Blue Sky On Mars

• Using digg and Netscape to get traffic
  (tags: marketing digg)
• YouTube - White & Nerdy
  (tags: funny music video)

Linkage

TurboGears got its first public display at the first Michigan Python Users Group meeting in September 2005. Last night, at the end of the latest michipug meeting, I flipped the switch to release TurboGears 1.0b1. Here is the announcement email that went out:

I am pleased to announce TurboGears 1.0b1, which now supersedes the 0.8.9 release as the preferred TurboGears release. Many people have been using the TurboGears 0.9x releases for several months now and have been very happy with the results. The 1.0 APIs are stable and we’re focused on bugs and docs for the final 1.0 release. This is a bugfix release over 0.9a9.

What is TurboGears?

TurboGears is a popular rapid web development megaframework, built from a number of great Python projects and with a bunch of high-level features built within the TurboGears project.

TurboGears is a front-to-back framework helping you on the front end (the MochiKit JavaScript library), templates for the view (Kid), the controller in the middle (based on CherryPy) and an object-relational mapper for your database (SQLObject).

To that mix of projects, TG adds:

• Widgets: Python objects that bundle JavaScript, CSS, HTML and server-side validation to make form creation and powerful JavaScript features easy.
• Internationalization: Tools and APIs to help you localize the strings in your application.
• Identity: Authentication and authorization made easy
• Toolbox: a web-based GUI to help you work on your project (write your own as well!) Includes CatWalk to help you work with your database data and Model Designer to help you design your database graphically.
• tg-admin: command line tool that gives you a quick start to your project, helps you set up your database and more!
• Easy Ajax: flexible template support allows you to choose a different template engine (output HTML, JSON, plain text, etc. all from one method)
• Built-in database transactions: keeps your database (and you!) sane. Transactions are committed or rolled back based on the success or failure of your controller code.
• flexibility as needed: though Kid and SQLObject are the standards, we already support many other template engines (Cheetah, Markup, Django) and the powerful SQLAlchemy object-relational mapper.
• community: last but definitely not least — more than 2,000 users on the main mailing list, and others on non-English mailing lists

In short, there are lots of tools to help you get the job done quickly.

What’s New Since 0.8

Nearly everything. All of the projects that TG uses have had significant upgrades, and nearly all of the features that have been built by TurboGears contributors are new.

Website: http://www.turbogears.org/

Download: http://www.turbogears.org/download/

Mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/turbogears

Python, TurboGears

If you haven’t already seen it, you should check out the screencast for the online marking tool that Greg Wilson’s group made. Very slick stuff, and I wish the graders had a tool like that when I was in school.

Oprius has posted three new screencasts of their slick Foundations package.

Finally, the good folks of ShowMeDo have pointed me to a page to request TurboGears screencasts. Put in a call for your topic of choice.

Python, TurboGears

Free Algorithms textbook - because you never know when you’ll need a different algorithm.

Linkage, Software Development

Another TurboGears-based product showed up on Digg a few days ago (I’m a bit tardy in blogging this one, sorry!) RPath makes a great-sounding tool for building custom Linux distributions for appliances. Linux is a great embedded platform for medium to large devices, depending on your requirements, and RAA lets you get your Linux in shape easily so that you can focus on your application (might I suggest that TurboGears is a good way to make the UI for your app? :). You can read more at Joseph Tate’s blog.

Python, TurboGears

BitRocket - Mac OS X BitTorrent Client

Linkage, Technology

WhatsNewIn30 - CherryPy excellent stuff on the way. Bob Brewer has cleaned things up a lot. (Elvelind Grandin is already looking at ways we can simplify the TurboGears core using these new features.)

Linkage, Python, TurboGears

Parallels Desktop for Mac lets you run Windows (and other OSes) on your Intel Mac. I’ve had it for a few days, but one of my coworkers showed me the “Parallels Tools” today. Wow. Make sure you install the tools when you use Parallels with Windows. It’s so cool. The mouse seamlessly moves between Mac OS and Windows as the cursor goes over the Windows window. And, full screen mode looks right now (before I had black bars on both sides of my MacBook Pro’s widescreen display). I haven’t tried to VMware beta on the Mac, but I can say that Parallels at least is most excellent.

Technology

Some very interesting tidbits about how Google runs its IT. Google Revealed: The IT Strategy That Makes It Work - Management News by InformationWeek

Linkage, Software Business