Disqus - Latest Comments for rtwomey

Re: How we use Sidekiq and Redis for massively concurrent workers

rtwomey — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 21:34:07 -0000

Awesome, great resources. Thanks.

Re: How we use Sidekiq and Redis for massively concurrent workers

rtwomey — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 21:26:15 -0000

We're using MRI as it's plenty performant enough for our needs, but perhaps in the future we'd consider moving to something with native threads.

Re: Thoughts on Google and Apple's Earnings

rtwomey — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:46:06 -0000

What would make you feel more comfortable with Apple? At what point would such compelling fundamentals make it possible to overlook things like their management transparency track record, or are you out no matter what?

Re: CBS Is Quietly Building An Internet Radio Powerhouse

rtwomey — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 11:27:32 -0000

It will definitely be interesting to watch. I liken this to the Internet video industry: it wasn't until YouTube proved that online video could be a commercial enterprise did the media companies become interested in working with the trend (Hulu) instead of against it.

I'd bet that the success of streaming radio via Yahoo and AOL (and Pandora and Last.fm) has shown the media companies that it's possible to work with this audio trend rather than against it.

Re: There Are Two Phones In this World: iPhone and Not iPhone

rtwomey — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:24:13 -0000

I'd still recommend it. Text messages are very easy to use, and I especially like seeing it in the iChat-like interface. For web connectivity, you can't find a better device: Safari on the iPhone is excellent. And you'll probably like the apps. There's a lot out there and I'm sure you'll find one that's helpful.

Re: Example of Good PR

rtwomey — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:49:05 -0000

Terrible pitch. Aside from the complete nonsequitor of Wired, I have no idea what they're talking about.

Re: Calculate How Much Spam Costs You

rtwomey — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:16:03 -0000

I'm not too annoyed by the marketing pitch. Really, I prefer things like this over advertisements: it proves to you why you should consider their service using your own data. If we had fewer banner ads and more things like this, people could judge for themselves what products to purchase on a far more even level.

Re: Apple releases iPhone 2.2 update, it’s a big one

rtwomey — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:05:08 -0000

I've been using the update over the weekend, and I'm certainly impressed. The iPhone is getting progressively better, but I wonder about Apple's priorities. For instance, street view is a nice feature (and they implemented it beautifully), but I think there are other, more pressing priorities they could have worked on instead.

For one, the maps feature is *so close* to being great for in-car navigation. All it would need is improved recognition of where you are on your route. Throw in turn-by-turn directions and route-recalculation and you've got a full-blown GPS device right there. I see no limitations with the hardware that would prevent this, only that it must not be a very high priority for Apple.

So how does Apple decide priorities? GPS devices have been fantastic holiday sellers. If Apple implemented these features in the iPhone, couldn't they make the marketing case to consider the iPhone as a gift instead of a GPS device? Seems like that might further help holiday sales.

Re: How to calculate cost-per-acquisition for startups relying on freemium, subscription, or virtual items biz models

rtwomey — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:51:39 -0000

Great overview. I typically focus on two critical parts of this for my freemium service: breadth and conversion ratio. I first ensure that we have a steady flow of new users coming to our service and registering for the free account, then I make sure I'm spending enough time getting our conversion ratio as high as possible. It's death if either of these sides of the equation get out of balance.

I've found that getting people to sign up for a free account is often the easy part: convincing enough people to sign up for the paid version is where the real work lies. :)

Re: Usability presentation for iPhone apps and store

rtwomey — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:39:41 -0000

Very interesting research. I'm especially intrigued about the results of the App Store behaviors. Most of what I saw confirmed my own suspicions, but it's reassuring to see people taking reviews "with a grain of salt". A lot of developers (myself included) have felt that the reviews on an app can make or break it with new users, but if people really are skeptical, then there may be some hope.

Re: Does a Web Office hurt Google or MSFT?

rtwomey — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 11:31:24 -0000

I certainly agree with you on that. I think people that promote Google Docs as an Office killer aren't quite understanding what Google Docs is all about (and what it isn't). It's excellent for collaboration, and I use it regularly with people at work. However, it's definitely NOT an Office replacement.

Microsoft realizes this, and I think that's why having an online presence to compete with Google Docs will hurt Google far more than cannibalize any Office sales.

Re: Does a Web Office hurt Google or MSFT?

rtwomey — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 09:39:29 -0000

Another possibility could be that this further extends the Office dominance in business, and slows down the adoption of Google Docs. Many businesses purchase Office for the desktop as a necessary cost of doing business: they're not interested in jumping through hoops to save a few bucks (Open Office has only a fraction of Office users). Extending that idea, I don't think Google Docs could be a replacement for Office anyway, as these mainstream users just aren't interested in switching.

Therefor, I think by giving users additional options for using their existing Office installation will only further solidify Office dominance and continue to give users just enough reason not to switch. So I see it hurting Google far more than it could ever hurt MSFT.

Re: How Apple Can Support True Background Applications on the iPhone

rtwomey — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 16:13:48 -0000

I agree, but what if you just limited it to one app at a time? Basically, you'd restrict the user to only have 1 foreground and 1 background app running at any time.

I worry that if you use the slicing approach (which is perfectly fine in that case), you would find yourself getting into task manager territory.

