Gowalla spots Google Maps mashup

Sunday monday fun: <a href="http://github.com/pengwynn/gowalla">gowalla gem</a>, <a href="http://maps.google.com">google maps</a>, some Javascript stuff, and a Rails app. <a href="http://gowallamaps.heroku.com">Gowalla spots Google Maps Mashup</a> [http://gowallamaps.heroku.com] It tries to use HTML5 geo location to get a position on the map (defaults to somewhere on USA). Probably best used on the iphone (tried on a friend’s Android and it failed :S). Screenshot: <img src="http://0x82.blog.s3.amazonaws.com/01032010/gowalla.png" alt="" /> Simple hack, and a reminder for <a href="http://www.gowalla.com">Gowalla</a> to open up their API :) Thnks @pengwynn for the awesome gem :) 129 gowalla-spots-google-maps-mashup

2010-03-01T09:29:00-08:00

Gowalla spots Google Maps mashup <a href="http://activitystrea.ms/">ActivityStreams</a> is the next big thing TM. It defines a protocol to syndicate activities taken from web applications (mainly social ones) and services. Just imagine a common spec for describing the activities a user do on Facebook, FriendFeed, Delicious, etc. The protocol originally targeted the Atom XML Standard, via an extension. Later, some work has been done on standardizing a JSON format too. With that in mind, I’ve tried to implement a Ruby parser that defines a common API to access both the Atom and the JSON specification. Is is now available on <a href="http://github.com/webcracy/activity_streams">github</a> and also as a <a href="http://rubygems.org/gems/activity_streams">Ruby gem</a>. Here’s a simple demonstration on how it works. We take the excellent <a href="http://feedproxy.cliqset.com/">Cliqset feed proxy</a> and get an activity streams annotated Twitter Atom feed: <script src="http://gist.github.com/314594.js?file=activity_streams_example.rb"></script>The JSON API is very similar. Some documentation is up on <a href="http://rdoc.info/projects/webcracy/activity_streams">rdoc.info</a> and it is worth checking the spec too. Have fun :) 128 activitystreams-ruby-parser-gem

2010-02-25T07:02:00-08:00

ActivityStreams parser Ruby gem HTML5 is here! Urray! I was tired of hearing about one of the new innovation in HTML5: the <a href="http://dev.w3.org/html5/websockets/">WebSocket API</a>. After reading the excelent blog post about <a href="http://www.igvita.com/2009/12/22/ruby-websockets-tcp-for-the-browser/">WebSockets and Ruby</a> by Ilya Grigorik I got inspired by <a href="http://rfw.posterous.com/musictweets-a-rediswebsocket-powered-experime">this experiment</a> which is a simple example of a twitter-to-browser usage of websockets. Since the excelent <a href="http://github.com/igrigorik/em-websocket">em-websocket</a> was available on github, I decided to write my own “from twitter to the browser” real time updates, with no polling. You can check the final result on <a href="http://github.com/rubenfonseca/twitter-amqp-websocket-example">my github repo</a>. <h3>General overview</h3> Twitter Stream API → Filter → RabbitMQ → AMQP → Eventmachine → WebSocket → HTML5 Brwser Too much buzzwords? Lets look at some code. <h3>Filter</h3> The filter is responsible for eating the <a href="http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Streaming-API-Documentation">Twitter Stream API</a> and puting the tweets on a queue (RabbitMQ in my case) using AMQP: <script src="http://gist.github.com/264450.js?file=gistfile1.rb"></script>Pretty easy right? Notice I am using a fanout exchange, which will allow me to broadcast the same message to all queues (clients) latter on. <h3>Server</h3> Now we just need to build a server that accepts websocket connections, and for each client deliver each message that arrives on the fanout exchange. The code will make this clear: <script src="http://gist.github.com/264453.js?file=gistfile1.rb"></script>So simple, yet so awesome! <h3>Client</h3> The client just have to connect the websocket, and for each JSON piece that arrives on the socket, present them on the screen: <script src="http://gist.github.com/264454.js?file=gistfile1.js"></script>It seems we’ve ended writing almost more JS than Ruby :P Note that I’ve only tested this on Webkit nightly and latest Google Chrome beta for Mac. Overall it was a great and easy experience building this simple system, but it allowed me to realize how simple we can build scalable push systems with the WebSocket API! update: seems like <a href="http://twitter.com/igrigorik/status/7107086085">Ilya Grigorik liked it</a> :) 126 twitter-amqp-websocket-example-no-polling

2009-12-28T10:18:00-08:00

Twitter AMQP WebSocket Example (no polling) quick post to let you know my latest two mini-projects on <a href="http://www.github.com">github</a>: <h3>Ruby library to whit.me service API</h3> <a href="http://whit.me">whit.me</a> is a wonderful service to shorten URLs. They have a <a href="http://www.whit.me/api/docs">public API</a>, and I wrote this library that allows you to use the service in the middle of any Ruby script. The project is available <a href="http://github.com/rubenfonseca/whitme/tree/master">here</a>. It is compatible with Ruby 1.9 and JRuby, and contains a full RSpec test suite. <h3>newzbin XMPP search agent</h3> After spending some time learning <a href="http://xmpp.org">XMPP</a>, I decided to try it and build something useful. So I hacked a simple search agent for the <a href="http://newzbin.com">newzbin</a> website to be used by me and my friends. It is poorly written, but it works. Maybe you can learn something from the simple example. In case you’re interested, the code is available <a href="http://github.com/rubenfonseca/newzbin_xmpp/tree/master">again on github</a>. It uses the XMPP4R gem and CouchDB (overkill, I know). Feel free to comment on any of the code and send me suggestions on how to improve it. 123 two-more-contributions-to-the-open-source-world

2009-05-22T14:22:00-07:00

Two more contributions to the open source world Together with <a href="http://whythehype.com/">Tiago Pinto</a> I’ve completed a <a href="http://www.tarpipe.com">TarPipe</a> <a href="http://tarpipe.rubyforge.org">API for Ruby</a>. <blockquote> tarpipe is a publishing mediation and distribution platform that simplifies regular upload activities </blockquote> The gem is available <a href="http://tarpipe.rubyforge.net">here</a> and the sources are on <a href="http://github.com/rubenfonseca/tarpipe-ruby/tree/master">github</a>. It is my first released gem so feel free to send some tips and suggestions. TarPipe is currently evolving very fast so me and Tiago will make sure our library stays up to date. Have fun doing your uploads! 105 tarpipe-ruby-api

2008-05-20T06:21:00-07:00

TarPipe Ruby API