EdgeCloud

Yeah, I mean literally “throwing it.”

We started up our first rails project recently which meant that we had to get the project into subversion. This wasn’t a particular problem in and of itself but I did have some interesting moments going through code to see what needed to be svn:ignore’d so we’d have a “clean” checkout when any of us needed to do so. This bash script from Jonathan Shea on textsnippets.com would have done the trick. I was able to piecemeal some parts together manually to get what I wanted out of it. A look through the script looks like it would have done all the dirty work for us and will be in our arsenal with whatever project is around the corner.

The name EdgeCloud, was pieced together by Nathan and I on a Sunday evening a little over two months ago (you can see that from a quick whois check). After racking our brains for what seemed like an eternity the eureka moment of EdgeCloud made itself known to us. I believe Nathan actually enjoys the honor of speaking the name first - it stuck with the both of us though, even after deciding to sleep on it for a night.

Cybersquatters don’t make things easy for those trying to “earn an honest domain.” Every conceivable (and not so conceivable) combination of wording in the english language is shrouded by a page that retorts that the domain can be had for “$888″ and given our modest beginnings we simply mumbled a few choice words and moved on.

The name is important enough that even after number of such squatters’ pages we continued on, braving the new world ruled by these creative-spark-killers. We poured over numerous books and wikipedia entries, looking for keywords, ideas and practices that we could use to generate new names. I had picked up nameboy (since that seemed to work out for my previous gig “Axiomfire”, which I always thought was a cool name) and started using it repeatedly to sift through combinations. The only other word that stood out to us was Axon but even that was problematic and there were already hundreds of domains with that name taken. Additionally, we wanted to avoid using suffixes like “systems”, “technologies” or “enterprises.” We wanted a single name that said it all, was less than three syllables and didn’t use any extra suffix modifiers.

And EdgeCloud was it. Nathan and I concluded adamantly that it was probably taken but a cursory check concluded that it was still available. But we didn’t grab it at that moment. We slept on it and in the morning after still liking it, we purchased the major TLD versions of the name.

Visually, I think the name is striking. It evokes so many different thoughts and gives so many soft, subtle, yet distinct sets of imagery. Luckily, we were able to find a font to match that sensation from House Industries. If you are ever in need of a font - or design inspiration, then head on over to their site. These guys are kick-ass. (Perhaps more later on the massive, hard-bound, nicely-printed book received with said font package purchase).

Rendered font and all, we forged ahead. I made some minor modifications to give a “cloud” illustration to the logo name area itself. It went through many revisions to get to where it’s at today. I’ve never felt it was complete, but I do feel it’s currently in a reasonable and comfortable place for doing business.

So what is an EdgeCloud? A Google search seems to indicate something along the lines of a star nursery here in the Milky Way (EdgeCloud2). Regardless of any explicit definition I certainly feel that the name provides us with a very strong branding opportunity and I hope we’ll be able to leverage that here in the coming months. It’s interesting to see how strong the desire has been to identify the business even from conception. Even more telling was the compulsion to say that something as simple as “Great Web Applications, Inc.” just wouldn’t do. No, No. It’s about creativity, passion, discipline and intelligence. It’s about “rigid flexibility” and understanding where you fit in the grand scheme of things (either personally or in your market). And it’s definitely about providing a brand that evokes a positive response or emotion whenever it is seen or heard.

What’s in a name? Everything…

It happens more often than you think. I keep my copy of Strunk and White close in case of emergencies.

Intuit’s Quickbooks Online Edition has become my most loved and most hated partner in this business. While I’m excited that OE provides a method by which each partner in the business can log in and see real time the current financial status of the company I’m frustrated by what I deem to be a lack of strategy for openness and a little bit of a “nickel and dime ‘em” theme going on.

Tonight, I decided to update the invoices that Quickbook generates for our customers. Luckily, there is a certain amount of flexibility in this. The big feature is the ability to attach your company logo to the invoice and align it as you see fit within the flow of the rest of the document. The problem with this is that there are no specifications whatsoever on how to accomplish this. Intuit’s only guidelines are that it doesn’t exceed 200k and that it be a common image file format. But nowhere does it specify or provide hints as to how it should be measured out so that it flows well with your invoice. I was simply reduced to trial and error. (Add to that the workflow process I had to use because I was photoshopping the file and getting it into my Windows XP install on my MacBook since QBOE only works on Windows/IE — but that’s another post). So there’s not much you can actually get out of this little feature. I’m wondering if my final rendering is even worth it. I might simply go back to plain text (less is more, right?). I’d like to take a fresh look at it again when I have a fresh mind but for now it’ll have to do.

