RFacebook on Bebo Plugin

Bebo has gone live! If you've been developing on Facebook you'll realize that the API's are very similar. So similar in fact that with a few tweaks you can get your RFacebook application running on Bebo. I've created a little plugin to help with that. Note: I've only tested this with RFacebook version 0.97 and Rails 1.2.5. If you have a different setup then... things might be interesting.

Here's how to get it installed:
1. First make sure RFacebook is installed. You'll also need to generate the whole facebook.yml but fill it in with your Bebo application's values instead.
2. Install the plugin like so:

script/plugin install http://svn.tierrabyte.net/plugins/rfacebook_on_bebo

3. That should do it. Everything else should pretty much work like Facebook. But take note that FBJS is not yet implemented in the Bebo API.


And like I said, this was only tested on RFacebook 0.97 and Rails 1.2.5 but it should be a good starting point if you're still trying to figure things out. Also, this will not allow you to run both a Facebook and a Bebo application within the same Rails project. But that shouldn't be too hard to implement.

One last thing. If you find this code useful, a donation of any amount to our Donate Rice Facebook Campaign (http://apps.facebook.com/donaterice) would be very much appreciated. We donated over $300 to the World Food Program in December alone. You can donate by clicking here:

Thanks! And feel free to leave any questions or comments below.

They Hasn't Learned Grammar

If we keep outsourcing our tech jobs, we'll be seeing more of this:


[Click on image to englarge]

Maximizing Server Resources

So currently I have two of my apps hosted by RimuHosting. They're on the MiroVPS2 plans which give us 160MB of RAM. I already have a DreamHost account, so instead of running MySQL servers on each VPS, I make them connect to databases hosted by DH. This frees up a good amount of memory and doesn't seem to affect the speed much.

With the freed RAM, I'm able to run three Mongrel instances behind an Apache load balancer. All in all, this provides pretty good throughput.

But I want more! In reality, we're not running into any problems with the current setup. But we're about to release a Facebook app, and if it goes viral I want to keep up with demand. I haven't really made any more modifications, but I've been looking into ways to squeeze the most performance out of our little VPS'. And I came across Swifttiply. It's a clustering proxy server whose main selling point is that it maintains a persistent connection with the backend processes. This cuts down on the socket setup and teardown costs. According to the benchmarks on the website, it seems to really speed things up if you have many concurrent connections.

But I won't convert. Not yet, however. Whenever something new like this comes out, I like to let things settle and see which setup comes out on top. HAProxy is another alternative. Which is better? What combination maximizes throughput? I'm not quite sure. Luckily I'm not pressured to decide at the moment. But I'll keep my ear to the ground to see how best to maximize my server's resources.

Check Out My New Crib

I moved my Blogger site over to my DreamHost account. It was dead easy. I really recommend it to anyone who already uses Blogger and has a personal website. It just makes it easier to consolidate it under one domain. Here's the howto.
Now this should motivate me to get working on my personal site...

A Typical Software Project

I came across this great comic. It sums up a typical software project quite well.


Click on image to enlarge.