Some of our code, papers, and presentations. We also blog at RailSpikes, co-founded Ruby Users of Minnesota, and help organize the MinneBar tech unconference.

Rails Plugins

  • mail fetcher — process incoming email efficiently and asynchronously.
  • refresh_to — a Ruby on Rails plugin that adds a refresh_to method to ActionController::Base, allowing developers to avoid Internet Explorer security warnings when moving from a secure page to an insecure page.
  • YAML mail config — extract your SMTP server configuration into a YAML file to avoid error-prone repetition.
  • acts_as_selectable — provides a to_select_form method for your ActiveRecord classes that maps to the Rails select form helper format.
  • acts_as_invitation — easily integrate a “send to a friend” feature to an existing ActiveRecord model.
  • url_key — create never-changing URL 'slugs' for permalinks based on attributes in your model.

Ruby Gems

  • simple-daemon — a lightweight daemon module for Ruby. Use it to add daemon functionality to your Ruby script.
  • RVideo — a Ruby library that handles video inspection and transcoding.
  • ActiveFacebook — a Facebook library with an ActiveRecord-like syntax (forthcoming).

Papers and Presentations

  • Norman Orstad, "CSS frameworks, when and why to use them" Presented at MinneBar, May 10th, 2008.
  • Norman Orstad et al, "Design Coding" Panel discussion at MinneBar, May 10th, 2008..
  • Jon Dahl, "Video Transcoding with Ruby on Rails." Presented at RailsConf 2007, May 18, 2007.
  • Norman Orstad et al, "Design 2.0: What's a web designer to do?" Panel discussion at MinneBar, April 21, 2007.
  • Jon Dahl, "Video Transcoding." Presented at MinneBar, April 21, 2007.
  • Jon Dahl and Luke Francl, "Overview of Ruby on Rails." Presented at MinneBar, April 21, 2007.
  • Jon Dahl, “Retirement-Driven Development with Ruby on Rails.” Presented to the Ruby Users of Minnesota, February 27, 2007.
  • Jon Dahl, “Behavior Driven Development with RSpec.” Presented to the Ruby Users of Minnesota, November 28, 2006.
  • Jon Dahl and Luke Francl, “Overview of Ruby on Rails.” Presented to CBS MarketWatch, June 2, 2006.
  • Jon Dahl, Dan Grigsby, and Nick Sieger, “Overview of Ruby on Rails.” Presented at BarCamp Minnesota, May 6, 2006.
  • Jon Dahl, “Introduction to Capistrano.” Presented to the Ruby Users of Minnesota, April, 2006.