Webware News

Are Twitter’s performance problems due to flimsy engineering or the choice of Ruby on Rails to build the application?

In the Twitter developer blog on Thursday, an engineer said that Ruby on Rails still rocks as a Web development platform. The service’s woes are due more to a creaky architecture, he said.

Twitter performance problems have brought heaps of scorn from the busy Web 2.0 digerati. That has prompted the company to disclose more technical details… like today’s Q and A format blog.

Many people have questioned whether choosing to write the application using Ruby on Rails was a

Continue Reading Twitter: Ruby on Rails rules, but we’re buckling from growth

SAN FRANCISCO–The inner workings of Google just became a little less secret.

The search colossus has shed only occasional light on its data center operations, but on Wednesday, Google fellow Jeff Dean turned a spotlight on some parts of the operation. Speaking to an overflowing crowd at the Google I/O conference… here on Wednesday, Dean managed simultaneously to demystify Google a little while also showing just how exotic the company’s infrastructure really is.

Google fellow Jeff Dean
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News.com)

On the one hand, Google uses more-or-less ordinary servers. Processors, hard drives, memory–you know the drill.

On the

Continue Reading Google spotlights data center inner workings

Dash Express
(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

Dash, which makes the very cool Dash Express GPS gizmo for cars (review), has opened up an API so developers can build new apps for the unit. On announcement, according to a company press release, several apps will be available: a homes-for-sale app from Coldwell Banker, a calendar app that can read appointments from Outlook, Google and automatically route you to them, a weather app from WeatherBug, a speed trap app from Trapster, and Mediaguide…, which can display the songs that just played on local radio

Continue Reading Dash Navigator gets open API

Tom Coates, creator of Yahoo’s Fire Eagle data location broker, took the stage at Where 2.0 to talk up some of the cool new apps that use the platform. “Fire Eagle is nothing,” Coates said, without the apps. Nearly all the apps he mentioned are listed on the Fire Eagle’s Gallery page (log-in required), but what I thought was more interesting were the apps he mentioned that don’t support Fire Eagle yet, but should. Or that simply don’t exist:

The Spot Satellite Messenger… is a handheld device that reports your position, anywhere in the world, every 10 minutes. It

Continue Reading Fire Eagle’s missing apps

Get a bunch of information in a small space with IntelliScreen–a delightfully simple, yet powerful iPhone app.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Despite the iPhone app store being weeks away from launch, developer Intelliborn… has just released a stellar application for users with jailbroken iPhones. Switchers from Windows Mobile phones who missed the “today” screen that lists a gathering of small bits of information on one screen essentially get the same thing with this app, which will compile weather, e-mail, SMS messages, and even RSS feeds on your phone’s screen every time you hit a button to wake your phone up.

Continue Reading The iPhone finally gets proper Web widgets