Skype kept shtum about the cause of the massive breakdown of the Service infrastructure within the last days. They only emphesized that it was not a hacker attack. Now the company Skype sheds light on the reason: A patch of the Microsoft Windows operating system caused the breadown of the entire Skype system serving over 200 million registered customers worldwide. The Windows monoculture has some perfidies … also for us Mac and Linux users … but luckily everything is runnning back again.

Three years ago, David Heinemeier Hansson published the first release of Ruby on Rails to the public. The paradigmatic shift of programming web applications in an elegant, pragmatic way is a present to all of us. It’s fun to draft and scaffold an application, to do rapid application prototyping. It’s even a pleasure to read RoR code. Enough puff piece for today … thank you, David, for starting the revolution … and thanks to the whole RoR-community for making it a web development revolution

The most important thing at a conference is the time between the sessions and presentations. There you meet the interesting people, have the best discussions and socialize with others. Sure, the quality of the presentations has to bee high, too. But the "in beween" is the heart of every great conference. To cultivate that "in between" the Berliner Ruby User Group invites the Ruby on Rails community to meet one day before the RailsConf Europe starts in Berlin. They’ll organize a Bratwurst-on-Rails event, also vegetarians can join Great idea! Everybody who joins the conference should should register for the Bratwurst-on-Rails socializing on September 16th 2007 and celebrate the Rails community! Thanks in advance for organizing that event!

Picture: bratwurst-on-rails.com

Apple just released some insights for iPhone web developers – and everybody who wants to optimize his website or web application for the iPhone will find valuable tips inside. Some remarkable facts: Mehr …

Hard times, especially for German mobile and online muisc start-ups. Accourding to the GEMA, the German authors’ society for music, the ringtone company Jamba did a great job at BITKOM, the German Association for Information Technology,
Telecommunications and New Media: The GEMA framework agreement for all BITKOM members is terminated. Now every company has to negotiate by itself for the specific music rights they need. Mehr …