Meta Bates

For the last few years every project or company I’ve worked for has started the same way, by setting up Basecamp, Lighthouse and Hoptoad (or similar ones anyway). Why? Basecamp  - so we could share documents and todos. Lighthouse – so we could track our issues and bugs. Hoptoad – so we could track the errors our application was generating.

These are all very good applications and have served myself and my clients well, but they’ve suffered from several very big flaws. The first big flaw was the cost. You can easily drop $100 or more a month across these different services. But that wasn’t the biggest flaw or problem I’ve had with these services. The biggest problem was lack of integration.

So what do I mean by lack of integration? Well, when an error comes in I want to easily be able to create a new issue from it. When the issue gets resolved, so should the error. If the error reoccurs it should re-open automatically, and so should the issue. I want to be able to create an issue right from a document or be able to attach issues to a document. I should be able to follow the flow from document to issue to error and back again very easily. Unfortunately, these applications don’t give you that level of integration. They offer some level, but just not enough.

Well, my friends, welcome to the future. Welcome to FluxTracker.com. FluxTracker combines a great issue tracker, a project management system, and an error tracker all in one application. Now you can full integration without any configuration, oh, and you can do it at a fraction of the cost!

We know it isn’t easy to switch to a different application, that’s why we’ve made it easy for you. You can easily import your Lighthouse account. FluxTracker also allows you to easily use the Hoptoad Notifier plugin for your project by just setting a few configuration parameters.

So know you know, you’re life can be easier. And you now know how easy it is to get started! So what are you waiting for? Go and sign up for our Free plan and start living the dream.

About.com became the first, that I know about, to review my book, “Distributed Programming with Ruby”. What a great first review to have as well. They rated the book 5 out of 5 stars! The review can be found here.

“Anyone working with distributed programming in Ruby will want this book.”

The only downside they saw in the book, was that they wanted it to be longer! I have to save something for the 2nd edition, don’t I?

If you haven’t purchased yours yet, I encourage you to do so. It’s on sale at Amazon.com right now.

If you have reviewed the book, or know of a review of the book, please pass it along.

The great guys over at RailsEvny.com have been nice enough again to include Mack in one of their podcasts. If you aren’t a regular subscriber to the podcast (and why not?), you really should be. Take a listen:

http://railsenvy.com/2008/10/15/rails-envy-podcast-episode-051-10-15-2008

Thanks again guys for the inclusion, and keep up the good work!

The release of Mack 0.7.0 was featured as the lead story this week in the railsenvy.com podcast. They guys had great things to say about Mack, have a listen:

http://www.railsenvy.com/2008/9/3/rails-envy-podcast-episode-045-09-03-2008

As always, if you don’t subscribe to the podcast, you definitely should. It’s one of the best ones around.

Peter Cooper just posted a very nice article about Mack, which features an interview with me, Mark Bates, over on Ruby Inside. Please check it out:

http://www.rubyinside.com/mack-distributed-ruby-web-application-framework-releases-070-1107.html