I read with interest that Twitter continues to stand behind Ruby on Rails, even though Twitter has grown into a very popular service, in turn causing quite a load on their servers. I’ve always heard that Ruby shouldn’t be used for enterprise wide projects, since it can’t handle the load, or that it isn’t easily scalable.  Yet Alex on the Twitter blog states:

“We hit some scaling stumbling blocks a few months back, but not because Ruby or Rails was working against us. Once Twitter reached a certain amount of traffic we were forced to rethink our architecture; you don’t build a messaging system the same way you build a content management system. We set about developing custom solutions both inside and outside our Rails application. We also made good use of web scaling standbys: caching, database optimization, more hardware, and shared experience. Throughout this scramble to scale, Ruby and Rails were assets for their speed of development and creative, helpful communities.”

So to me that says that if Ruby on Rails can be used for something as large as Twitter, it is surely ready for the prime time. It would be nice to see more companies take up the cause of Ruby and develop a few applications with it. As more developers embrace Ruby, we should see this come true.

I just received a few invites to giveaway from Pownce. I don’t really need them.

There are six of them, so please leave a comment if you want an invite, and I’ll send it to you. Of course one per person, and the first six responses only.

Map mashups, everywhere I look, map mashups!

According to Google there are over 50,000 map mashups on the web today. Well now they are going to do something to bring them altogether. Google Inc. is introducing tools that will stitch together applications from a hodgepodge of Web sites.

Google is encouraging mashup developers to build applications called mapplets, posted under the “My Maps” section of Google.

Now a developer can have multiple mapplets laid over a Google map. So now you can show, say, your downtown, with all apartments for rent, but also the crime patterns, or in relation to starbucks for example.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this works out.

Sphere is a startup of individuals working to connect mainstream and conversational media content. They are best known for the Sphere Related Content Widget.

You’ve probably seen the Sphere tag at the bottom of blogs like TechCrunch or, now, my blog. Clicking on it will activate an AJAX script, bringing up a box showing related content to the post you’ve just read.

Maybe it’s the information hound in me, but I do love this plugin. And it’s available now for Wordpress. For me it was a quick install. And it gives blog publishers another way to make their blogs sticky and give their readers extended information. To me it’s a “gotta have it” plugin for Wordpress.

Diggdown.net got more publicity than it deserved when Digg lawyers went after them for using Digg in their domain name. Now called iggdown.net, their story made the front page of Digg this morning.