Apache CouchDB is a "distributed, fault-tolerant and schema-free document-oriented database accessible via a RESTful HTTP/JSON API" that has received quite a bit of publicity in developer circles in the past year. It's written in Erlang, so has all of the scalability and flexibility the Erlang environment brings to the table, but as a RESTful service, you can use it from pretty much anywhere.
It's approaching two weeks now since Ruby 1.9.1 was released, bringing with it not only a whole stack of extra performance and a new VM, but also a lot of compatibility issues. No pain, no gain!
Priit Haamer is an Estonia-based Ruby developer who has put together a "Ruby dictionary for Mac OS X." All you have to do is download the file he provides, unzip it into your ~/Library/Dictionaries folder (or create that folder and unzip it in there) and you'll be able to use the built-in OS X "Dictionary" application to search for Ruby module names, classes, and methods.
It's time to thank those great companies and individuals who help keep Ruby Inside (and often other Ruby sites) going. Note: All descriptions and notes are written by Ruby Inside and are not directly influenced by the sponsors. As such, any opinions stated are those of Ruby Inside and not necessarily shared by the sponsor!
Feedzirra is an all-new Ruby feed parsing (it's not a generator) library by Paul Dix. The choice of feed parsing libraries in Ruby has been reasonably limited so far, so Feedzirra is a most welcome addition to the Ruby ecosystem. Its focus is on pure speed - it uses Nokogiri (an ultra fast Ruby XML parser that depends on libxml) and curb (bindings for libcurl - to do the HTTP work) so compilation is required. Feedzirra was designed to be used to fetch thousands of feeds, process updates quickly, save on bandwidth (with conditional GETs, etc) and be dead simple to use.
2012 update: Still not up to speed with Ruby 1.9? Check out the Ruby 1.9 Walkthrough for a 3 hour guide to the details :-)
Ryan Tomayko, currently known as one of the lead developers of Sinatra, was definitely not mincing his words yesterday when he posted Why "require 'rubygems'" In Your Library/App/Tests Is Wrong:
Rhodes - developed by Rhomobile - is an intriguing framework of Ruby interpreters that can be used to develop native applications for the iPhone, Windows Mobile, RIM (Blackberry) and Symbian smartphone platforms (with Android support to come). Last month, Werner Schuster (of InfoQ) wrote a basic roundup of how Rhodes works.
