Developing Upwards

Plasmid is an in-browser database and I've been working on it for a few months, talked to many people about it, and finally reached a point where I can release an API stable version. There are two main components to Plasmid, developed separately. PlasmidJS is the in-browser database, based on the IndexedDB specification and supports recent versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. The second component is Plasmid Sync: a backend server that allows users to synchronize their in-browser databases between machines. I'm really excited about this and I hope to see what people can do with it. There are other projects like this around, most notably the excellent PouchDB project, but I think Plasmid has properties that make it a better fit for many needs. Download This release is PlasmidJS 0.2.0 and is available at Github and on the Plasmid GitHub page. 0.2.0 on Github 0.2.0 on the Website Jump Right In If you'd like to jump right in, check out ...

Pssst... You're reading this on my old blog. You should update your RSS reader for my new one ! I've been invited to attend what looks to be an amazing event, Edge Conference. Edge looked to be a different sort of conference, and I'm excited to see how it works. Edge is about everyone learning from everyone else, so you need to bring something to teach as well as a desire to learn. Every moment of the conference will be publicly available afterward. I hope that I can bring something to the discussion, and I feel that if I don't try to do so, I'm not getting as much as I could out of this. The format of Edge encourages and depends on it, in fact. We open each hour long session with a ten minute talk. After that, we’re into the discussion, and we keep it moving fast. We record everything, on video and in text. Everything is released for free to the world the moment the event ends. While I hope I'll be able to get in my two cents to wha...

I'm actually incredibly nervous. My talk is "Offline-First: an Approach to Modern Web Apps", and in it I'll be talking about dealing with how the assumptions of the web are turned upside-down by the notion of offline web apps, but also how this can help us deal with a host of issues that have plagued us for some time. Come see me speak in Raleigh, NC at the NC State Centennial Campus. The conference runs September 21-22, 2013. I've had a great time at the NCDevCon events the past two years, and I'm looking forward to contributing as a speaker this year!

This was originally posted on my new website , where you can read the full post. Please subscribe to the new feed there to follow new things I write.   The most well known, yet still problematic, area of data ownership in our web-based world is all the data we keep housed "in the cloud" in the machines of the services we use every day. The contents of your blog at Tumblr The documents your company shares on Google Drive Your to-do list at Nozbe or Remember the Milk The music you've bought and listen to at Amazon All your family photos kept safely (you hope) on Flickr All of these services hold the information that is important to you, that you depend on, in many cases defines a large part of who you are (your writings, your photos, your musical tastes). How often do you plan for these services having a major outage? Or vanishing entirely and forever? Or suffering some kind of terrible data loss? read more at www.ironfroggy.com/on/web-data-ownership/owning-y...

I haven’t burnt out, yet, but I can feel it coming. I’m not sure if this is something I can avoid, something inevitable, or maybe something I can soften the blow on and make a little less painful. I think there is a burn out on the way, and I’m going to at least be observant. Read the rest of my post at Medium

This is a repost from my new website . Please follow my new blog for future updates. What does it mean to "own" my data in a web-based world? I don't know what this means, but we should. Before the growing responsibilities of "The Web" is for us, owning my data meant the files sat on my own machine. It meant the files were in a format that was either human readable, or documented well enough that alternative tools could read it or convert it. It meant no vendor could die, or change its mind, and make my data useless to me. This isn't the case in the web today. read the rest of this post

This was originally posted on my new website , where you can read the full post. Please subscribe to the new feed there to follow new things I write. Private software is software one writes only for themselves and never shares or intends to share. It isn't commercial, because it isn't sold or even distributed at all. It isn't open source, but it shares something in spirit. I write about this in favor, though like all things, on a case by caes basis. I'm coming to really enjoy the idea of private software. Private software made by a person to solve a personal need and none other. It is, at its surface, very contrary to what you might expect Open Source to be about, but in a way I believe it to be a great shining example of the ideals open source comes from. read more at www.ironfroggy.com/on-private-software