of which have a 30 day money back guarantee. Prices start at $85/month for the twelve month plan and $90/month for the six month plan.

Go ahead and place an order

Questions?

If you have any questions about our new Boxcar service, don’t hesitate to send an email to contact@planetargon.com or give us a call at +1 877 55 ARGON.

We’re excited about the launch of Boxcar and would like to thank all of our existing customers who have helped us design it.

Cheers,

The PLANET ARGON Team

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It was just two years ago that I discovered local beverage company, Viso (Visoda at the time), makers of the popular Vigor energy drink. It has since become a staple in the PLANET ARGON offices.

“Its cheaper than a mocha, has more caffeine, and has vitamins so I don’t end up in catatonic state after coding for 20 hours straight.” — Alain Bloch, Rails Developer, PLANET ARGON

Organically sweet, available at our neighborhood coffee shop (and most nearby markets and grocers), and chocked full of caffeine. 300mg, to be precise. You read that right, 300! According to the bottle sitting on my desk, that is the equivalent of 3 cups of coffee. But don’t worry, it’s all organic, so it’s good for you… right? ;-)

Viso beverages taste great and are nothing like regular energy drinks. They’re sweet (but not too sweet), non-carbonated, and full of vitamins. You can also get a sugar free version, called Will. Non-caffeinated varieties available too. You’ll likely see me wandering the conference floors with one in my hand.

Where to get Viso?

• Order online (website designed by Portland locals, Needmore Designs)
• Backspace (where we often buy it.. 1/2 block away from our office)
• Several smaller markets (think that 7-11 is carrying it now too)
• Bars (some bars now make Vigor-based hard drinks!)
  As you can see, we take our Viso drinking… very seriously.

Consider this a friendly tip from the locals, if you need a little pick me up that you can carry around in your bag, grab yourself a Vigor and join the ranks of the Portland caffeinated.

“Viso makes me feel alive again!” — Chris Griffin, User Interface Design, PLANET ARGON

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As Portland prepares for an influx of Rails enthusiasts, Robby is getting warmed up for the Business of Rails panel, where he will be joined by other Rails business leaders to talk about what it takes to be a successful Rails consultant.

For those of you in the Czech Republic, be sure to catch up with Robby at Ostrava on Rails in June, where he will be making a Business Case for Rails.

Not going to make it to Portland or Ostrava? No need to feel left out, Robby has promised a series of blog posts, also titled a Business Case for Rails.

Last, but not least, check out Robby’s comment in Sun sets its sights on Web 2.0 start-ups
.

Ruby on Rails has been considered a major threat to the Java community for quite awhile,” said Robby Russell, executive director of Planet Argon, a developer of community and social networking Web sites in Portland. Sun has now developed J Ruby, which lets Ruby applications run on top of Java. And the theme of JavaOne this year is “Open Possibilities.”

It’s a beautiful day in Portland, let’s hope the sun stays around for all of you heading our way.

We look forward to talking with you about the Business of Rails.

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It’s been year since I announced our Rails Business Hosting, and it has been a popular hosting choice for many of our customers. We’ve been hard at work designing a new hosting service, which aims to provide you with even more privacy, more guaranteed resources, and better options for scaling your Rails application as your business grows.

In the coming weeks, the PLANET ARGON team will introduce Boxcar, an exciting new hosting service that has been designed, developed, and fine-tuned over the past several months.

In the meantime, check out the new Boxcar site, launched this morning by our designer in residence, Chris Griffin. Sign up on our mailing list to be one of the first to find out when this new service is available for public consumption. You can also stay tuned to our blog, as we’ll be posting more updates over the coming days and weeks as we prepare for our launch!

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Earlier today, ComputerWorld published an article that lists what they believe are The Top Five Technologies You Need to Know About in ’07. In this article they list the following.

Five Hot Technologies for 2007

1. Ruby on Rails – Faster, easier Web development
2. NAND drives -Bye-bye, HDD?
3. Ultra-Wideband – 200x personal-area networking
4. Hosted hardware – Supercomputing for the masses
5. Advanced CPU architectures – Penryn, Fusion and more

That’s right! You might have noticed that ComputerWorld has named Ruby on Rails, our development framework of choice, as the top technology to know about in 2007!

“Equal parts design philosophy and development environment, Rails offers developers a few key code-level advantages when constructing database-backed Web applications. One of the central tenets emphasizes using less code for application development by avoiding redundancy and following Rails conventions. This means increased performance and, ideally, decreased development times.”

It’s great to see that the technology that we decided to adopt over two years ago is still making big headlines!

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Although Railsconf is still three months away, people are already planning for what should be a great four days of learning, networking and, of course, fun.

What makes this year’s conference even more special is that it is in our home town of Portland. For those of you who have yet to visit, you’re in for a treat. For a somewhat small city, it certainly has a lot going on. Perhaps the most attractive aspect, to many people like myself, is the abundance of outdoor activities. Having access to countless trails, skiing and more, all within an hour or so drive, makes it a great place to live.

While you may not get time to head out of town to wander around the Gorge, its easy enough to get over to Forest Park, which is a great place for walking, running and cycling. It includes over 5,100 wooded acres making it the largest, forested natural area within city limits in the United States. More than enough space to wander around while you absorb what you learned at the conference.

Cyclists can rent from various places around town, with Fat Tire Farm being the closest to the park. Its actually on the same road as one of the entrances to a good cycling trail, which can be accessed by heading west on Thurman St. However, they do not take reservations and it is first come, first served. Getting over there from the Convention Center is also very easy, with Portland’s excellent public transport system. Most of the downtown area is covered by a fareless square, which means you can take the Max, for free, over to west Burnside, then catch the 15 bus over to NW 23rd.

We hope you’ll enjoy Portland as much as you enjoy the conference itself!

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