As luck would have it though, they’re supposed to release a new version of the thing soon-we-dont-know-how-soon-but-soon-we-think so the rumor sites say.

Aaaaaahhh!

Can’t wait though.

I’m no neo-luddite, and I’m generally an early adopter, but have approached Ruby and Rails with only an arms-length interest. But having spent some time this summer doing my own research, I’ve become convinced to embrace it on a couple of big projects at work that are separate platforms from our core product. I’m looking forward to it. One thing I’ve noticed (how can you miss it, they practically yell it), is how much I enjoy and appreciate the culture that’s developed alongside Ruby on Rails in terms of making applications and code elegant, concise, readable, and easy to maintain. The Rails framework seems to make it easy to do things the right way, and I believe the lessons we’ll learn in developing RoR applications will help my team and I become better developers in general, regardless of the development environment we use, and I’m excited about that.

I’m also looking forward to attending the Lone Star Ruby Conference this weekend in Austin and seeing what I can learn.

I spent 7 years using Request Tracker, which was nice in many ways. Biggest drawback with it was poor handling of attachments and lack of reporting (maybe I was using an old version…). I’ve tried FogBugz for a few months, and it was good, but again not happy with reporting and depth of features. Looked at Trac (nice but light on features), Lighthouse (very feature-light), Mantis (lightweight), Bugzilla (you’re kidding, right?). JIRA totally rocks but I’ve owned houses that cost less than what it’d take to use JIRA at my company. Looked at Redmine (promising but can’t determine if it’s better than Eventum).

Here’s what I’m looking for:

1. Free or very cheap (~ $10/month per registered user)
2. MySQL-based
3. Preferably open source / GPL
4. Preferably PHP, but could do RoR or Perl, don’t want .Net, Java or Python
5. Un-registered users can submit issues via email to specific projects/queues
6. Robust email routing/notification
7. Un-registered users can easily see the status / discussion on their issues
8. Robust reporting (charts/graphs, gantt would be nice)
9. Subversion integration
10. Highly customizable

Anyone want to offer suggestions / feedback?

Paraphrasing:
[...]
“ShellEnhancer is an application designed to enhance the default shell of Windows and to make your life easier. ShellEnhancer allows you to make your own tasks. Tasks consist of a number of commands which get executed one after the other. Available commands include: insert text, send keystroke, manipulate windows, run program, start screensaver, lock workstation and many others. Tasks can be executed with hotkeys, mouse gestures or screen corners. This can also be automated with the Auto Managed Windows feature.”
[...]

It also lets you make windows transparent, a nice feature and the one of the things I miss most about my Mac.

While I haven’t spent much time researching this space, on first glance I’d have to give them the benefit of the doubt.

After you go through the quick registration process, you can search for a concept and return a gigantic list of domains based on the concept and a broad list of synonyms, rendered in a format that makes it easy to quickly identify and buy the ones that most appeal to you. You can also choose to show or hide TLD’s as well as whether the domain is registered or for sale or expiring. If the domain is for sale, you can quickly make an offer.

Though I don’t see it, hopefully they’ll soon add the ability to save searches and create alerts as new domains expire.

Many tried, and many failed. But one of the best implementations I’ve seen is the Onion Skinned Drop Shadows by Brian Williams (yes, I’m linking to a 3-year-old article again).

From the article:
[...]
“…if you wish to create visual effects that expand and contract to fit any object, require no image manipulation, and render the same across all browsers, then ‘Onion Skinned Drop Shadows’ may be just what you’ve been looking for.”
[...]

It’s not for CSS rookies, but if you dare, give it a shot. It works well.

Developed by Mike Davidson and Mark Wubben um …several years ago… sIFR allows web designers to “…insert rich typography into web pages without sacrificing accessibility, search engine friendliness, or markup semantics…”.

Using a bit of Flash® and JavaScript magic, it gives you the flexibility to use fonts in your web pages that are independent of browser-installed fonts on the user’s machine.

I won’t go into the technical details, you can do that by reading the article. But it’s a nice way to give yourself wide flexibility in designing sites the way you want with little programming overhead.

For all of you aspiring to make your first million by wedding your livelihood to Google’s P&L’s … they have a new product for you.

Google has released the Google Mashup Editor to beta.

Simply put, it does this:

The Google Mashup Editor provides simple tools and features that allow you to create mashups in minutes.

• A set of tags that compiles into AJAX UI components
• Syntax highlighting
• Autocomplete of gm tags by pressing the tab button
• Quick access to documentation for any tag by pressing F2
• File upload and management
• Error checking and notification

So, Google once again has made it stupid-simple to begin monetizing SaaS PIG’s and launch a Micro-ISV empire! Mwa-ha-ha-ha!

I particularly like the Thickbox image gallery popup, the Ajax tab navigation, and the client-side table sorter.

Digital-Photography-School.com has a good article for “the rest of us” who fill 99% our camera’s SD cards with blurry pictures of the spot our kids were standing just 2 seconds ago.

11 Tips For Better Candid Photography has several “well duh” tips we amateurs may not think about when pickup up our point-and-shoots to capture the latest “DAD! WATCH ME!” moment.