Spring Break Internship in Node.js at Greane Tree Technology! Dude!

Greane Tree Technology welcomes Matthew Marchesni, a senior at Union College, for a week-long internship/apprenticeship learning Node.js, a server-side Javascript platform known for its speed. We met Matt last December at NY Innovates 2013, when he was eagerly learning Ruby on Rails. As a Ruby on Rails shop, we were very impressed with Matt’s go get ‘em attitude. We ran into Matt again at the Tech Valley Holiday Developers Bash, where we chatted about the possibility of a Spring Break internship at Greane Tree Technology. After some more planning, we all decided that Node.js would be a terrific topic for Matt’s week of hands-on learning with us.

We agree with Matt that soaking up Node.js knowledge is a great way to spend Spring Break!

Matthew Gerrior to Speak at Fourth Annual Vermont Web Marketing Summit

Matthew Gerrior, Greane Tree’s Lead Software Engineer, will be one of the experts speaking at the Vermont Web Marketing Summit on November 14 in Burlington, VT. This is the fourth year for the summit, which last year attracted over 250 attendees from New England and beyond. Matthew will join speakers from Google, Outspoken Media, DragonSearch, and other leading digital marketing firms.

Matthew’s talk, “The Mechanics of Social Media,” will explain the major social media APIs and how to use them to integrate social media with web applications. Matthew will give examples from his experience building applications for Greane Tree Technology clients such as Baruch College, Baby-Friendly USA, and Complex TV.

To learn more about the Vermont Web Marketing Summit or to register, visit vtwebmarketingsummit.com.

GreyCastle Security: Troy Stalwart, National Standout

Greane Tree Technology appreciates being part of a network of small businesses in Tech Valley that offer excellent service to customers locally and nationwide. Every so often, we like to profile fellow entrepreneurs with whom we have especially enjoyed working. A few months ago, we described working together with Russo Project Management. Today, we want to focus on GreyCastle Security, an information security consulting firm headquartered in Troy. As GreyCastle says on its website, “Our company was established because a need existed for an information security consulting firm truly focused on managing risks in people, process and technology, not pushing the latest hardware and software.” We have found GreyCastle Security to be true to, and very good at, their stated mission.

We first learned about GreyCastle Security when we read CEO Reg Harnish’s contributions to the “Workbytes” column in the Times Union. We were impressed with the way Reg calmly and clearly explained the risks of computer security breaches, and the steps that could be taken to mitigate those risks. When we were looking for a security firm to advise a client, GreyCastle was one of the firms we recommended. When Reg and his associate Mike Stamas made their presentation, they didn’t just talk about the technology of threat and protection. They talked about the global industry of hacking, the attractiveness of poorly defended small targets, and the importance of a comprehensive program to train employees, often the weakest link in a security chain. Reg and Mike impressed our client, too, who subsequently hired GreyCastle Security to map out their security strategies and policies.

Greane Tree turns to GreyCastle when we have questions on securing our applications. Applications are a critical part of any business and often contain the most confidential and sensitive data, thus making them one of the most targeted elements in any organization. TheSecure Software Development Life Cycle (SSDLC) lies at the heart of application security and is a key part of the defense of company assets. From understanding new requirements to maintaining legacy software, GreyCastle Security can assist with application security through training, code review and analysis, and by creating a more secure operating environment. As with any other security measure, application security is ongoing and must be maintained in order to be effective. Together with GreyCastle Security, Greane Tree ensures that the latest security controls and considerations are integrated into its Secure Software Development Life Cycle.

GreyCastle Security advises people all over the country. They have a busy speaking schedule, and are regularly called upon to comment when security breaches make the news. Their team is growing and they recently moved to new offices at 500 Federal Street, Troy. We’re glad that they are keeping things local, and will continue be part of the Troy tech renaissance.

Greane Tree heads to Burlington, VT for Buruco!

Greane Tree Technology Software Engineers Matthew Gerrior and Chad Calhoun attended the Burlington Ruby Conference, “a boutique conference for extraordinary Rubyists,” on August 3rd and 4th. The conference was held in beautiful Burlington, Vermont, within view of Lake Champlain. The conference featured talks by respected Rubyists from across the United States. One of these speakers was our neighbor David Czarnecki from  Agora Games right here in Troy. The conference was a single track event, meaning that everyone was able to attend all of the talks. This reinforced the sense of community that the organizers aimed to create. The tight-knit group of around 150 Ruby enthusiasts spent two days learning about improving their code, and their lives as developers.

