Ruby on Rails Tutorial, 2nd edition (updated for Rails 3.2)

Michael Hartl’s free has helped a lot of people to learn the voodoo that is Rails and Michael is currently updating his ebook for Ruby 1.9 and Rails 3.2, and of course, the update is still available online for free. This initial release consists of the first five chapters, and each week he plans to release 1–2 additional chapters until the full book is out. You can sign up for the Rails Tutorial News Feed to be notified when new chapters are ready.

The second edition includes many new features:

• Fully updated for Rails 3.2 and Ruby 1.9
• Coverage of the new asset pipeline
• Behavior-driven development (BDD) with Capybara and RSpec
• An introduction to Cucumber for writing client-friendly tests
• Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets with Sass
• Better automated testing with Guard and Spork
• Rolling your own authentication with has_secure_password

GTBank is becoming more innovative

One of the newest solutions from GTBank is the 'SKS Teen Mastercard', which enables you to send money to your teenager anywhere in the world. With this, GTBank is trying to create compelling solutions for teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18 which will enable them to also have their own Mastercard which can be used worldwide.

Good one on that GTBank.

Free “Starling” book from O’Reilly

O’Reilly has just released a free book on the Starling Framework written by Thibault Imbert. This is essentially an updated and enhanced version of the getting started PDF that he wrote around the time of the release. Here is the abstract:

Starling is an ActionScript 3 2D framework developed on top of the Stage3D APIs (available on desktop in Flash Player 11 and Adobe AIR 3). Starling is mainly designed for game development, but could be used for many other use cases. Starling makes it possible to write fast GPU accelerated applications without having to touch the low-level Stage3D APIs. 

Most Flash developers want to be able to leverage GPU acceleration (through Stage3D) without the need to write such higher-level frameworks and dig into the low-level Stage3D APIs. Starling is completely designed after the Flash Player APIs and abstracts the complexity of Stage3D (Molehill) and allows easy and intuitive programming for everyone.

Thanks to Thibault for creating a great beginner resource for Starling. You can also check out Lee Brimelow's video tutorial on Starling at gotoAndLearn.

Is Femi Fani-Kayode any Different?

A fellow encountered this with Femi Fani-Kayode yesterday on Facebook:

Adegbesan Adekoyejo:

Very well said, i want to begin to look at you as the new because u still look young and you are very intelligent, however i am odds with that reasoning, perhaps because you served under another wasteful government where the vice and the president exposed their dirty linen in public. I am not one taken to sycophancy sir, i also suspect we might see you in 2015, or maybe not. Are you able to tell us using the luxury of your facebook page what you achieved as Minister of the Federal Republic during your tenure and why the allegations against you are not true. I am sure we have so many like me who will like to know sir. That said, excellent piece as always!

Femi Fani-Kayode:

@Adegbesan, young man, this posting is not about me but about our country and in any case who appointed you as the judge over me or anyone else? If you want to know about my achievements when I was in public office four years ago please go and ask your father (if he is still alive) or go to my website and read up on it. Meanwhile I have nothing to prove to you and neither do I care what u think of me or the government that I served. Do yourself a favour and think about what is happening in your country today and where it is heading rather than obsessing about me and what I may or may not do in 2015. Even though you are still very young make your own contribution to national affairs and try to focus on the message of others rather than being fixated on the messanger. I assure you that your problems in Nigeria are much bigger and greater than FFK or OBJ. We have had our time...let's see what you will do with yours.

Adegbesan Adekoyejo:

@FFK, thanks for sending me to my Father and that was such a good way to answer an innocent question. Did i strike a wrong nerve? I do not judge people but allow them to serve to us their achievement in service, i have not accused you of any ills, but the questions i asked will still come up in the future. Nigeria is boiling at the moment and we all know and should work towards ensuring it does not disintegrate for which i see you clearly do, that said, tough questions await you in 2015, regardless you are such an intelligent man and i enjoy your write-ups but was that reply intelligent? 

At this point, another fellow, Ajayi Sunday Joseph commented:

@FKK, well scripted sir. I love you so much. but you are too hard on Adegbesan. 

Two minutes later, Femi Fani-Kayode deleted the post.

