If you have seen any of my presentation over the last year, you know that I reference the Raspberry Pi as an interesting piece of technology. For a very low cost (fully loaded less than $90), you can build a media, file or web server. I spent about $70 on my rig. I should have posted a blog about the Pi earlier, but better late than never.
I received a note from David Conroy who took the Pi and merged it with another project I am working on (the RAMCO EZ-API) to build a cost effective integration device between your Association Management System and other systems. David has an excellent description of setting up a web server (yep a LAMP server) on the Pi. If you are a RAMCO customer, you will find his write-up on accessing the RAMCO EZ-API from the Pi equally well written.
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Messaging, voice-mails and face-to-face meetings are all useful types of communication but there is still a place for e-mail, especially if you are creating a record of something. In this post, I will cover the basics of sending e-mail from a node.js service. The scenario I’m addressing is an HTML5 client hooked you via a WebSocket to a node,js service running on a separate server.
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NOTE: CRT is excited to have Mark Lesswing, Chief Technology Officer and SVP of ITS at NAR, write a series of posts on his experiences with node.js. In the article below, Mark covers the use of SQLite and node.js. Please note that this will be a pretty technical series and speaks to the diversity of topics CRT will cover. We will indicate when we have articles that are more technical as we post them. Thank you. – Chad
In a previous post, I discussed the concept of using node.js as a WebSocket server. This approach is characterized by many smaller node.js servers, each providing information to separate WebSockets. The user experiences the data through an HTML5 webpage. It is natural that the next topic of discussion would be persistence. There is a wealth of information that can be found on the web regarding node.js and robust SQL databases like MySQL, so I will not duplicate the information in this post.
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NOTE: CRT is excited to have Mark Lesswing, Chief Technology Officer and SVP of ITS at NAR, write a series of posts on his experiences with node.js. In the article below, Mark geocoding and libraries and services that prove useful in the node.js environment. Please note that this will be a pretty technical series and speaks to the diversity of topics CRT will cover. We will indicate when we have articles that are more technical as we post them. Thank you. – Chad
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NOTE: CRT is excited to have Mark Lesswing, Chief Technology Officer and SVP of ITS at NAR, write a series of posts on his experiences with node.js. In the article below, expounds upon the importance of Web Sockets to the future of the web. We will indicate when we have articles that are more technical as we post them. Thank you. – Chad
I have been focusing on the future of the web lately and wanted to share some insights. HTML5 is an important step forward for websites and there are plenty of articles on the web related to new capabilities like client-side caching, geolocation and WebSockets. I wanted to share my experience supporting HTML5. A good place to start would be on the server side.
node.js. I had the same first reaction you are probably having “Javascript on the Server?”. I had to stretch my thinking to get used to the idea, but once I overcame my first reaction, I was pleasently surprised.
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NOTE: CRT is excited to have Mark Lesswing, Chief Technology Officer and SVP of ITS at NAR, write a series of posts on his experiences with node.js. In the article below, Mark highlights some key differences between traditional server-side languages and node.js. Please note that this will be a pretty technical series and speaks to the diversity of topics CRT will cover. We will indicate when we have articles that are more technical as we post them. Thank you. – Chad
If you want to quickly grasp node.js, you must think in terms of events, just as you do in Javascript in the browser. This callback approach is a departure from the way things used to be done on the server-side. Traditionally, the name of the game was frameworks, scripting or object-oriented modules. Node.js works best if you abandon that thinking and model “thread-like” behavior; a scriptable asynchronous server.
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Today I’m remembering my friend Greg Malone.
I started a project to install a file backup system for my home systems. I have Windows, Linux and Mac systems on my home network with file types ranging from small text files to huge recording sessions. I didn’t want to spend a lot (or any) money on a solution but I recognized the value of the information on my network. If you are operating a business, these same thoughts and motivations should be crossing your mind.
Have you ever been surfing the net and found a site that just blew you away? Sure you have.
When I find myself that position, the next question I ask is “How did they do that?”. I have been doing alot of DOM programming lately which sparked my interest in AJAX-based frameworks. Sure, you could “view source” and inspect the script tags, but as you all know, technical types are lazy.
I thought you might appreciate the WTFramework because it inspects and identifies the underlying framework with a single click. The project is actively supported and the list of libraries it can detect is impressive. Here are a few:
Now I can spend more time learning from the expert users of these frameworks!
This is a shameless plug for the blog operated by NAR’s Information Central who publishes field guides intended to address business issues. Some of the guides are technology related and some are not.
A field guide is a topic specific collection of links designed to help you come up to speed on issues quickly. Examples of recent guides are GPS, properties with dubious history and the impact of wind farms on property value. You can develop informed opinion by using the links to relevant articles from the general media as well as trade publications.
I forgot to mention that field guides are a free benefit provided by Information Central. Feel free to suggest new topics for future field guides.
Follow-up – 1/20/09:
Here are two links in the RE.NET that reference the Field Guides: Agent Genius and CV Escrow.