The MacBook memory upgrade, while not as easy as some Dell lappie upgrades I’ve done in the past, is still not bad. Luckily, there some folks folks who can’t help themselves from disassembling new Mac hardware which is great because it provides us with some real world guidance on what’s going on once we remove the battery. The most difficult part of the upgrade itself was removing the panel that shields the battery from the memory. These are the “not even the smallest screwdriver in the world could unscrew me” screws. Using a knife (what can I say, I couldn’t wait) I unscrewed the screws from the panel and gently removed it. The two memory slots (thank you Apple for giving us two!) sit underneath where the panel laid and using the levers for each you can easily remove them. Now here’s where that real world guidance comes in handy as the big suggestion on inserting new sticks was to make sure they are properly seated. You will have to put more pressure than you think you will need to accomplish this…there is a significant pop and drop when you get it right. The thing is solid so you shouldn’t hurt anything. After I did this on my MacBook, replaced the battery and panel, I started it back up and voila! 2GB of RAM. All the better to run Virtue and Parallels with.

I continue to be impressed with the performance of the MacBook.

Well written instructions on the simple process to get a shared printer talking from Windows to Mac. The key here is the Apple Color LaserWriter printer driver trick. Good call - works like a champ and now I can print to my Mac Mini from my Macbook (running Windows XP through Parallels). Sweet.

It’s a bold statement, but given the experience I’ve had with my new MacBook in just the last 12h, I can assure you this is not anywhere near an over-exaggeration. With the MacBook, Apple has redefined the consumer laptop segment by engineering a masterpiece. But you knew that. If you own a Mac, you love the design, adore Mac OS X and talk about your machine like it’s part of the family.

So what makes this iteration of Apple’s consumer laptop (as well as every MacIntel to come out so far) so special? One word: Parallels. When I first saw this a couple of months ago on TUAW I was completely intrigued. As a Web Developer, I’m wedded to developing in Firefox (and happily so), but tweaking to IE which means that I have to have a windows machine to do so (yeah, or Linux/WINE). But it’s incredibly difficult to maintain such a set up and still maintain a high level of productivity. The dream setup would be to run Windows inside of Mac OS X - seamslessly and without rebooting (a la boot camp) - and it should be fast unlike VirtualPC. I was convinced though that even if Parallels could do this then certainly Apple wouldn’t make a consumer grade laptop that could handle this type of work. Boy, was I ever wrong.

Enter the Core-Duo MacBook, capable of 2GB of RAM: an incredibly powerful combination that is a web development workhorse at-the-ready.

In the first days after the MacBook started shipping there was even footage showcasing some possibilities with Virtue and Parallels (fast and “perty”). Now I can personally vouch for the MacBook - it is a more than capable machine that can run (multiple installs of) windows and allow you to do the IE6/IE7 testing that you need to do. That alone is worth the price of the machine. Add blazing fast performance (Firefox is no slouch as a Universal Binary), built-in iSight, FrontRow (and Remote - which is definitely icing on the cake) and you have a monster package.

If you are a developer, I would heartily recommend purchasing *any* of the Core Duo Intel-based Macs. Parallels is clearly a killer app for developers and makes your next Apple purchasing decision not just the most important one you’ll ever make - it’ll be the easiest one.

Amazon currently has MacBooks with $100 rebate or MacBook Pro’s with $150 rebate (no tax, fast shipping). Even though it says Pre-Order and they scare you with a July ship date, I got mine in less than a week. Also, check out AppleCare there as it’s $30 cheaper than buying it at the Apple Store. You can easily save some serious cash by going that route - a great deal for such a great machine.

I’ll post more on how my memory upgrades and Parallels + XP Pro install went a little later.

Excellent article on how well screen readers deal with rich interfaces (using ajax) — with research to back it up.