We’re looking for 3 interns for summer work.
Just think you could get paid to get coffee and be a slave at some boring corporate cubicle garden
or
You could actually create something interesting, fun and (gasp) useful. Sure, there’s no pay, but you’d get to work on Ruby on Rails (like a real project), Open Source appliances, mobile technologies
PLUS
you can do it in your pajamas.
Okay, so work from home, library, whatever. You’re responsible for whatever attire you have on that may or may not offend anyone.
Send an email to jobs@imapenguin.com with the subject “Internship”.
Note that the more creative you are in your email the better your chances of being one of the three. Also, since we’re not paying you, your country does not matter! Reasonable English is a good idea though.
Every once in a while, something comes along that alters the course of things for me. I joined the Navy in 1993, that was one thing. I found Linux while recovering from back surgery in 1997. That was another.
Last month, 37Signals released an application called Highrise. We penguins are longtime 37signals users of products like Basecamp and Campfire. This new application raises the bar for us as a company, and for me personally.
Highrise on the surface looked like an oversimplified contact manager. Using the other products by 37Signals has greatly increased our productivity in the past so we decided to give them the benefit of the doubt.
In 2 days, we were completely convinced that they were on to something. PEOPLE are the PRIMARY piece of data in the application.
Well that’s great because PEOPLE are what matters in any business. Not Opportunites, Deal size, the number of things we may be able to get them to buy, etc.
We put people in the center before Highrise, but our old CRM solution didn’t work like that, so we kept people in the center in our minds and the struggled with the application to work with us on it.
Today, our CRM application helps us remember all the details about conversations, follow ups, promises, funny family happenings (if you care about people, you should remember what they care about most) and things that really matter.
Yes, we know the Rails appliance is still on rails 1.1.6 
We’re developing an automated build system for incremental rails updates on the appliance and including MySQL support in May.
If you need it quicker, this is a 100% open source project. We don’t charge for it and wont, so let us know if you’re interested in joining the development team.
Him: People are willing to look at and buy this because it’s what is popular right now.
Me: This doesn’t actually provide any security, it’s an illusion product.
Him: Who cares, people will pay a large amount of money for this. The margin is great.
Me: Isn’t this like stealing? I’m more interested in actual solutions, not snowballing people into something that doesn’t actually work.
Him: ::Goes on 20 minute spew on them vs competitor ending with:: “and it will stop information leaving your network via http POST”
Me: So if I submit to a form submit via GET what happens?
Him: Well we don’t block that.
Me: So I just circumvented your very expensive system just from listening to your pitch. What other parts aren’t going to work?
Yep, that really happened.
For those of you who have been sleeping, Ubuntu 7.04 was released today. We’re taking upgrade questions at support@imapenguin.com.
Hint: you can purchase support from us for commercial applications by calling 703-842-5324 or emailing sales@imapenguin.com
Support for people working on real open source projects via email is free at support@imapenguin.com (make sure you mention you’re doing open source and what the project is).
Have fun and let us know how it’s working for you!
I’m giving the IM talk at Angelbeat in Philadelphia next Monday the 23rd. It’s in the morning and I’m in town until dinner time. Drop me a line (mike@imapenguin.com) if you’re in town and want to geek out at a coffee shop in the afternoon.
While at 32 I’m by no means old, I had a funny conversation last week about my beginnings with Linux. The short short version is that I played quite a bit with Slackware and then got really serious when RedHat 4.2 came out.
The slightly younger (like 25ish) person I was talking to looked very surprised and proclaimed “Wow, I would have thought with all you seem to know about Linux that you’d been using it longer than me. I started just after RedHat 4 was released.”
With a sigh, I explained the crazy numbering system choice RedHat made to go up to 9 and then back to 3 (or EL, ES 3 or 2 or whatever silliness it was they did) that I was speaking of “RedHat Linux” 4.2 which was released in May of 1997.
I think this might mean that the RedHat 5.2 box and disc set that I have on my bookshelf means that I have special connections into RedHat and that I have insights into about 2 years into the future.
Given this information, I’d like to announce that I’ll happily sell you CDR copies of this CD set for $50 a pop.
It’s a glimpse into the future folks. Just think, RedHat 5.2 today. No waiting.
Better break out those notes on XF86Config though, the graphical interface installer for this futuristic version isn’t quite done yet.
Zultys auto attendants need an 8bit Mono U-law format wav file. Most recording software will give you a stereo 16bit format at the very least. To convert via sox (available for Unix machines including Macs) simply do:
sox -c 2 Audio.wav -c 1 -r 8000 -U Audio2.wav