March 2012
9 posts
6 tags
World's Largest Watercolor Map
Stamen has done it again. Based on the OpenStreetMap they have created a fascinating look of hand drawn watercolor.
Be sure to visit their site (maps.stamen.com) and explore the world in a new way.
Gothenburg, Sweden
4 tags
Emacs - The Black Box
For many people, Emacs is a black box that few dare to open. Yes, Emacs is hard to learn, especially if you try to use it the “right way”. I guess this is what most people are so afraid of. A sad fact when you know how much it has to offer.
A few years ago, before I was an Emacs user, Richard Stallman was in town talking about free software. At some point during his talk, he just...
1 tag
Slides from David's MongoDB presentation →
Scaling MongoDB for real time analytics - a talk held at Software Passion Summit
4 tags
Slides from Theo's JRuby presentation →
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants - presentation held at Software Passion Summit 2012
8 tags
BURT ❤ Norway
Besides the many trips between our offices in Stockholm and Gothenburg our second most visited city must be Oslo. We have signed some great deals there, adding more customers to the previously signed Nettavisen and Finn.no (read more about them in the official press release). But the best thing with Norway is all the people we’ve been meeting, and the enthusiastic conversations we’ve had on how...
5 tags
Storing stuff not worth storing (MongoDB)
Developing an analytics platform means dealing with enormous quantities of rapidly evolving data. In order to manage it we at Burt use a database called MongoDB. On paper MongoDB seems to be the ultimate solution: its fast, easy to cluster and shard, doesn’t use schemas and supports indexes and some atomic operations, but… Oh ‘BUT’… three simple letters. Three simple letters that...
6 tags
How to write a JRuby extension in pure Java
Yes I know — Java, ick. But sometimes it’s worth it. Even though JRuby is blazingly fast, sometimes as fast as Java, there are situations where it just makes more sense to roll up your sleeves and write some proper curly brackets.
Until very recently I wasn’t aware that JRuby had any form of extension API, I just thought that because the Java integration is as good as it is out of the box there...
8 tags
Four issues on “advertising” in social media
Some thoughts on advertising in social media from our CEO Gustav von Sydow:
Just finished reading a GigaOM article on the value of social ads (or lack thereof). Typical quotes being:
The point is that Facebook is a social medium, not an advertising one, like search or display. It certainly is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful branding medium. It is, however, a word of mouth or...
5 tags
Exciting Times Ahead & More Amazing Peoples
Long winter days in Sweden are slowly taking a turn; Gothenburg rainy as always, Stockholm rarely lit by sun but since Christmas things have been exciting and intense enough that no one seems to even care about the weather anymore.
The last couple of months our offices have just been bursting of positive energy and excitement. Restless and eager to make things happen we almost need to rein...
