Jason Fried of 37signals mentioned a great book on their blog today. I read the recommended pages (pages 1-6 and 61-64) and I have to agree that the book seems very interesting. Definitely adding this book to my wishlist!
[source: 37signals]
Here is a nice list of Ruby on Rails tutorials that I found on another blog. It's a good place to start learning about Rails and see what others have done with this wonderful little (not so little anymore) framework.
Here's another good resource for the "non-designers" out there. Choose a base color and it'll give you recommendations for a nice color scheme.
[colormatch redux]
A few days ago I wrote an article about all the cool things people have been doing with Google Maps. The integration of the mapping services with other services is often called a "mash-up". These mash-up sites offer a lot of great and innovative services and they are made possible by the API's provided by the mapping sites.
Today I found out about the beta projects that Yahoo is working on. One project is a Flash based map which works very much like Google Maps. They don't yet have the Satellite view available, but I'm sure they are working on it. Much like MSN's Virtual Earth, Yahoo's version offers an array of cool new features that are missing from Google Maps. I love Google and all their great innovative technologies, and they are usually the first ones to get the products or services to us, but they always seem to be outdone by their competitors when it comes to features. Maybe they choose not to provide alot of features and keep things simple? No matter what, being able to plot multiple point on a map is very important and I think they definitely need to add that in. Anyway, I digress...
I won't bore you with any more opinions. Why don't you go and check out Yahoo's new map. And when you're done playing with it, see what others have done using Yahoo Map's API.
Oh and if you're interested in creating your own map mash-up, read this interesting article by Dan Theurer: How to build a Maps Mash-up
If you aren't on the Ruby on Rails mailing list, you have no idea at the level of activity that is currently going on in the Rails community. There are new features, plugins and versions popping up just about every week. On average, I see around 50 new messages a day and about 5 new "annoucements" a week (give or take.)
The last few annoucements (both from DHH himself and from the community) have been very exciting. The two most notable are the annoucement of the final release of Rails 1.0 (which will happen very soon!) and the Rails Engines feature. With all the great plugins being developed, the Rails Engines (which is a plugin itself), allows you to keep your plugin code (Models, Views, Controllers, configurations, etc.) separate from your actual applicaiton code. This way, you can simply upgrade to the latest version of that plugin w/o any fears of overwriting your custom application code.
One of the first Rails Engines powered plugins is the Login Engine, which is simply the original Salted Login Generator, minus the i18n stuff, packaged into a plugin and installed via the Engine. This is a lot to take in at once, so the best way to understand it all is to watch a nifty video. All will be explained my child. Enjoy. :-)