i5labs pushing the limits of Rails
Posted by marcel March 19, 2006 @ 09:25 PM
In November, PlanetMoon launched Infected, a first-person shooter game for Playstation Portable. The PSP game has two-pieces, one, the actual PSP game (which is C++), and a statistics reporting tool (how many kills did you get, how many people did you infect, where in the world are they). Any time someone wants to grab their stats, it kicks in the PSP Web Browser, which points to a Ruby on Rails server. The team behind this is Jason Wong’s i5labs. Jason blogs about some of the challenges of working within the constraints of PSP console.
i5labs also just finished a Zubio chair massage kiosk at the San Francisco Shopping Center. You schedule 10 or 20 minute massage sessions using a touchscreen, then swipe your credit card. The touchscreen system is implemented with Rails. Jason shares details of the code and hardware.
i5labs is also looking to hire a part time Ruby on Rails developer (who could eventually go full time). If you’re interested drop them a note at jobs@i5labs.com.
We’ve seen the limits of Rails pushed before, when Mike Clark and James Duncan Davidson mixed Rails with Cocoa with VitalSource. Anyone else using Rails outside of the traditional web context?
We also did a mix up of Cocoa with Ruby and Rails. Rails is bundled in a Cocoa App and started by using the new Mac OS X launch services right through the Cocoa app.
The app is powered by the Spotlight index (instead of a database) and Rails is used to provide a wonderful AJAX enhanced web interface (http://searchlightrss.com)
At maccontrol we are using Ruby on Rails in a embedded consumer product. The maccontrol connector has a embedded MIPS processor running Rails. You can see more on our website
WebRaiser is doing some Rails development for touchscreens, too. We use a lot of different languages internally, but I’m working with one of our customers on a travel information center which runs Rails and a local SQL Server database.
i5labs, congrats on your deployment! We’re up in Sac – I’ll stop by sometime when I’m in the city.
I’m about to start working on a simple voting system to be used at a client’s conference.
Attendees have the opportunity to place votes for the awards being given at the end of the conference, with the voting software running on dedicated terminals, and running a Rails app.
We have a client that is deploying a new application with Rails. Here is a snapshot, I love their attitude:
Everyone says they want to work someplace where they can shake things up and make things happen. Come work for our client and you actually can. They are a Sunnyvale, CA based venture backed start-up working with mobile video.
They are looking for people who can do more than just program.
Why take that job coding yet another CRM for yet another guy in a suit who will merely grunt and look bored at your sweat and dreams made code when they can offer a chance to play with all the toys you¹ve been hearing about, insane days coding, and at the end of it all a chance to point and say to your friends, “look at how cool this is.�
Feel free to contact me at mike@mindsource.com