The Web Platform Podcast

In episode 7 of the web platform podcast, ‘’Web RTC and Designing Realtime Experiences”,  we talk with Agility Feat (http://agilityfeat.com/), a design and development firm in the US, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras. Agility Feat has been not only building out real-time apps for a while now but they are also actively contributing back to the community around it as well by speaking at events, distributing a RealTime.com newsletter, and more.   Web RTC (http://www.webrtc.org/) is “a free, open project that enables web browsers with Real-Time Communications (RTC) capabilities via simple JavaScript APIs”. It is a peer-to-peer communication tool and its been around for a while. Contrary to popular belief Web RTC is not just video & chat in the browser. It is more than just that, it has data channels, screen sharing, streaming, and much more.   Web RTC is an evolving standard for realtime app development and is gaining popularity quickly in the realtime web community. More browsers are starting to impleme

Agile is a buzzword that, for better or worse, has caused emotional reactions that are both negative and positive. It is a highly overused and misunderstood term in our industry but it has shaped the way web software has been built for years. Agile is a flexible set of tools and practices that enable businesses to rapidly produce software that is extremely versatile to change. It has spawned many variants in its implementation and has endured much scrutiny. Agile strives to create quality software that embraces collaboration & individuals over interactions. James Shore (@JamesShore), creator of LetsCodeJavaScript.com (http://www.letscodejavascript.com/) and co-author of the book ‘The Art of Agile Development’ (http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596527679.do), talks with us in our 6th episode - ‘What Agile Brings to Products & Teams -Why TDD is Not Dead’. This episode, at its core, is about Agile software development and how Test Driven Development (TDD) can help us, as programmers, build better qual

Web Components are a set of emerging and rapidly changing technologies alter the way many developers are starting to build web applications. Zeno Rocha (@zenorocha), a dominant force in the front end development community talks with hosts Erik Isaksen (@eisaksen) & Christian Smith(@anvilhacks) on how developers can get started building with these technologies today & how to build their own components, tooling & using the Github & Bower communities, and other front end developer goodness. Zeno, began a small project, CustomElements.io ( http://customelements.io/), that was meant to track his and others Web Components. CustomElements.io, now used by Mozilla as their X-Tags (http://www.x-tags.org/) registry, has become much more than that and is now a central place for developers to share, publish, and maintain their Web Components. The project spawned an incredible amount of support from the web development community that grew into several other related projects such as ‘WebComponents.org’ ( htt

“The Rise of BAAS : Static Application Hosting & All Things Firebase”,  episode 4, is the second of our exploration into Backend As A Service (BAAS) and how it’s changing how we build applications today. Static Application development is on the rise & the tools that help us quickly host and iterate on these applications are emerging rapidly. With the exit of GoInstant as a BAAS, can we safely rely on these services as dedicated backends or do we solely use BAAS for real time interaction, prototyping, or something else? Ossama Alami, VP of Developer Happiness, at Firebase talks with us about the recent Firebase Hosting service, deploy tools, open data sets, static hosting & BAAS applications and everything Firebase. Firebase, a young but influential player in BAAS was founded in 2012. At it’s core, it is a backend that lets developers store and sync data in real time. Ossama has dedicated himself to empowering developers and ensuring Firebase remains a force for good in the developer community.

“The Rise of BAAS : GoAngular & The GoInstant (@GoInstant) Platform”,  episode 3, is the first of our exploration into Backend As A Service (BAAS) and how it’s changing how we build applications today. Matt Creager (@Matt_Creager), lead developer on the GoAngular project, talks with us about GoInstant, a powerful BAAS. The rise of BAAS has caused mixed feelings in the developer community. Static application development is rapidly increasing and evolving & the toolsets to build these are getting more detailed. This is due to many factors and static applications are quickly being recognized as solving more & more problems & pain points in application development today. Why would you build your applications with BAAS & how can you leverage the developer tools / frameworks out there? Matt tells his perspective in this episode.   

Episode #2 features Engineers Adi Chikara (@adi_ads) & Pam Selle (@pamasaur) on Prototyping strategies and goals. Building HTML, CSS, JavaScript prototypes is becoming more and more prevalent in our work. The fast development time and information yielded by a prototype can save your clients so much time, money, and headaches. Much of our discussion focuses on why & when you would want to prototype, strategies for purposeful prototype construction, and how all of this could impact business outcomes.

This is Episode #1 featuring live interviews from RubyNation 2014,  a regional Ruby Conference in Silver Springs, MD. It showcases the importance of building meaningful digital experiences,  development culture & community, & the value sharing knowledge.