The conference started with a Keynote presentation by Mark Bates (@markbates) on leveling up as a developer, which focused on the fact that we must Always Be Coding if we want to be the best developers we can be. The talk was followed up by a presentation on zero down-time deployments from Agora’s David Czarnecki (@Czarneckid). Carina Zona (@cczona) taught us how we can improve our local Ruby community, or even start our own if one doesn’t exist yet. Brian Cardarella (@bcardarella) spoke on the topic of Real Time Rails, specifically in relation to streaming responses to the user over time. Nick Cox (@everydaytype) lightened up the mood in the afternoon with an engaging conversation about incorporating rest into the life of software developers, requiring us to join him in breathing exercises aimed at relieving stress. The first day ended with a presentation on mRuby, a lightweight Ruby implementation aimed at embedded systems, by Andrew Nordman (@Cadwallion), which helped to shine a light on Ruby’s uses outside of Rails.

The second day kicked off with a presentation from Richard Schneeman (@schneems), who characterized the typical mistakes that Rails developers make, culled from the millions of apps deployed to  Heroku. Danielle Sucher (@DanielleSucher) followed up with a presentation aimed at helping developers better negotiate everything from salaries to landing a new client. A glimpse into the Ruby Standard Library was provided by Zachary Scott (@_zzak) which illustrated ways to accomplish tasks without adding additional gems to a project. Bryan Helmkamp (@brynary), founder of  Code Climate, followed up with a very instructive presentation on how developers can help build a culture of code quality within their organization, benefiting them and the clients they serve. We were pleased that he recommended regular code reviews and regular lunch and learns, both of which we practice here at Greane Tree Technology. Dan Gebhardt (@dgeb) helped to shed some light on building scalable and useful APIs, demonstrating the different serialization options available, as well as how we can make our APIs as open and easily explored as the web. The conference came to a close with a keynote presentation by Steve Klabnik (@steveklabnik) on Functional Reactive Programming, which makes it easier to handle time varying values and which has recently gained popularity for developing graphical user interfaces, including those found in client-side web applications.

The conference successfully achieved its two goals of fostering the Ruby community and teaching vital lifestyle and development skills. We met some amazing developers and learned a great deal. We’d like to thank the coordinators for putting on such a wonderful conference, as well as the speakers for the time they spent preparing their presentations and delivering them to us. We would love to make it back again next year.

Greane Tree Technology Lunch & Learn: Cross Platform Mobile Application Development Tools

Greane Tree Technology CTO Joseph Payette gave our latest “Lunch & Learn” presentation. With the number of tools and frameworks for cross platform mobile application development increasing every year, it can be a challenge to determine the best fit technology for a mobile project. All of these tools and frameworks have their advantages and disadvantages, as they leverage different mechanisms for abstracting differences across mobile devices in an effort to provide a single platform for rapid application development.  To bring order to the various options at hand, Joe reviewed mobile application architectures (native, hybrid, and HTML5), and explored and compared a few hybrid tools and frameworks, namely PhoneGap (www.phonegap.com), Appcelerator (www.appcelerator.com), and MoSync (www.mosync.com). Joe’s mobile application development presentation  includes sample code for these three tools and frameworks.

The Lunch and Learn series is a regular event where we discuss topics of interest to our projects and clients. Last month Chad Calhoun explored Git Interactive Techniques.

Greane Tree Technology Lunch & Learn: Git Interactive Techniques

The latest installment of Greane Tree’s Lunch & Learn series took place last Friday. Chad Calhoun shared some features of the Git version control system that he has recently discovered. Chad reviewed interactive adding, interactive rebase, and workflows for cleaning up commits. Interactive adding is a simple way to stage commits with “hunks”, small chunks of code, rather than with the entire file. Interactive rebase is a great feature that allows you to reorder, reword edit, delete, or combine commits.

Chad picked up several Git techniques through the Git Real courses on Code Sch
ool. Code school has done an amazing job with their courses and we suggest checking them out if you haven’t already!

The Lunch and Learn series is a regular event where we discuss topics of interest to our projects and clients. Matt Gerrior kicked off the program with his talk on Growing Object Oriented Software Guided by Tests. Joe Payette continued with a presentation on Ansible for server orchestration. Chad’s Git presentation slides can be viewed online at Speaker Deck.

SocialMadness: Vote for Greane Tree Technology to Support the Commission on Economic Opportunity

Greane Tree Technology is taking part in the second annual Social Madness competition, sponsored by The Business Journals. The sponsors will make a $10,000 donation to each of the charities designated by the three national Social Madness competition winners.

