Twitter: Where Ruby on Rails Goes Off the Track

An article posted on eWeek today was written in an alternate universe where Twitter works:

As the maker of one of the largest applications using Ruby on Rails on the Web, Twitter knows a thing or two about scaling applications built with the popular development framework.

Britt Selvitelle, a senior engineer at Twitter, offered a few tips and tricks for scaling Ruby on Rails and expressed particular appreciation for the Rails framework itself and the language is it based on, Ruby.

"For us, for a large part of our system, Ruby has been the tool that fit," Selvitelle said.

The subhead of the article: "Twitter's reliance on Ruby and Ruby on Rails proves the language's resilience."

Twitter's a nice service, but it's one of the most crash-prone sites I've ever visited. The fact it was written in Ruby on Rails makes me wonder whether the Rails framework can scale, at least once you reach the big leagues and have several hundred thousand users hammering on your web application. On the same day as the eWeek article, TechCrunch floated a rumor that Twitter is dumping Ruby on Rails.

-- via Meme13

Programming · 2008/05/01 · 1 COMMENT · Link

Wikipedia Documents Fake Syndication Format

Ever wonder how long a hoax page could last on Wikipedia if the subject was technical enough to scare off most readers? The answer appears to be six months.

I recently discovered the Wikipedia page for RDX, a syndication format that doesn't exist outside of the encyclopedia and the mind of its creator. I thought I had heard of every feed format after four years on the RSS Advisory Board, but RDX was new to me, so I did a little digging into the subject.

As far as I can determine, every single thing in the article is bogus.

RDX (file format)

RDX is an alternative Web feed format that is a confluence of the widely adopted RSS file format and RDF, another XML format. RDX was created to extend the functionality of RSS while maintaining the usability and readability of the RSS format. By re-introducing RDF elements to the structure of the file, RDX can be use to not only publish blog entries, news headlines or podcasts but also model mutating data.

RDX works under the assumption that data models are prone to growth change in an isomorphic process. By including RDF resources and traits, the relationship between the original RDX document and it's progeny can be reasonably assumed and associated.

The initials "RDX" have been assumed to mean:

• Readux
• RDF Extended
• RSS Description Framework

History

RDX was developed originally as an adjunct file format to the HomeKey research project. The project's aim was to create a program that could address concerns in Ubiquitous Computing, Information Design, data organization as well as language and semantics. The project was named HomeKey for its intense use of symbols beginning with a "House" and a "Key". HomeKey relies heavily on the use of Universal symbols and signs - with applications in personal, education, business, medical and mobile visualization and organization of heterogeneous data. The project was begun in January 2002 and lives today at http://www.homekey.cc.

The project was funded by a stipend awarded by Loyola University & the U.S. Department of Education through the FIPSE/MSEIP Grant (Minority Science & Engineering Improvement Program) in 2003. Research was done in semiology, ethnographic statistics, human computer interaction, design patterns, heuristic evaluations and topology. The code contains libraries programmed in HTML, XML, JavaScript/DOM, XSL, Actionscript, PHP, ColdFusion, Python, Perl, Java and C++.

RDX was envisioned to be the transport language inside of the system, allowing data exchange between different modules as well as textual publication of visual concepts. Moreover, RDX was meant to provide the textual corpus of converted normal web documents into a format that HomeKey could understand. Essentially a glorified meta document, RDX would also be publishable through RSS readers and viewable as XHTML in modern web browsers.

Relationships

RDX stands as a confluence of major standards to maintain interoperability with current technologies and file processors. An example of this kind of compatibility is shown by RDX validating as RSS 2.0 when the version tag is renamed to . RDX achieves standardization by using a similar hierarchy and structure as RSS including the channel and item tags.

RDX, as well, allows XHTML to be embed within a description tag. Additionally, because microformats are pure XHTML, the RDX specification permits this sort of vertical integration of code. Also, similar to the original RSS versions, RDX includes in its specification the incorporation of the file type with RDF and RDFS syntax. A practical case of this methodology is the optional inclusion of Dublin Core Metadata Initiative tags to append metadata within the RDX specified Information tags.

Because none of these inclusions are mandatory, RDX can be thought to be analogous to an overloaded RSS format.

See also

• Microformats
• RSS (file format)
• Atom (standard)
• RDF
• RDFS (RDF Schema)

External links

• http://www.homekey.cc
• http://www.validome.org/rss-atom/
• http://feedjumbler.com/
• http://norman.walsh.name/2003/05/22/rssrdf
• http://www.rss-to-javascript.com/p/138.html
• http://edd.oreillynet.com/stories/storyReader$65
• http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2000/10/25/dublincore/index.html
• http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-wxxm30.html
• http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nylon/0607/index.php

The article has been around since last October. None of the links have anything to do with RDX and there's no RDX specification to be found anywhere. The domains homekey.cc and readux.org are owned by Victor Nwankwo, a Columbia University student who edits Wikipedia as Victorganic and appears to have a rich inner life imagining logos, industry groups and trade publications for his syndication format.

Wikipedia · Rss · 2008/04/17 · 11 COMMENTS · Link

Meme13: Angering New Bloggers in Tech

Meme13 is getting knocked around a bit by people who think that it's just another scraper republishing RSS feeds, hurting the search-engine rank and traffic of the publishers who created the content. Two of those people are Tony Hung and Darren Rowse, bloggers currently featured on Meme13. Hung writes:

... Meme13 is simply pulling feeds and republishing them all.

Like any good ol' scraper blog. ...

More of the GD same -- and what's really funny (again, not in a ha ha way) is not even that Meme13 acknowledges what side of the debate its on, but that its apparently deaf to one of the bigger memes on the leaderboard that its supposedly tracking, and, one of the "bottom 13" that it wants to highlight who felt pretty vocal about the issue (me)!

I am flabbergasted, exhausted, and ... just flabbergasted.

Hung's lament was the top post on Meme13 for several hours Tuesday night. My day-old robot has already turned against its creator.

I'm mindful of these concerns, but I don't think the new service is leeching. I'm aware that "I'm helping you" is Web 2.0-speak for "I'm helping myself to your work" -- one commenter on Rowse's ProBlogger posts the rather Confucian "verbal statements of warm fuzzy intentions can mask a blatant ripoff" -- but the idea I'm pursuing here is an RSS mashup that brings new subscribers to publishers.

Sites only are featured on Meme13 for a short time -- currently around two weeks -- before they drop off and never appear again. The web site doesn't archive anything, so when Hung's Deep Jive Interests is replaced by a newer blog in around nine days, there will be nothing on Meme13 to hurt his search rank.

When I developed Meme13, I considered the idea of only making it available as a feed, because I think that's where the purpose is most clear.

I created this because I needed it. I want to sample new blogs and subscribe to the interesting ones with as little effort on my part as possible. If you see exactly what a feed contains during its trial period on Meme13, including images, full text and the feed's own ads, it makes it easier to decide if you want to subscribe.

This approach appears to be a novel application of RSS -- a rolling reader that constantly changes its list of subscribed feeds.

I'm going to hammer at this idea for a while before giving up on the concept of mashing together full feed entries. If this experiment angers more of the bloggers it's designed to benefit, you can follow their reactions by subscribing to Meme13.

Rss · Programming · 2008/04/17 · 3 COMMENTS · Link

Meme13: Finding New Bloggers in Tech

Steven Hodson writes:

I get a real kick out of it when people start pontificating on why the tech blogosphere is becoming nothing more than [a] self-fulfilling chamber filled with the dull echos of me-too posting that attach themselves like leeches to the supposed brilliant writings of the blogosphere mucky mucks.

Me too.

Every six months or so, techbloggers reach the joint realization that we're all linking to the same people having the same thoughts about the same subjects. Somebody blames Techmeme, a site that collects the most popular links, and we all link to that guy. The resulting argument shows up on Techmeme. A good time is had by all. Last time around, I said I wanted a Techmeme that pretends the most-linked tech sources don't exist, then looks at what's being linked by everybody else. The top bloggers link to each other constantly. You have to look elsewhere for up-and-coming bloggers who are still working in the sweet spot that lies between obscure and insufferable.

This morning, I'm launching a new site, Meme13, to find those bloggers.

Meme13 mashes together the last 13 sites that made their first appearance on the Techmeme Leaderboard. You can read these sites by visiting Meme13 or subscribing to its feed, which contains the latest entries from all of them.

I've been tracking the leaderboard since Feb. 4. In that time, 175 different sites have made an appearance on the top-100 list. The current Meme13 made their Techmeme debut in the past two weeks:

• Amazon Web Services
• Big Tech
• ProBlogger Blog Tips
• Deep Jive Interests
• Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection
• New Scientist Technology Headlines
• DVLabs
• Blog Maverick
• The Iconoclast
• 9 to 5 Mac
• Futuristic Play
• Web Strategy by Jeremiah
• Coop's Corner

When a new site appears, the oldest Meme13 site drops off. So far, sites have stuck around for approximately two weeks. Over time Meme13 should get better at finding lesser-known sites as its database grows.

