We are "confirmed"! :)

Yahoo! OBS Labs got official "confirmed" status from Engine Yard's Rails Development directory:
http://www.railsdevelopment.com/developers/obs-labs

We need your feedback!

If you've get in touch with me or my company OBS Labs for Rails consulting and development please leave us feedback here:
http://www.railsdevelopment.com/developers/obs-labs/recommendations/new

Thanks! We need your voice!

Entrepreneurs can change the world join the momenent.

Just wanted to share an idea of our new clients. I really liked their inspirational video:

http://grasshopper.com/idea/

8 Facts about the Russian Startup Scene

Together with my friend Bjoern Herrmann we compiled this short article about Russian Startup Scene

8 Facts about the Russian Startup Scene

Did you ever wonder about the startup scene in St. Petersburg and Moscow? I spent this summer in St.Petersburg and Moscow and did some deep research. Earlier I was quite unaware - therefore I was pleasantly surprised and excited to find out how vibrant and ambitious the scene really is! Watch out for the Russians ;-)!!

Here are 8 points you should know.

Read full article on Startup School Blog

Supercool startup recommends OBS Labs!

We are now working in close partnership with SuperCoolSchool (http://beta.supercoolschool.com) - very promising San Francisco-based startup in online education.
They just posted recommendation for us on their blog - check this out:
http://supercoolschool.typepad.com/blog/2009/01/resommendation-for-a-supercool-ror-team-in-russia-.html

Our internal project!

Finally this happened !
After we created over 20 projects for our clients in US, UK, Germany, Switzerland, Australia...
OBS Labs works on our own startup ! Two of our top Rails developers work on building alpha version (proof of concept) project.

I cant tell really much about it as its still in stealth mode. I spend quite some time for discussing this idea with developers, managers from US and Europe. Sounds like this can be something great but i still prefer to keep fingers crossed.
Its going to be done for Europe and Asian markets and has successful prototypes on US market (yeah US already invented everything, all you can do is adopt it locally). It is all about socializing and surviving in crisis times. I really cant tell anything more at the moment but i am very excited about this idea!
The next big thing is coming!

New US phone: +1 (415) 8303 771

We changed our US phone number to +1 (415) 8 303 77 1

Wheather you are looking for new affordable software development partner, consultant on Ruby on Rails or just want to discuss your idea about next web project -feel free to call us! Normally i answer myself or one of our developers can take a message.

We dont have office manager here - yeah we all have to learn IKEA lessons especially in crisis times :)

New Rails projects!

Many important things happened here in OBS Labs since my last post. We visited European Rails conference in Berlin, Germany. We completed Social Network site for web startup in Switzerland (hope its going to be another exciting site about wine). We participated in softlaunch of Quevita (http://www.quevita.com/) potentially largest European social network around healthy living style.

Now i am in conversation with Supercool School (supercoolschool.com). This can be non-profit project where i and some of our developers could use our Rails coding skills to bring Change in Africa and countries with weak education system. This is going to be top cool project and i cant wait to join this Supercool team.

Launch application in 6 weeks - myth or reality?

Some great Rails development companies guarantee that they can launch the first version of your desired app in just as fast as 6 weeks!

WoW! That sounds great- we can get desirable result in about 1.5 month - this is the way one can think of it...

Is it real?
Yes it is. There is no magic here and you don't have to be David Blane to do it. Here is where the trick is. Most companies (including OBS Labs) use Rails in pair with Agile development(SCRUM, eXtreme Programming or whatever). In this approach development divide into series of 2 week iterations. As a result of each iteration clients receive fully-workable and tested code, that includes few (5-10) features for that iteration. After reviewing iteration result features for the next iter. are discussed together with client.
So typically in 6 weeks you can have 3 iteration and from 15-30 featured fully workable application. Isn't it enough for average 1.0 version, prototype or whatever? Well, it definitely should be enough to make client to sign long term contract ;-)
How can OBS Labs beat it?
Well, at first we are not trying to compete with anyone. We are small, experienced at what we are doing for years, do it good and our clients love us for that dedicated approach.
We use same latest Rails technologies, contribute to new open source trendy stuff as well, use same practices for project management, trying to keep quality as our idol.
And when you can buy two similar products you should consider price as a important factor.

