the cloudspace blog

Corey and I have been seriously tearing apart some URLs in our recent work and found that the standard URI library in ruby just wasn’t cutting it. It didn’t parse and merge exactly like we expected, sometimes even dropping parts of the URL. It also had problems handling special characters in URLs like these: ™ ‘ ’ ° ®. We found the Addressable ruby gem from sporkmonger on git hub. From the description it sounded like exactly what we needed, “Addressable is a replacement for the URI implementation that is part of Ruby’s standard library. It more closely conforms to the relevant RFCs and adds support for IRIs and URI templates.”

Meet Dave Geffken. Dave has been working with Cloudspace for almost 6 years and is our resident non-profit website and application specialist. He is also currently getting trained for our agile development team which he will be joining in the coming month.  As you will read below, Dave is big into watching football, snowboarding and pinball.  And now here’s more about Dave:

Where were you born? Where did you grow up & what was it like there?
“I was born in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.  I grew up in a suburb of Ft. Lauderdale called Lauderhill.  I went to a small Catholic school in Lauderdale Lakes called St. Helen’s.  Typical Florida suburb upbringing; played with friends in the neighborhood after school, went to summer camp at the local park, played sports at school and with the city.  I went to the beach a lot and learned how to surf, skim board, wake board and water ski.”

My last two posts have both had the word “dodeca-thalon” in the first paragraph. Dodecathalon means a series of 12 things. Those 12 things are the 12 Agile Principles. So far I’ve covered the first two. If you haven’t read them, please do. And then, read this one, #3.

Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.

As I mentioned with the last principle, we welcome change. We count on change happening, and we use it, Judo-style, to our advantage. But, part of the success to navigating change is feedback. You need quick feedback. And, when you’re developing software, feedback comes from delivery.

Hi all, Dixie here with an update on our Kiva loans!  So far, we’ve given a helping hand to 11 entrepreneurs, and are on the lookout for two more.   As I’ve mentioned earlier, I really dig this Kiva thing, so watching our loans being repaid and being able to send it right back out is awesome.  We like to help out computer-related businesses, but as you can see from our Recent Loans page, we’re also branching out!  Who do you like lending to?

In my last post, I said that I was committing to a dodeca-thalon of posts on the Agile Manifesto — one for each Agile principle. I think this is great stuff that everyone should be exposed to. If you use Agile, or wonder why people are so hot for Agile, this series is for you.

And with that intro, here’s #2 of 12

Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.

Everything changes. Software is not set in stone, and even if it was set in stone, it would still change. So, we need a process that gracefully handles change. Part of this trick is by getting rid of the idea of a 12-week project, and instead having 12, 1-week projects. You want to have small, frequent plans.

Cloudspace is proud to announce the launch of a new Child Service and Foster Application, uRefer.

The uRefer system allows District Case Managers and Private Investigators to electronically make referrals for services and get updates from the service providers on service delivery.  Some of the main features of the tool are:

1. System integration - Simply by entering a FSFN Case ID, the user will have most of the demographic information on the case automatically imported into the system.  Therefore, services can be distributed to different providers without having to repopulate the information over and over again.  The remaining extra information is provider-specific for each service.  Those questions can be edited by a service provider at any time, independent of a developer, while also holding the historical integrity of the data.

Cloudspace is heading to SXSW tomorrow morning, to hang out with tens of thousands of friends! We love to talk and drink beers. Catch up with us, @timrosenblatt or @toddsampson

Meet Jacob Hemphill.  Jacob is the youngest engineer at Cloudspace and works with our Professional Services team.  He is also currently a student at the University of Central Florida.  He is a quick learner, a very dedicated employee and a great addition to the team!  He has a very bright future with Cloudspace. Now on to the interview…

Where were you born? Where did you grow up & what was it like there?
“I was born in the United States, but I grew up in several parts of the world, namely the USA, Russia and the Philippines.”

Tim will be presenting “300 Seconds of OAuth” at Ignite Orlando on Wednesday, March 4.  Ignite Orlando is a free event that brings individuals with like interests together for a night of learning, drinking and networking.  The event starts at 7pm and is being held at Slingapours in the Wall Street Plaza downtown.   So if you are in the Orlando area Wednesday night,  check out Tim’s presentation and meet up with other members of the Cloudspace agile team at Ignite Orlando!

If you’ve never read about the Agile manifesto, you should. It represents the absolute cutting edge of the software development industry.

I’m starting a 12-part series of blog posts on the Agile Principles, discussing what they mean, and what they look like in the real world. It’ll be like an Agile dodeca-thalon.

Welcome to #1 of 12.

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

What we mean by this is that above anything else we do — above code formatting, testing, meetings, planning, sometimes breathing — our #1 goal is valuable software. If we’re not delivering value, we have no reason for existing. “Business value” we often call it. We always focus on delivering the most business value possible given the amount of time we have. Sure, the spinning cornflower blue logo is hot stuff, but we’re going to focus on the authentication system first.