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Category: Rails

Rails Boxcar hitched to a new company: Tacoma group acquires Planet Argon Ruby on Rails hosting

And while I love all Portland and Silicon Forest projects equally, those first couple of projects I covered will always hold a special place in my heart. So today’s news that Rails Boxcar was headed north to Tacoma got my attention.

Roughly two years ago—along about the time I launched Silicon Florist—Portland-based Planet Argon was launching a project of their own: a hosting service for Ruby on Rails apps called Rails Boxcar.

And while I love all Portland and Silicon Forest projects equally, those first couple of projects I covered will always hold a special place in my heart. So today’s news that Rails Boxcar was headed north to Tacoma got my attention. Read More

Tastymate adds an extra ingredient to restaurant reviews

Whether it’s true or not, folks in Portland like to claim that we’ve got more restaurants and bars per capita than any city in the United States. And that has a lot of folks thinking about the ranking and reviewing of those restaurants and bars.

I mean, we have a ton of restaurants. But they’re not all good.

Enter tastymate, a new restaurant review tool, which has quietly launched a BETA of its service.

A Ruby-on-Rails side-project for Graeme Nelson, tastymate was designed to be simple, straightforward, and quick, with a simple premise:

I created tastymate because I wanted a better way to find and share tasty restaurants and bars. I wanted to be able to find tasty spots through my friends and their friends.

“Voting” is based on how many people have added the restaurant or bar to their personal lists of “tasty spots.”

So, it’s another restaurant-review site, you say. What’s the extra ingredient?

The little extra ingredient that makes tastymate interesting—besides its inherent simplicity—is tastymate’s Twitter integration.

Follow tastymate on Twitter and you’ll receive notifications when new folks join or when restaurants are added.

If you have Twitter on all-day, it provides a pretty compelling way to answer the “where should I go to eat?” question when you have recommendations flowing in via your Twitter stream. Especially as the user base continues to grow.

For more information or to register for an account, visit tastymate.

Planet Argon offers up Boxcar account for October Hackfest

To support the monthly Rails Hackfest, Portland-based Planet Argon has offered a six-month Boxcar account to 1st place winner for October.

Boxcar is a pre-configured virtual server for hosting your business-level Rails applications and was designed to support the best-practices for Rails deployment.

The Rail Hackfest was designed to further the development of Ruby on Rails source code through good-natured competition. Contributions are rated and charted throughout the month, with the top contributors walking away with prizes.

For more information on Boxcar, see the Boxcar site. For more information on the Rails Hackfest, visit the Working with Rails site.

Making PHP act like Rails

The Portland PHP users group, pdxphp, has scheduled its next meeting for September 11 at CubeSpace. The topic? Implementing Rails concepts with PHP.

The meeting begins at 6:30.

The Portland PHP Users Group is a community forum for people to share, meet and learn about PHP and Open Source technologies. The group strives to be a valuable resource for anyone interested in PHP regardless of their skill level or background. Through sharing and communication we believe we can foster a creative and successful community of PHP developers.

For more information, stay tuned to the pdxphp site.

Additional details on Rails Boxcar

Last week, I mentioned that Portland-based Ruby on Rails shop Planet Argon had released Rails Boxcar, a leased hosting environment for Rails applications. At that point, details were a bit slim as to what the Rails hosting environment would offer and what it would cost.

Today, Planet Argon officially unveiled the service offering on their blog:

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.

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.

For more information, see the Planet Argon blog.

RailsBoxcar open for business

Unveiled earlier this year, RailsBoxcar is now open for business.

Portland-based Planet Argon has announced that the pricing for their Ruby on Rails hosting environment has been released and that they are prepared to take orders.

Good news if you’re a Portland Rails developer looking for local hosting for your app.

[Boxcar is] 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.

For more information, see the Planet Argon blog.

PLANET ARGON is a Ruby on Rails development, consulting, and hosting company that encompasses a network of developers and administrators that love working with open source technology. Founded in 2002, PLANET ARGON started only as a custom web application development company, but eventually expanded its services to offer web and database hosting to the general public, specifically to fellow developers.