Draconis Software Blog

I’m not sure if all of you are aware of exactly what we do here at Draconis Software.  I thought now would be a good time to let everyone know, since we’ve got some availability for new work.

Here are the three main types of work we do, and why we do them:

1. Web (Rails, Grails, et al): Our bread-and-butter remains in doing web development.  Despite the complexity that HTTP brings you when trying to build an application, there’s still something exciting about the dichotomies that web development brings: web framework and database, server-side and client-side, function and design.  And clearly web companies aren’t going away anytime soon.  For a while now (probably over a year) most of our clients have tended towards Rails, and it’s also our defacto suggestion for new clients.  Lately though, we’ve been doing a bit more work with Grails, which I think is becoming an exciting framework.  We’re also open to some of the older web technologies, like Java or PHP.
2. Mobile (iPhone): Our decision to branch into mobile development was influenced by one main factor: we’re in love with the iPhone!  Luckily, the iPhone is also a pretty good platform in which to develop, and many of the methodologies from web development can carry over.  Our most recent iPhone project was creating an iPhone interface for Invotrak, which shows how web and mobile development can be bridged.
3. New Things!: We pride ourselves on being able to tackle new technologies (see #2 above).  For example, as much as we love Rails, we’d jump at the chance to play more with one of the other Ruby web frameworks, like Merb.  I don’t know what the Next Big Thing will be in a year or two, but I hope that we’ll be playing with it when the time comes!

We don’t limit ourselves to any one type of client.  We’ve worked with public companies, pre-venture startups, individuals, and everything in between.

For anyone interested in talking to us, there’s plenty of ways to contact us, including our website, email, or just leave a comment on this post.

Also, I’m curious if anyone reading this has consulting firms of their own (and/or does freelancing)? Let us know in the comments!

Just a quick note about our new site design (if you haven’t noticed already).  We’ve put a lot of effort into redeveloping our site, hopefully conveying a fun, bright feel.  The main change, though, is what’s no longer visible: our network monitoring system RSP.  As a company, we’re moving in a different direction and have decided to make our site focus on our consulting efforts.

The Draconis Software website has gone through many different iterations over the years, and I’m particularly happy with the direction it’s going in.  As time goes on, we’ve worked hard to simplify our web presence, putting up only the most interesting and necessary information about our company and what we’re up to.  This has been one of the principal tenets of the web 2.0 design movement, and we’ve certainly practiced this with our clients.

But, enough about our thoughts on the site: we’d much rather hear what you think!  What do you like/not like about the new design?

Sorry for the lack of posts lately – we’ve been pretty busy. We hired another software developer, and we’ve been working to expand our consulting business a bit. Unfortunately, the blog suffers for this, but it’s not for a lack of interesting stuff! Over the last few days, we’ve had the fortunate experience to work with memcache and a number of other performance-related tools to help fine-tune a very large PHP codebase.

In addition, we’ve been putting efforts into invotrak (our invoice-tracking tool) along with other projects we’re pretty excited about. We should have some details on at least one new site being launched soon, so stay tuned!

We’ve just “completed” our move to new offices.  It’s a little larger, a little nicer, and so far, I’m very happy with it.  We’ve got the place wired for gigabit Ethernet, VoIP, plus wireless for the laptops, and it should be pretty slick.  Only snag, thus far, is Verizon (our ISP).  We’ve got our telephone line installed, which is really only used as a dedicated line for faxes, but the DSL connection still isn’t syncing.  So, for the time being, we’re working from home.

Sorry posts have slowed down recently (though, when have we ever posted fast?), as we’ve been taking vacations and getting this move pushed through.  Hopefully we’ll be returning to normal soon!

Just a quick note to let you know about the new invotrak.com blog, launching today. If you’re not already aware, we launched a new online invoice-tracking service recently, which helps freelancers and small-businesses keep track of the invoices they send to clients. The service is free, and we’ve seen quite a few people join up.

The blog is to keep much of the invotrak-related content in one place (without cluttering up this blog). It’ll have invotrak-related news (new features, notices, etc), as well as original content we think is of interest to users. If you’re interested in freelancing/entrepreneurship/etc, you may find the invotrak blog interesting.

Check out the updated Draconis homepage – it’s quite a bit different from before, with no flash!  The remaining RSP pages and other related content is still the same, but that will be converted over at some point in the near future.  I spent quite a bit of time on this design, so be sure to let me know your thoughts!

There’s a funny article up on ReadWriteWeb about some of the worst webapp names, though only 10? Almost every day there’s a stupid name coming across the TechCrunch wires. But on the flip side, you have to give a lot of these people credit: coming up with a name for a product is very difficult.

Case in point: for a long time, we’ve been calling our monitoring software RSP (which, for those paying attention, doesn’t stand for anything). The name is forgettable and boring, and really doesn’t convey what the product is all about. So, in a teaser for the future, we’ll be ditching the name RSP in favor of something else. It’s a bit more web 2.0-ish, it’s kind of fun, and it’s different. I won’t say just what it is yet, but it’s coming soon.

As I mentioned recently, this blog is just inundated with spam on a regular basis, and keeping it from making it into comments is quite a chore. The first step in fixing the problem was to install a CAPTCHA system (in our case, we used a simple math question rather than a hard-to-read image), but it doesn’t solve all the problems. For instance, the other source of huge levels of spam was fake trackbacks. Solving this, however, was so simple I should have done it from day one.

The solution was to install a simple Wordpress plugin to check for a legitimate link to our blog – it loads the referenced page from each trackback and searches for a link. If there isn’t one, it marks it as spam. Simple – and it’s reduced the number of spam comments that reach our moderation queue to near-zero.

Between the trackback checker and the CAPTCHA, blog spam is much more manageable.

I’ve been getting annoyed lately with the deluge of spam this blog receives. For a blog without particularly regular content (and not a very large audience, too), we seem to be inundated with spam.  So, I went looking for a solution.

When it comes to fighting blog spam, there’s really two routes: setting up a comment filtering system to weed out comments that match a set of filters, or a CAPTCHA component. One of my biggest gripes with most CAPTCHA systems is the ugliness of the solution: the images are made as difficult as possible to read, making it as difficult as possible for a human to post a comment. Well, I found a different solution that I am much happier with: a simple math question, asking users to solve an equation before allowing the post to go through.

(Read the article)

We’ve been working on updating our network monitoring and management software RSP to version 2.3. This release focuses on making it easier for new users to start using the software (especially for those who aren’t necessarily interested in setting up a full-blown monitoring infrastructure). If you haven’t tried it out yet, download the trial version and let us know what you think! We’re constantly looking for feedback on our efforts.

(Read the article)