Greane Tree Technology is once again competing on behalf of the Commission on Economic Opportunity of the Greater Capital Region. The Commission on Economic Opportunity (CEO) works in partnership with individuals, families, and the larger community to empower people to build self-sufficiency in all life areas and to rise out of poverty. By “liking” Greane Tree of Facebook, following us on Twitter or LinkedIn, or voting for us daily on SocialMadness.com, you can help us win the chance to donate up to $10,000 to the charity of our choice. Our choice is CEO!

Starting June 3, please take a moment to vote for GreaneTree Technology in one (or more!) of the following ways. The first round of local voting runs from 12:01 AM ET June 3, 2013 through 11:59 PM ET June 17, 2013. If we get enough votes in local voting rounds, we can compete nationally for the chance to bring home a big prize for CEO. You can vote for us multiple times! Please help us help CEO!

“Like,” comment on, or share our Facebook posts: www.facebook.com/greanetree
Reply, retweet, or mark our tweets favorites on Twitter: www.twitter.com/greanetree
“Like, comment on, or share our posts on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/greane-tree-technology-group

BizJournal subscribers: vote for us at http://www.bizjournals.com/albany/socialmadness. We’re on the “Medium” tab.

More about #SocialMadness: http://www.socialmadness.com

Making Things Simple for Complex TV

In recent months, Greane Tree Technology has been working on high-profile, high-traffic web applications for clients. The resulting sites make extensive use of streaming video, social media integration, and responsive design.

A Video Hub for a Demanding Demographic

Last fall, Complex Media asked Greane Tree Technology to build a video hub for its growing collection of exclusive short video properties. Complex Media is the brainchild of urban fashion designer and hip hop impresario Mark Ecko. Boasting over 60 million unique monthly visitors, the sites that make up Complex Media attract their primarily young, male visitors with original content on style, technology, and celebrities. Complex was named to this year’s AlwaysOn OnMedia 100 list of “top emerging companies … in the world of media, advertising, marketing, social commerce, branding, and public relations.”

 Complex needed a web application that would fetch assets from the Ooyala video content management and analytics system, then display them in a stylish and user-friendly video portal or in widgets that could be deployed in other web properties. The software had to be built quickly to capitalize on trending content, but to withstand millions of views, it had to be built well.

To build clean code quickly, Greane Tree Technology worked with frameworks: Laravel for PHP, Backbone for Javascript, and Foundation for CSS and HTML. Mustache templates expedited the generation of dynamic HTML. JQuery and Underscore.js furnished libraries of useful functions. A Redis key-value store gave the web application quick access to video file directory information.

Following the Agile methodology, Greane Tree worked with Complex to prioritize features and deliver functionality in small, well-crafted increments. Within two months of project start, the dedicated video portal, complex.com/tv, was launched. Since launch, the videos have been receiving about a million views per month. Greane Tree Technology continues to make enhancements, such as new Twitter Player Cards to facilitate video sharing via social media.

Growing Trend

Complex is only one of the clients for which Greane Tree Technology has created applications integrating video and social media and supporting a high volume of users on multiple platforms. We’re not yet at liberty to discuss the particulars of all our current work, but suffice it to say, the projects’ high profile and technological interest keep us motivated and keep our skills sharp. Greane Tree is always looking for more top-notch developers; contact Annmarie Lanesey if you are interested in joining our team.

Matt Gerrior’s Talk on Social Media Integration

Senior Software Engineer Matt Gerrior spoke to a lively crowd at this morning’s Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley in the lovely Cohoes Music Hall. He crammed a lot of information into a short talk. Download his slides on social media integration and study them at leisure!

Matt Gerrior Takes You Behind the Scenes of Social Media

Greane Tree Technology Lead Software Engineer Matthew Gerrior knows a lot about the ins and outs of integrating social media into web applications. He will be sharing his insights at Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley #14: The Mechanics of Social Media. The event will be held from 8 to 10 am on Tuesday, April 30, at the Cohoes Music Hall. Breakfast will be provided by All Good Bakers.

Matt’s experience with social media includes:

• Using Trendspottr to pull data from Twitter and Facebook to help users tailor their own engagement with social media
• Enhancing video sharing with Facebook Open Graph and Twitter Player Cards
• Interweaving data from Twitter and Instagram to add a live stream of relevant social media to webcasts from entertainment venues

Matt will explain the basics of social media APIs, and will give pointers on how to use them. Joining Matt on the panel of speakers will be Scott Glasser, Founder, Design & Development, Beaglebird Studio, and Tommy Nguyen, doctoral student, Computer Science Dept., Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. They will speak about the history and use patterns of social media.

To learn more about and register for the event, visit Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley.