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Getting Things Done

Monthly Archives: November 2009

Fun Fridays: A place for builders

November 29 2009 - Design, Programming, Startups - 4 Comments
The first Fun Friday will be in Barcelona, Dec 11th. Join us!
Hashtag of the event: #funfriday

pollock-as-an-artist

If you are a developer, artist or designer, you can’t miss this event.

We’re planning the first Fun Friday, an open creative event where you must develop a project from scratch, alone or with more people.

Feel like a beginner again. Develop something fun , not worrying whether your boss or clients will like it. Choose pointless or meaningful. Let your ideas fly.

Why?

  1. Before your first project, you probably spent lots of time learning. Starting from scratch again means learning again.
  2. Overcome mistakes you made when you first started. Now you know the right way!
  3. Use the experience you’ll get in your everyday work, after Fun Fridays.
  4. Any technology. Ruby, MongoDB, Scala, Sinatra, Erlang, Sammy.js, whatever!
  5. Build something that will last. We’ll host it for you if possible!

The event

The goal is to build something that works: A web application, an animation, a story, an art concept, any idea. We’ll be working Dec 11th from 9 am to 21 pm and do pizza-driven development.

The event will take place at Teambox’s offices. You can invite as many people as you wish. Bring your computer and best tools.

Are you coming?

Sign up for the event or comment in this post if you have any questions! International visitors are welcome as well, we can offer some place to stay.

los edukadores

Make it happen! Share this on tweeter or comment to let us know you’re coming.
You should also tell your fellow developers or share it in dev groups!

Pablo Villalba

Teambox founder

@micho

Which email provider are your users on?

November 26 2009 - Programming, Teambox - 16 Comments

I wrote a snippet of code that tells you which email providers are your users on.

Teambox’s users are from:

  • GMail, 34%
  • Hotmail, 12%
  • Yahoo, 3%

A good share of the market goes for GMail, suggesting that linking Google Accounts could be useful.

It’s just a simple Rails snippet, which I shared as a gist. You can use it in your Ruby app, just rename User and email fields to whichever you use.

Would you like to try the snippet on your app, and share the results as a comment?

Pablo Villalba

Teambox founder

@micho

Our HAML and SASS presentation

November 25 2009 - Programming - 18 Comments

Today I’m running an introduction to HAML and SASS for the Rails Conference in Madrid.

Haml And Sass

I’m sharing here the slideshow with the whole thing, which is pretty self-explainatory, and the repository with an example project that is converted to HAML commit by commit.

The workshop covers:

  • HAML basics.
  • Setting up an app with it and converting from ERB
  • SASS basics.
  • Best practices: Helpers, conventions.

> Download HAML and SASS presentation as a PDF.
> Demo project in Github. Read commits step by step to see how the app has converted to HAML.
> HAML site and reference.
> SASS site and reference.

sass

Pablo Villalba

Teambox founder

@micho

Concise

November 24 2009 - Design - Write Comment

Good design takes out what’s not essential, the unnecessary repetition, and leaves what’s important.

I love how this diagram contain every element, just once. “Hey Jude” as a flowchart:

hey-jude-flow-chart

Source: Laughing Squid. Thanks, J!

Pablo Villalba

Teambox founder

@micho

Migration complete

November 19 2009 - Teambox - 12 Comments

Last Monday was, possibly, the toughest moment we’ve gone through at Teambox. A huge database with thousands of projects had to be migrated, and we did our best to bring the Teambox 2 experience to the same data you had before.

If you haven’t taken a look at it yet, visit Teambox 2 now, and click on I forgot my Password to create a new password!

It has not been easy, and we are still working on compatibility issues and special cases for some users. If you are having problems, please contact us!

Internally, we’ve been using Teambox 2 in different new ways:

  • Conversations are used to post links and insight on different topics: Git mastery, Chef recipes, etc.
  • Task, with their new statuses, have become our new workflow.
  • Pages are being used to share passwords to services and access data to servers.

Thank you again for your patience! The party is just starting…

BigFish-photo_04

Pablo Villalba

Teambox founder

@micho

Which path should you take?

November 13 2009 - Insight - Write Comment

[Alice to Cat] “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

“–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

This time [the Cat] vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.

Alice has lots of cute metaphors about life. Got some time to read? :)

girl two paths

Pablo Villalba

Teambox founder

@micho

Teambox in the Green

November 10 2009 - Teambox - Write Comment

I’ve been writing stories the past week and everything is in the green!
By the time we launch we won’t be running with scissors any longer.

I don’t know why, but I just like using Mislav in my stories.

feel_green

If you want to try the new version of Teambox 2, it’s up at app.teambox.com

Andrew Brown

Andrew Brown

Usability fails

November 10 2009 - Design - Write Comment

I had a good laugh with these. Straight from the FAIL Blog:

epic-fail-wheelchair-stairs-fail

epic-fail-no-choice-fail

Pablo Villalba

Teambox founder

@micho

Teambox's headquarters

November 9 2009 - Teambox - 10 Comments

Some pictures of Teambox’s new offices, in Barcelona. Feel free to pay us a visit, whenever you wish. We love meeting new people!

There’s plenty of space here, and we’ll soon organize some open events so any developer can join us. Ruby is great, but other platforms are welcome too.

Keep an eye on our blog to learn more about Fun Fridays and DevSurfing, two upcoming projects that will make you feel like a beginner again.

teamboxs-basecamp

Can you see Andrew in the pictures?

teambox-basecamp-2

Multi-monitor goodness!

Pablo Villalba

Teambox founder

@micho

The mouse that wanted to be a keyboard

November 8 2009 - Design - Write Comment

I really hope this project is a joke. It reminds me of that saying, “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. And so they added more and more to the mouse, forgetting that some inches away you have, well… a keyboard.

multi button mouse

Quoting the OpenOffice Mouse site: “You can do far more with this mouse than most people are likely to realize at first [...] You can launch applications from the desktop, and in your browser you can fire up a specific Internet site with one button, then close it with a double-click on the same button.”

But why use the mouse for that? You need macros? Well, that’s why you have a keyboard! Shortcuts! Hotkeys! Bundles! Launch keys! And guess what -if you are using open-office, your hands are probably already on your keyboard.

Pablo Villalba

Teambox founder

@micho