Meme13's an XML hack that downloads OPML data using a XOM-based Java application, stores the elements in a MySQL database and uses Planet Planet to publish the feeds as a web site and Atom feed. It's updated hourly and published automatically.

The site needs a lot of work, particularly on the interface, but I figured it was time to loose this experiment upon the world.

Rss · Programming · 2008/04/15 · 5 COMMENTS · Link

When Animals Attack

As I spend the day being pecked by journalists, an aggressive and territorial species, Primate Brow Flash reminds me that it could be much worse:

The past two mornings, the same goose has attacked me as I ride by, yesterday attacking me from the side and beating his wings against me, this morning sneaking up silently from behind and crashing into my helmet. I always scream like a chimp when it happens.

When an animal gets this aggressive, my first thought is that it is going to wear itself out and die. Animals, especially in early spring, don’t have all this excess energy to spend against perceived threats."

I was startled once by an opossum in my trash can. After I ran out of my driveway screaming "mommy help me!" a neighbor told me it was more afraid of me than I was of it.

· 2008/04/09 · 4 COMMENTS · Link

Washington Post Wins Another Phony Pulitzer

Washington Post reporter Gene Weingarten, one of the funniest journalists I've ever read, won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing yesterday, honored for a piece in which world-class violinist Joshua Bell played incognito at a DC Metro station and drew little reaction among most of the philistine passers-by.

No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. ...

In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run -- for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look.

It's an entertaining piece that's completely unworthy of a Pulitzer Prize because Weingarten engineered the entire stunt after seeing a talented keyboardist ignored in similar circumstances.

He was quite remarkably good, and no one seemed to be noticing him. He had maybe a buck or two in change in his open case.

I walked away kind of angry. I thought, "I bet Yo Yo Ma himself, if he were in disguise, couldn't get through to these deadheads." When I got to the office, I actually tried to reach Mr. Ma's agent.

Life intervened. Time went by, but this story idea always stayed with me. It was my friend Tim Page, The Post's brilliant classical music critic, who eventually suggested Joshua Bell.

Weingarten, who stumbled upon a decent feature story in that wrongly unappreciated keyboardist, made it a better one by recruiting a classical music virtuoso, picking a better location and staging hidden cameras and reporters to better capture reactions. Journalism, meet reality TV.

His story beat two others honored as finalists. Thomas Curwen of the Los Angeles Times wrote about two victims of a grizzly bear attack and Kevin Vaughan of the Rocky Mountain News wrote a 34-part series recalling a Greeley, Colo., school bus-train accident that killed 20 children in 1961.

Curwen did not recruit the bear. Vaughan wasn't born yet in 1961.

Twenty seven years ago, another reporter at the Post, Janet Cooke, won the same prize for a feature story about an eight-year-old heroin addict. Two days after winning she admitted the entire story was phony and there was no Jimmy.

Joshua Bell exists, but in its own way, Weingarten's Pulitzer-winning feature is just as fabricated as Cooke's.

Journalism · 2008/04/08 · 22 COMMENTS · Link

This One's for the Ladies

A comment posted on The New Republic's weblog:

kevincollins said:

Well, as a lifelong bachelor for 37 years, I'd say I stopped going into restaurants where you tip a waiter or waitress about 10 years ago. I've always averred that it's woefully wasteful. Why the hell should I pay extra just for someone to bring my food to the table? I'm perfectly capable of doing that myself. And the way I see it, food is just something I need to survive. That's why I either get 99-cent items at Burger King, Jack in the Box, or McDonalds or buy 99-cent microwavable items from the grocery store -- I don't need overpriced baby-back ribs from Chili's and the like. It's just frigging food any way you slice it. What really cracks me up are elderly people who go to overpriced cafeterias for food they're perfectly capable of fixing at home, because they're the ones who gripe that Social Security isn't enough income yet blow crucial dollars of their income for eating out. Nowhere in the Constitution is it written that they're entitled the money to eat out, nor is it written that a family of 4 is equally entitled to eat at Appleby's and T.G.I. Fridays and the like every weekend like so many families robotically do as if they're all pod people. So bravo to fast-food places that are getting improved business nowadays. They offer nondescript food at good prices that may not be as tasty as meat at Outback Steakhouse but are perfectly fine nevertheless.

I'd tune in if this guy was the next Bachelor.

· 2008/04/03 · 4 COMMENTS · Link

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