Note: Ruby Inside service will be slow until Thursday as I'm on vacation. The flow will then return to regular levels! Thanks!Sinatra - A New Ruby Web App FrameworkIt's still in its infancy but Sinatra is an interesting looking new Ruby Web app framework. It relies very heavily on a custom DSL but is otherwise in a similar niche to Merb or Camping.PackR - Ruby JavaScript CompressionPackR is a port of a Javascript compressor originally developed by Dean Edwards. The interesting thing about PackR is that it comes as a Rails plugin to enable you to have the JavaScripts associated with your Rails apps "packed" on the fly. Packing isn't a sure-fire way to stop someone ripping off your code, but it makes it significantly harder.Great resource on Rails' sessions and cookiesThe guys at QuarkRuby have put together a great guide to lots of other sites that show how sessions and cookies are managed in Rails and how you can work with them.

Mailtrap is a "dummy" SMTP server developed in Ruby by Matt Mower. The main use for Mailtrap is to act as an SMTP server that runs locally and can be sent mail which can be inspected for debugging purposes. For example, your Rails application running locally might need to send mail using ActionMailer, and while you want it to go through all of the SMTP motions, you don't want the mail to really be sent.. enter Mailtrap! In this blog post, Matt goes into more details about how Mailtrap works, why it's a good idea, and the motivation behind its development.

Reading Excel Files From RubyWe Heart Code posts a tutorial showing how to use the Parseexcel library, a port of a Perl library that lets you parse Excel spreadsheets from your code.How To Debug Your Rails App With ruby-debugPatrick Lenz presents a great article that shows how to debug a Rails application from start to finish.Economical Use of Amazon S3 with Ruby on RailsRobert Dempsey has written a comprehensive article on how to use S3 in an economic, efficient way from Ruby on Rails applications.Ruby on Rails vs ColdFusion CommercialThe ever active RailsEnvy guys have produced their eighth Ruby on Rails vs X commercial.. presenting Ruby on Rails vs ColdFusion.

Ryan Bates is being a total champ in rolling out more and more consistently good Rails related screencasts for free at RailsCasts.com. Some of the latest include:

CplusRuby is a new library by Michael Neumann that makes it really easy (as in, even easier than RubyInline, although CplusRuby is of a smaller scope) to define custom C structures from within Ruby. The major goal of CplusRuby is performance, and the ability to easily define small methods within a class that compile to C and which can call each other directly. An example is always better than an explanation, so check out this code.

Getting Started with Rubinius Interested in what's going on with Rubinius, the new virtual machine and Ruby compiler created by Evan Phoenix? Want to install it and have a play on your own machine? Someone's put together a great blog post called "Getting started with Rubinius" that runs through checking out Rubinius, compiling it, and digging into the code. Premailer.web - Ruby app that brings all CSS styles inlinePremailer.web is a Ruby script (and Web service) by Alex Dunae that can take an HTML file that uses external CSS files and turn it into an HTML file with all its styles declared inline. This is useful if you're putting together an HTML newsletter and you want all of the styles included with no requirement to load external files. Premailer.web uses Hpricot for all of the heavy lifting, and Alex said that a post about Hpricot on Ruby Inside was what inspired him to get started on this tool.Obscure and Ugly Perlisms in RubyAs an ex-Perl programmer myself, I was pretty surprised to learn about a few of these Perlisms that had made their way into Ruby. Now I just have to make sure I'm not tempted to use them.."Video conversion" in Ruby on RailsThis isn't really performing video conversion using Ruby code, but is an interesting demonstration of using BackgrounDRb to queue up video conversion tasks for FFmpeg and how to show the videos back to your users.RubyShellRubyShell (aka rbsh) is a project I've kept an eye on over the last few months. As the name implies, it's a UNIX "shell" (as in, like bash) but with a Ruby twist. It lets you access things like processes and network adapters using Ruby syntax. It's powerful stuff and I think it could become a major contender against bash for Ruby developers with a little more work. Smart stuff!acts_as_conference Rails Conference Call For ProposalsThe acts_as_conference Rails conference, taking place in Orlando, FL in February 2008, has put out a call for proposals. They're looking for eight speakers with an hour's session each. The topic has to include Rails in some way. Deadline for submissions is November 2nd and the schedule will be announced on November 16th.