Intruders.tv Interview with SugarStats.com at TheNextWeb 2008 in Amsterdam
Posted on May 9, 2008
2 Comments
Back in April at TheNextWeb I Met up with two great guys, Jude and James, who were shooting tech startup interviews for Intruders.tv.
I was able to do a quick 6min SugarStats.com interview and they were finally able to put it up on their site.
I was able to go over the how we started, the problems with diabetes as well as a little about our technical setup and where we’re going as a company.
Check it out:
http://uk.intruders.tv/Marston-Alfred-of-SugarStats-com-Online-diabetes-management-tool_a410.html
Tags: Amsterdam, Intruders.tv Interview, Marston Alfred, Online Diabetes Management, SugarStats, SugarStats Interview, SugarStats.com, The Next Web 2008 Amsterdam, TheNextWeb.
Posted on May 9, 2008
Filed Under Business, Design, Diabetes, Entertainment, Podcasts, Ruby on Rails, Startup, SugarStats, Tech, Travel, Web, WebDev
BrainTree vs TrustCommerce for Credit Card Processing and Recurring Billing
Posted on April 23, 2008
1 Comment
We’ve been using TrustCommerce.com for a over a year with SugarStats to do the recurring billing/subscriptions and credit card processing. Overall it has been a pleasant experience even though we had a few bumpy bits.
I’ve recently found out about BrainTree which seems to offer everything TrustCommerce does and then some in an all-in-one solution. While I’m a big fan of the “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” saying, we’re considering switching.
TrustCommerce Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Great Rails/Ruby Integration and API
- Fairly good support
- Great security and risk/fraud protection practices
- Decent prices
- Excellent recurring billing/subscription support
Cons
- Support has slowly been going downhill. I even hear sales is non-responsive to new accounts.
- Online Web Portal is a bit lacking and cumbersome for statistics
- Need a separate company to be the merchant
- Can’t combine multiple apps into one TC account
BrainTree
Pros
- Seems to also have a superb API.
- Rails/Ruby integration via a few diff plugins and especially great support via ActiveMerchant
- Active community
- Quickbooks Export/Import
- Good reporting/Analytics tools in web control panel
- All-in-one solution which includes merchant and gateway
- Can have multiple sites behind one web control panel login
- Great security and risk/fraud protection
- Supports both major credit cards AND Paypal/Google Checkout/BillMeLater
- I hear support is great
- Fee’s: ???
Cons
Don’t know yet.
The real benefit I’m seeing is the multiple sites behind one login, Paypal/Google/BillMeLater payment and the active community/ActiveMerchant support. If the web control panel interface is at all better than TrustCommerce I’ll be very please as well.
Tags: ActiveMerchant, BrainTree, Paypal, Recurring Billing, Ruby on Rails recurring subscriptions, Subscription, SugarStats, TrustCommerce.
Posted on April 23, 2008
Filed Under Analytics, Business, Design, Hosting, Ruby on Rails, Startup, SugarStats, Tech, Web, WebDevTwitter releases Starling gem
Posted on January 11, 2008
2 CommentsBlaine and the guys at Twitter just released Starling as a gem. Starling is Twitters code and messaging system that they use in production across their clusters:
“Starling is a light-weight persistent queue server that speaks the MemCache protocol. It was built to drive Twitter’s backend, and is in production across Twitter’s cluster.”
Check it out: http://rubyforge.org/projects/starling/
Tags: Blaine, MemCache, queue server, Starlin, Twitter, Twitter.com.
Posted on January 11, 2008
Filed Under Daily Thoughts, Ruby on Rails, Tech, WebRails is a ghetto? Zed Shaw goes to war with Rails and the Rails community
Posted on January 1, 2008
Leave a CommentDamn, he sure does go to town with this one. I didn’t know things were so messed up for him regarding Rails. Its a real shame to see him want to leave so bad cause the guy is brilliant and we all love Mongrel. It is almost hard to believe some of it but then again I’ve heard a whole lot of stuff about the Rails core team.
Its a long, PISSED OFF rant, but entertaining none-the-less. I’m not sure just what to say about it all yet but I have to say the best part is the DHH part where he said they used to need 400 restarts a day!!
Check it out: http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.html
Tags: DHH, Mongrel, Rails, ThoughtWorks, Zed Shaw.
Posted on January 1, 2008
Filed Under Ranting, Ruby on Rails, TechVacationing in Berlin, Germany - A Foreigners Review
Posted on October 3, 2007
4 CommentsI had the great chance to briefly visit Berlin for RailsConf Europe 2007 and these are my initial impressions.
City
The city is huge! I wasn’t nearly able to see as much as I wanted to. There are many many areas to visit in Berlin and even many centers. One in the south, north, east and west from what I saw.
Much of the city seemed very clean, very nice and you could even say upscale. But from what I hear that is nothing compared to Munich. There were some ghetto looking places but you’ll see that anywhere and really they aren’t bad places per se at all. You’ll especially find nice buildings, shopping and food around Stadsmitte.
Food
That restaurants I was able to go to were pretty good. I went to a few different ones that had a lot of German specific food and the dishes were a good size and decently priced.
One restaurant in particular I can recommend is a place called “Bombay”, an Indian restaurant. The food was great, I had one of the best salads I’ve ever had and the people I was with liked their dishes as well.
As far as beer goes it was all superb. I had the chance to go a brewery called Lindenbrau in the Sony Center and that was especially memorable. They had all sorts of special varieties such as Banana, Cola and Apple Beer. It may sound nasty but for the most part they were delicious. Even the Pilsner was of a high quality and very smooth. You can also pretty much count on wherever you go to get a nice tall litre or half litre of beer at the minimum.
You’ll also find Café’s and Coffee shops anywhere you go. There is a large variety of Starbucks, Balzac Coffee and Einstein Coffee around the city.
Nightlife
Well, perhaps I was just in the wrong part of town but there really wasn’t anything happening as far as clubs and nightlife that I saw. I know there are some recommended clubs such as Havana’s, 90 Degree’s and AM Bar but I didn’t get a chance to go. But around Statsmitte there plenty of good bars to hang out at. A few friends saw Will-I-Am of the Black Eye Peas one late night.
Price
Generally I found things cheaper than Holland but I guess that is the norm? Smaller things like Coffee seemed a bit pricey but the meals for what you got were well priced. As for clothes just taking a quick look it seemed like things were also priced a bit lower than Holland for shirts and jeans.
Transportation
It was bit confusing at first, but I quickly learned and learned to love the city transit system. Especially the metro’s, they are many and they interconnect throughout the entire city. Add to that all the trams, trains and buses and you can get anywhere at literally anytime. Night trams/busses run every 30min and during normal hours you usually don’t have to wait longer than 5min for a metro which run that way until 12:30am.
Verdict
I love this city from what I’ve seen but because of my short stay that isn’t much. But I liked it enough to come back for a vacation and just to visit.
Tags: Berlin, Germany, RailsConf, RailsConf Europe 2007, Ruby, Vacation.
Posted on October 3, 2007
Filed Under Business, Daily Thoughts, Entertainment, General, Health & Food, Mobile Tech, Ruby on Rails, Tech, Travel, Web
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I'm Marston and here you'll find my rantings, rhetoric and other useful info. I dig tech, photography, quantum physics and organic food. I'm the founder of SugarStats.com and thats my days developing.
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