Five minutes later, he deleted me as a friend on Facebook. - Alhaji Oshine Oyedeji 

What do you think of Femi Fani-Kayode before now, and right now?

Neurotechnology Develops Biometric Technologies for Low-Power Android Devices

A software development and algorithms developer for biometric, voice and object recognition technologies, Neurotechnology has expanded its biometric technologies offering to include the VeriFinger Embedded SDK, the VeriLook Embedded SDK and the MegaMatcher Embedded SDK (software development kit) for finger biometrics, facial biometrics and multi-biometric systems, respectively.

The latest embedded biometric technologies developed by Neurotechnology have been designed specifically for mobile platforms such as compact, low-power devices like handheld computers, smartphones and tablets. These advanced products incorporate the same algorithms as the PC counterparts of MegaMatcher, VeriLook and VeriFinger, thus ensuring AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System)-level accuracy in terms of recognition quality and usage.

With a 1 GHz processing speed, it hardly takes a second for VeriLook Embedded or VeriFinger Embedded to process and identify face images or fingerprints. The initial release version of MegaMatcher Embedded includes both VeriLook and VeriFinger biometric algorithms. Subsequent versions of the MegaMatcher will include voice and iris biometrics as well. The embedded technologies require the same biometric templates and API as their PC counterpart, thus enabling easier and faster migration to embedded applications. They support Android operating system version 2.2 or higher. Neurotechnology will also enable support for WinCE and ARM Linux operating systems.

The software development manager, Pavel Cuchriajev stated that since mobile platform support is crucial to biometric applications, the new embedded product line has been developed to support the Android platform. Cuchriajev added that this new feature opens several opportunities for development of end-user biometric solutions.

VeriLook Embedded, VeriFinger Embedded and MegaMatcher Embedded are available as a software development kit that can support web-based or stand-alone biometric solutions for devices running on the Android OS.

Huawei Unveils the World’s Slimmest Android Smartphone

Huawei unveiled the Ascend P1 S, which it claims is the world’s slimmest smartphone.

Running on the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, the Ascend P1 S is only 6.68mm thin; in comparison, the Motorola RAZR is 7.1mm thick and the Samsung Galaxy S II is 8.49mm thick. In addition to its super slim form factor, the Ascend P1 S is also the fastest and most compact smartphone in its class, with a dual-core 1.5GHz processor with 1GB of RAM.

The Ascend P1 S boasts a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen display with HD resolution of 960×540, toughened with Corning’s Gorilla Glass for extra durability. For imaging it comes with a back-lit 8MP camera and a front facing 1.3MP camera.

Read more

Amazing Newsletters to Subscribe to for Web Designers/Developers

Listed below are newsletters you can subscribe to get once-weekly top stories of the week for Javascript, Web Design & HTML5:

• JavaScript Weekly
• Web Design Weekly
• HTML5 Weekly

The US Says Goodbye to IE6

Time to pop open the champagne because, based on the latest data from Net Applications, IE6 usage in the US has now officially dropped below 1%!

Good riddance to bad rubbish!

Web browser, Frontend and Standards Feeds to Follow by Paul Irish

Paul Irish recently created some feed bundles that you can follow in Google Reader. While a lot of conversation has moved to Twitter and G+, hugely useful information is still published regularly to blogs.

It's easy to click through and subscribe in Google Reader. There is also OPML files if you want to take them elsewhere.

JavaOne 2011 Videos Now Available for Viewing/Downloading.

Oracle and Parleys are working together to bring a lot of JavaOne 2011 content online for you to watch/download.

A total of 48 sessions are currently publicly available on Parleys.com, and have been viewed over 75,000 times already.

You can find all the content in the Java > JavaOne 2011 space on Parleys.com.

The Inside Story Of Tech's Hottest Startup

Here’s that rare Steve Jobs story that has never been told, about the company that got away.

Jobs had been tracking a young software developer named Drew Houston, who blasted his way onto Apple’s radar screen when he reverse-engineered Apple’s file system so that his startup’s logo, an unfolding box, appeared elegantly tucked inside. Not even an Apple SWAT team had been able to do that.





That company is Dropbox. You can read the full post at Forbes.