Personally i love American cars. I am currently driving 2005 Chevy Tahoe and i am so happy with it. In Europe its quite expensive to have American full size, but i still love it. Those who know a little about this car know that its build on same platform as other GM models like Chevy Silverado, Chevy Suburban, Caddy Escalade and Hummer H2. I dont need to carry bike or logs so i don't need Silverado, i am not Texas farmer with 5 kids so i dont need Suburban, i dont like rap so no need for Caddy, and offroad is not for me so H2 wasn't my choice. For me my Tahoe is just the smart choice between this models. I simply dont want to pay extra $$$ for chrome on wheels and handles while I enjoy full size car, i never had problems with taking additional passenger or bag with me and i am not scared with hard road conditions. The right choice for me.

OBS value for similar project would be as much as about 3 times less than other companies can offer. They will charge you about $120-$150/hour saying that they are the only and the best experts on that market. We normally charge about $50/hour, while paying our developers about the same rate as they do! (Today rates of developers in Russia rising to EU and US ranges, and its not a good way to save just on salaries) How can we handle it? The answer is simple both they and we are using offshore developers , but our developers are all in on office in Russia, we cant afford to invest as much in marketing and advertising, being Formula1 team sponsor pay top $$$ to managers and shareholders(OBS Labs is hold by developers themselves). When you work with OBS Labs the structure of your costs is simple, clear and top efficient!

Sounds good, can you show me some examples?
You are always welcome. We just recently completed and launched social networking application in one man/month, we created ecommerce and mailing application in 2 weeks! Some time ago we did simple CMS system in about 4 weeks? Want some more? I can refer to both clients who work with us for years and clients competed their first goals for less than 6 weeks. Please contact me directly by vlad _at) obsgroup.biz for more information and consultancy on your project.

Some Rails code tips

Recently we did internal code review for one of our clients.
After results been send we were asked whats wrong with code we pointed out:

v = params[:vintage].to_i if v < 100
if v < (Date.today.year - 2000)
v = 2000 + v
else
v = 1900 + v
end
end

One developer failed to explain, because he wasn't the guy who did this review and he didn't know the context.
The context was the it was inside one of the actions instead being separate method in controller or even in helper.
The tendency in Rails (accordind to its creators, and common sense) says that action code should be as simple as possible - in perfect world just calls to some methods and rendering page
In this case it should be something like

v = get_vine_vintage(params[:vintage])

or something, with method defined somewhere else. We always should keep controller actions code clean and readable.

After European RailsConf

Thanks to everyone who met us at RailsConf in Berlin! It was nice to meet all of you and to hear the last tendencies in Rails development from principals.

This year event wasn't as popular as year before but i believe its all for good. After being known as a silver bullet for killing web projects that everyone wanted to hire, Rails is becoming de-facto one of the smartest options for small-medium size web projects.

Some update on our projects: we are running 3 projects for our Swiss clients at the moment, still working with one of the oldest and most valuable clients in US, looking forward to pick another US client which is a well-known web 2.0 site.

Rails Conference Europe '08

Don't forget to register on European Rails Conf that will be held 02-04.09 in Berlin, Germany!
OBS had a lot of fun there last year, same as on main event in Portland, OR.
Registration site:
europe.railsconf.org


See you at Railsconf!

OBS Labs Launches the First RoR Social Network Adult Site

Recently we released version one of Dominatrix (www.dominr.com)– the first Adult social network website based on RoR.
It was done in just a few weeks by Dmitry Vyazov, OBS Labs Senior RoR Developer.
Site offers popular features enabling people collaborate – private messages, photo galleries, blogs. In just a few days over 30 users already registered there. We hope that target audience will find this resource very useful
“Using Ruby on Rails helped us to run site fast and keep good possibilities for extending and scaling application”, Dmitry says.

Kyte: Check this out!

Mail Servers Update

We are in process of migration to the newer mail server.
Some of your emails to @obsgroup.biz may not be delivered

Please use "read report" option for all your emails to us with next two days.
Thank you!