Our hosting provider had an (unexplained) outage from about 1:55 PM ET to about 4:05 PM ET.  Our apologies for the interruption.

Aron will be showing Spotstory at this week’s Thursday Meeting at Berkman.  The meeting starts at 7:00 PM at The Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett Street, Cambridge MA.  We’re really looking forward to this.

(Actually, I won’t be there.  I’ve already committed to attend the Social Media Club Boston event, “Ethics and the Social Media Generation Gap,” happening that same evening.  I am afraid can’t wait to see which side of the gap I’m on!)

Boston Ruby Group tonight

Finally, a reminder that both Aron and I will be presenting at tonight’s meeting of the Boston Ruby Group. It starts at 7:00 PM at One Broadway, Cambridge, MA.  Come on by if you’re an experienced Ruby hacker or just curious.

The Boston Marathon is coming up next Monday, and we thought it would be fun to see if people could come up with a bunch of Spots near the marathon’s course.

In preparation, we went up and down the course to seek out all of the mile markers. (This is why I was playing in the middle of the highway.) We’ve collected them in a Boston Marathon Mile Marker tour.  So, if you’re near the course, create some Spots of your own!

There is something peculiar about traveling a route in one mile hops.  It brought to mind two thoughts which would not have appeared with the same clarity had I been bombing through in an automobile; or walking or biking at a much slower pace.

The first was a realization of just how long the course is!  IT’S LONG.  I know everyone knows that it’s long, but something about moving along one measured segment at a time, being aware that I was traveling a mile, made me appreciate what kind of distance I was really covering.

Secondly, stopping for ten to fifteen minutes at each mile marker gave me time to observe how the landscape was changing at each stop: town center becoming wooded area becoming industrial center becoming suburb becoming city.  It was a lot of fun.

I hope you’ll join in, add your own Spots and observations, and give folks something to look at while they’re waiting for the athletes to arrive at their viewing place!

It is quite easy to extend your Ruby on Rails test infrastructure so every document is checked for validity.

1. Install the plugin assert_valid_markup.
2. Install my test_validation_helper.rb in your test directory.
3. Require the validation helper from your test/test_helper.rb:

   require File.expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__) +
       "/test/test_validation_helper.rb")

After those three simple steps, your HTML and RSS documents are now being validated each time you run tests.

I am giving a brief presentation on this topic at the April 10, 2007 Boston Ruby Group meeting.

You can flip through a PDF of my slides if you would like more details.

Update: In addition to the PDF, my presentation is now hosted on slideshare and shown below. If you are reading this post in an aggregrator, you will need to click through for the show (or just use the PDF version).

I’m sure we’ve each been told at least once in our lives to “go play in traffic.”  Recently, I’ve actually been spending a lot of time standing in the middle of major Boston roadways and thoroughfares.  More specifically, I’ve been taking photos.

I am not advocating this behavior, but if you find yourself having to stand in the middle of the road, here are some pointers.  I didn’t follow all of my own advice this time, but next time I will! (There’s going to be a next time!?)

• Go early in the morning, preferably on a weekend  There’s less traffic!  Fewer cars means fewer chances of getting hit.  The sound of an approaching auto is also more apparent.
• Wear some bright colors  This time, I wore black.  This probably wasn’t a good choice.  Next time (!?) I’ll wear some sort of fluorescent vest.
• Bring a friend, preferably two, as lookout  This is especially helpful if you’re going to be doing something that causes you to take your eyes off of the road.  It’s even more useful if you’re going to be on roads with hills and curves which limit visibility.
• Be patient  If traffic is heavy, wait!  Unless you’ve gone during rush hour or around lunch, you’ll find a break in the traffic.

Okay, you didn’t need me to tell you any of that, unless you’re less than six years old.

Details on exactly why I was doing this will be forthcoming!

We spent a couple hours today, like everyone else who uses the Google Maps API, trying to understand if this morning’s rollout of KML support and MyMaps was an opportunity or a crisis.

Pundits say the sky is falling.  Others who actually have something at stake (like other people’s money) are saying it’s almost a non-event.  The sky is in its place, but when the The Big G shakes things up in your vicinity, there are going to be some consequences.

So, yes, we use Google Maps on our site, and location-based information is a major part of what we offer on Spotstory.  But honestly, the map, though neat, is not the whole ball of wax.  (In fact, once the novelty of getting a map to display wore off, it became a smaller part of the Spotstory concept, if not in screen real estate.)  The site contains neutral point of view information, personal observations, tagging, photo sharing, comments, social networking, syndication, and more.

But, enough of the brave face.  What’s the real impact of Google Maps’ new features on Spotstory?

First, the good news.  The KML support is a good thing: Google released a better search engine for us today.  Now, we just have to understand how to best take advantage of this for our users.

Then there is MyMaps.  Aron and I often come back to a particular point when discussing Spotstory: if we have great content, a lot of problems are just going to solve themselves.  Today was another one of those discussions.

With MyMaps, Google becomes another place to create and store content.   Will that content end up being extremely useful, MySpacey, or just plain spam?  We’ll see.  Do we wish we didn’t have to add Google to the long list of others competing for that content?  Yes!

