http://www.snailbyte.com Company news along with technology and business trends. Sun, 20 Apr 2008 16:54:06 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en We recently launched a new website, [Wajapi](http://www.wajapi.com), which allows users to discover books through people. It allows users to Discover new books Follow what their friends are reading Show books on blogs Wajapi is used to populate the booklist in the sidebar of this blog. The idea is that pasting such a booklist ... http://www.snailbyte.com/2008/04/20/wajapi/ When the Linux kernel developers no longer had free access to BitKeeper, a proprietary version control system, Linus Torvalds couldn't find a free replacement that met his needs. So he created his own: Git. Slowly but surely, Git is conquering the world. Today, a "social network for developers" based on the coolness ... http://www.snailbyte.com/2008/04/11/git-is-the-new-black/ Tim Berners-Lee gave a keynote [speech at 3GSM](http://opengardensblog.futuretext.com/archives/2007/02/tim_berners_lee.html) last year where he discussed the difference between what he calls a foundation technology and a ceiling technology: A foundation technology is designed to enable innovation, to be the base which will support other even more powerful things to come. A ceiling technology ... http://www.snailbyte.com/2008/03/05/instant-messaging-as-a-platform/ Duncan J. Watts is a physicist turned sociologist and author of the book Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age. In a recent interview with Fast Company, Watts disputes Malcolm Gladwell's tipping point theory which became conventional wisdom when his book became a bestseller. "It just doesn't work," Watts says ... http://www.snailbyte.com/2008/01/31/viral-marketing-watts-vs-gladwell/ [Daniel Lucraft](http://www.daniellucraft.com/blog) recently released [Rak](http://www.daniellucraft.com/blog/2007/11/rak-a-grep-replacement-in-pure-ruby/), a ruby powered grep replacement. To install: gem install rak Rak is useful for searching Rails code through the console. Search results are displayed with the search terms highlighted, which is very useful. Go ahead, give it a spin! http://www.snailbyte.com/2007/12/03/ruby-grep-rak/ Last week's Economist has an interesting article ("[Crunchless credit](http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displayStory.cfm?story_id=10026377&subjectID=526352&fsrc=nwl&)") on how the recent credit crunch affects peer to peer lending services such as [Zopa](http://www.zopa.com) and [Prosper](http://www.prosper.com). Apparently, private lenders haven't raised their rates as much as the banks have because unlike the banks, they don't face higher funding costs. The article ... http://www.snailbyte.com/2007/11/02/peer-to-peer-lending/