Down at Highgroove Studios, we’ve finally lifted the wraps off Scout, our simple solution to server monitoring and reporting.

It’s true, we’ve been using Scout internally now for months, and it has proven its usefulness time and time again. We’ve also been collecting meticulous feedback from our pre-launch users. We hope it saves our customers as much time as it has saved us.

See the Scout Blog announcement here: Scout Opens to the Public
See our blog announcement here: Scout’s Grand Opening

It’s a great time to be a techy. Here’s my top 5 run down of why:

1. The Apple iPhone. I don’t want to sound like a Apple Fan Boy, but of all the techno-gadgets out right now, it’s got to be the coolest. When I was young, I was enthralled with a show called “Beyond 2000” and in some of the interviews with the designers of the Flying Car, “they” said that by 2008, there would be many families owning these flying cars. Well, we don’t have flying cars, but we do have a tiny hand-held device that can hold GBs of music, movies, TV shows, and pictures, can take and share pictures, provide maps of the world on command, satellite imagery, directions, and is a full-fledged Internet device that switches from on demand edge to wifi seamlessly. Oh, and is the best phone (dialing, answering calls, syncing contacts, visual voicemail) out there. Truly futuristic.
2. Rapid Web Development Frameworks. It is truly easy to build rapid, effective, database-backed, web applications and deploy them on the Internet, securely or publicly for anyone and everyone to just plain “get things done.” Technologies like Ruby on Rails, the Django Framework for Python, Java (maybe) and PHP (possibly), simple open APIs, easy cross-platform Javascript libraries, the Open Source stack of Apache on Linux, and the excited-ness and open-ness of the “Web 2.0″ community makes building these kinds of things fun.
3. DVRs. Tivos and Tivo-like technologies are fundamentally changing how we view television. My MythTV server (I keep rebuilding it) can record HD over the air, and content from my DirecTV box, very easily. When I miss something I want to watch, I order it off iTunes, or simply watch it on one of the network sites like nbc.com or abc.com or maybe a torrent network (or friend). Oh, and I don’t watch commercials. MythTV automatically detects them (using black screen fades, logo detection, and other algorithms), and I hit one key to skip all of ‘em. Watch for social networking type functionality, like interacting with other TV viewers (my friends) to really bump this technology to the next level.
4. VOIP. Skype, Asterisk, Vonage, and others make it easy for someone (me) to have a phone number in almost any area code (or toll free) that rings to multiple phones, soft(-ware based), or real, and then rings elsewhere, turns voicemail into text/e-mail, and receives faxes turned into pdfs and delivered to my e-mail inbox. Hosted VOIP services will be very disruptive technologies in short time.
5. Social Networks. Yes, it’s true: MySpace enabled all teenagers (and tweens and twenty-somethings) with a computer to make the ugliest web pages in the world — the equivalent of rainbow HRs, dancing baby animated gifs, and MIDIs playing in the background (you remember?) — technology-one-upped as photo slideshows between text, youtube videos everywhere, and embedded mp3s in the background. But, despite my cynicism, networks like Linked In, and now Facebook are mingling business and pleasure, and connecting people presently (friends, classmates, work-mates), historically (old class-mates, old pals), and forward-in-time (in groups and ways they didn’t know exist) in totally new ways. I think they also show some ads too, though I’m not sure. Even if they have no intrinsic value to many people right now, the fact that a majority (or is it closer to 99%) of all college students are using sites like Facebook on a day-to-day basis mean they aren’t going away when they get into the workforce. This kind of connectivity and open-ness will be demanded and expected in the workplace, soon.

Hey alright, I made it to 5. It really is a great time to be into technology. Highgroove Studios and all our ventures are doing fantastically, and we are simply having a terrific time working on all kinds of fun stuff, like web development using Ruby on Rails, apps on the iPhone, Facebook integration, and maybe some top-secret stuff, soon to be revealed….

If you’re into techno-babble as much as me, there are some events (in Atlanta) coming up that you might want to check out, including the Georgia Tech College of Computing Alumni Association’s Net Neutrality Panel, the Ruby User’s Group and Python User’s Group meetings (meetup), Startup Weekend Atlanta, and BarCamp Atlanta. Techno-babblers, rejoice!

Some shameless self-promotion is going on at my favorite techno-babbling blog, CleanAir.

It’s our Top 10 Highgroove Moments of 2006. Enjoy!

I am super excited about my newest gig, as an Instructor at the Big Nerd Ranch here in Atlanta.  I’ll be teaching a course on Ruby on Rails, a web development framework (and an opinionated development style) that is very near and dear to me.

I was looking back at my previous blog posts on how much I enjoyed teaching and instructing, and it’s clear that I am passionate about sharing knowledge and helping others — and enjoy the challenges of explaining complex concepts in simple, easy-to-understand ways.

The Big Nerd Ranch style of a retreat with intensive, hands-on training has to be the best environment to learn that I’ve come across.  As a former corporate instructor, having taught enterprise-grade software products at large Fortune-x00 companies, I know from experience that there are about a billion distractions to “students” on-site (e-mail, meetings, support, phone calls, etc.) that detract from the learning experience, and in some cases can disrupt the entire learning process.  I’m excited to be a part of a great team and concept.

p.s. we blogged it on CleanAir.

Derek and I have been working on a little something called Heartbeat that is going to revolutionize Ruby on Rails deployment and administration.

It was born out of our RailsDay2006 competition entry, and soon it launches.  Derek and I posted a sneak peak of Heartbeat Deployment on the Highgroove blog.

That Derek is getting unbelievably good at Ruby on Rails developing. His AJAXian hacking skills are a force to be reckoned with.

Stay tuned!