Our challenge is the same as it has always been: to attract folks and give them a great community and environment to create Spots (and Tours and Visits.)  Google is keeping us honest.  We have to do things that innovate and add value or we’ll, deservedly, wither and die.

Google Maps is an important piece of many web offerings.  If Google is going to continue to evolve Maps–and why wouldn’t they?–they will undoubtedly overtake and make redundant some of the things others have built on their platform.  It’s our job to stay ahead of them, or find ways to serve audiences too small for them, etc.

So, there is some good, and there is some bad.  Certainly, we’re not hoping for more surprises like today’s, but the truth is that for a tiny company like us (and all companies, I’m sure) there is always something unexpected, negative, unhelpful, or anxiety-inducing to work through!  You work through it.

Aron and I will be presenting at the upcoming meeting of the Boston Ruby Group on on Tuesday, April 10th, 7:00 PM at One Broadway, Cambridge, MA.

Aron will talk about the regression testing infrastructure we use to validate all of our markup.  I’ll briefly go over another component of our Rails testing environment that we call Isolated Fixtures.

More details can be found here.  Come on by and say hello (not to mention last time there was pizza!)

A couple of days ago, I read (via some other blog, no doubt) that there’s a movement afoot in Vermont to form a “Second Vermont Republic.” That’s right, The Green Mountain State, or at least some number of her citizens, is looking to secede from the Union.

It’s not my intent to debate the details, merits, likelihood, or legality of this effort. I’m just here to offer a couple of thoughts.

Thought number one was, “Wow, the list of states wanting out of the Union is getting pretty long.” I know that there are factions in New Hampshire and Hawaii trying to re-establish the independence of those states. And that was just off the top of my head. A moment of research revealed that Oregon, Washington, and New England play host their own nascent rebellions. Doubtless, there are others.

My other thought was, “How will this effect the supply of maple syrup!?” This wonder was short lived. Today, I came upon this map which reveals that Massachusetts has a robust domestic maple syrup supply.

I was unaware of this as I am a native of Eastern Massachusetts, and like all natives of Eastern Massachusetts, I am almost wholly ignorant of the goings on of Western Massachusetts. (Aron, a native son of Western Massachusetts, will, rightly, heap scorn upon me.)

Now I’m craving a taste of my native state’s offering, but it appears that the sugarhouses are just about done with the season, which extends from late February through early April. It should be noted that both International Pancake Day and International Waffle Day occur during this period, which only makes sense.

In a piece entitled “Temples for tourists” Umberto Eco comments on plans to build a facsimile Greek temple in the town of Albanella when an authentic, though ruined, Greek temple exists only ten miles away in Paestum. On its face, the idea my seem absurd, be he goes on to argue that it might actually not be such a bad idea.

That’s because all tourists are not created alike. He goes on to identify three groups of tourists—”aristocratic”, “bourgeois”, and “mass”—each with its particular history and taste:

There was a time when important historical and cultural sites were visited only by aristocratic travelers making the Grand Tour or exploring Italy. Those people thought it was just fine that the churches and palazzi were falling to bits[.]

Then came “bourgeois” tourism, which was still an elite affair but involved hundreds of thousands of cultivated and sensitive travelers. In order to satisfy their requirements both locations and artworks were restored[.]

With the advent of mass tourism, some important sites increased their income, but at the cost of ugliness and vandalism. They became dumps for discarded soda cans and plastic bags […]. The feet of certain statues of saints have been worn smooth by the constant handling of the faithful […]

Commentary

First, I’d like to point out that I consider myself part of the aristocracy in outlook though I realize my financial condition puts me firmly in with the masses!

Joking aside, I’ve a more serious reason for pointing out the article, beyond general interest.

Spotstory was started with the idea that there were lots of people out there who shared the temperament and curiosity of the aristocrat and the bourgeois, but whose tastes, although firmly interested in the classical world, also encompassed things more contemporary or even just a little offbeat. (Although, honestly, I would have never expressed it in such class-based language before reading this article!)

Spotstory’s is a bet that there are lots of people more interested in Paestum than Albanella.

While contemplating Spotstory, it did occur to me it that the concept could have harmful side effects. How many formerly obscure or otherwise sensitive locations might be injured by the revelation of their existence and location? How many saints’ feet would we be smoothing? How many riverside paths would we be eroding? How many historically or culturally significant places would we be disturbing?

In the end, I decided—hoped—that the people who would contribute to the site and constitute the community would simply be people who shared such concerns, and who would behave in a responsible way. People interested in visiting Paestum today are going to be like folks interested in visiting Paestum in the past. To quote Mr. Eco a bit more:

“Just think how many people will be more satisfied by the fake temple at Albanella, all in one piece, shining and splendid, than by the real thing that has struggled to survive in nearby Paestum. Let the crowds in search of easy satisfaction be directed to Albanella, leaving Paestum to those who know why they want to see it and who won’t litter.”

We wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone for making our launch week a success!

Happily, we find ourselves at the end of the week having met all the goals we’d set, having met some cool folks, and–of course–having learned about a bunch of interesting spots!

Special thanks goes out to all of the folks that have taken the time to report problems and to offer suggestions. We can’t overstate the value of your many contributions.

Thanks again for being part of Spotstory’s story!