Re: Help, I’m clueless about Web Service scalability

rtwomey — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:05:02 -0000

@paul: One easy thing you can do is high-availability failover where a separate server takes over the IP address (and other characteristics) of your failed server. Check out www.linux-ha.org.

Re: Ryan Twomey - ActiveMerchant is about as easy as it gets

rtwomey — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:25:30 -0000

You bet. I'm still working through my implementation now, so there's still some work to be done. Incidentally, I used your Peepcode book as an introduction to getting started, which was a very helpful guide.

Re: Ryan Twomey

rtwomey — Sun, 18 May 2008 10:51:29 -0000

haha, thanks. I'm using it too, and I'm impressed. It's a nice eye-candy way of viewing feeds, though it's not really meant for hardcore RSS addicts.

What I'm doing, actually, is pulling together lots of feeds that aren't in my regular newsreader and using snackr to display them. That way, whenever I glance over at it, I'm guaranteed to see something I haven't already read, and can pick out things I may not have seen otherwise.

Re: Ryan Twomey - A busy day...

rtwomey — Sun, 18 May 2008 10:41:38 -0000

Thanks. Luckily, the rain has been holding off. Hopefully it stays that way, otherwise it will be a miserable day.

Re: Switching to Gmail

rtwomey — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:08:16 -0000

@Jeff: No, labels don't modify a message in any way. When you forward the email to your secondary account, it will need to search for key words in that email to apply the label. So this may not be possible, if you're just manually applying labels to your messages.

Re: Switching to Gmail

rtwomey — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 20:33:47 -0000

@Jeff: First, yes: labels are treated as folders in IMAP (an email that appears in multiple folders means it has multiple labels).

Second, to create that mirror Gmail account, yes: you would need to (painstakingly) recreate each label and filter, which can be quite a bit of work.

Third, you're right: you won't be able to assign labels using the auto-forward, but if you setup your filters correctly on your mirror Gmail account, you can reapply those labels when it receives a forwarded email. So, on the mirror account, setup filters that check for keywords for each message to assign your labels to.

Fourth, you may not be able to just do the forward/filter tip I suggested, due to your setup (if you do a lot of manual labeling, for instance). In that case, you're options are to either relabel each item in your mirror Gmail account, or "just live with it" as a collection of lots of emails forwarded.

And finally, for the process of copying, again: I don't use Thunderbird and don't know much about copying messages using it. But if it's like Apple Mail, then you can do the following: select one or multiple messages, start dragging them to the destination Gmail folder, then press down the Command key (a green plus icon will appear, to indicate you're COPYING, rather than MOVING, your messages), then drop those messages on that destination folder. I imagine Thunderbird is similar.

Anyway, like I said, try copying just one message to start and seeing what happens. Also, I suggest you check out the ThunderBird community support sites (http://www.mozilla.org/supp... for better information than I can provide. Hope this helps!

Re: Switching to Gmail

rtwomey — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 13:45:38 -0000

@Jeff: Okay, I think I understand better now. I did something similar when I was experimenting with this IMAP setup, in that I had a secondary Gmail account where I would upload one message at a time from my local copy to see what would happen.

What I suggest trying is to use your secondary account and copy over just one message. Start with that and see how it works. Consider sending yourself an email that you don't care about, and experiment with it. Then, try dragging that email over to your secondary Gmail account, and see what happens. Did the email copy over? Did it get deleted from the first account? If you can answer those questions, then you'll have a pretty good idea of what will happen when you actually copy over your real messages.

One other thing: to keep your emails in sync with both Gmail accounts, I imagine you're going to setup an "auto-forwarder"? You can do this using Gmail, where it will automatically forward every email that comes in to your secondary Gmail account. Then you won't have to worry about copying messages over like this again: they'll already be there.

Re: Switching to Gmail

rtwomey — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 23:33:41 -0000

@Jeff: So, if I understand correctly, you want archive all of the email that's currently in ThunderBird into Gmail (i.e. messages stored in TB that were there before you setup your Gmail account)? If this is correct, then the idea is this: add your Gmail account to Thunderbird as a second account, using the IMAP protocol (instructions from Google are at http://mail.google.com/supp..., then drag+copy the email messages from your existing TB folders into the corresponding Gmail folders. To prevent losing any messages, be sure you COPY (not MOVE) your email messages.

Sorry I can't be more helpful, though, as I'm not using ThunderBird for email (just Apple Mail). Post any other questions you have though, as others may be able to help.

Re: Updating Rubygems in Leopard (Mac OS 10.5)

rtwomey — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:37:33 -0000

@rikas: Sounds like you need to set RUBY_SOURCE_DIR to point to your 1.8.6 installation of ruby:

RUBY_SOURCE_DIR="/path/to/ruby_source" gem update

Re: Hiding a mounted volume on MacOS

rtwomey — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 00:20:59 -0000

hey, that's a great idea! It never occurred to me that in the UNIX world, files/folders starting with dot count as "hidden", but in Windows, they're ignored. Great tip!

Re: Hiding a mounted volume on MacOS

rtwomey — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 19:32:41 -0000

Well, after upgrading to Leopard, not sure if this still works or not. I installed Leopard and my Untitled volume (the Windows partition) appeared on my desktop again. Re-running the command above seems to give a permissions problem. If anyone else has any suggestions, be sure to post!

Re: Apple iPhones reduced in price

rtwomey — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 22:11:25 -0000

You know, that's a very good point. He sure knows what he's doing, alright. :)