The Google Chart API is an extremely simple tool that lets you easily create a chart from some data and embed it in a webpage. You embed the data and formatting parameters in an HTTP request, and Google returns a PNG image of the chart. Many types of chart are supported, and by making the request into an image tag you can simply include the chart in a webpage.

Check out this little “Hello World” sample:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chd=s:hW&chs=250x100&chl=Hello|World

I don’t know how long this has been around, but I found out only a week or so ago. The Google Chart API will be very useful for me in a bunch of reporting projects.

If you are into Ruby check out Ruport (Ruby Reports) and the Online book I found online.

Via Google Code

After flipping through some pages I came across this handy chart which graphically explains the contents of any Rails project tree in a very simple way.

Speaking about Books, I also came across this one due to be published in December 2007: “The Accessible Web, Creating Content for Everyone”. Seems a good book about accessibility on the Web.

We are glad to announce that Ruby has become “Programming Language of the Year 2006″.

Ruby has the highest popularity increase in a year of all programming languages (+2.15%). Runner up this year is JavaScript with +1.31%. Both languages are boosted by their corresponding frameworks, Ruby On Rails and Ajax. This might be a new trend. In the recent past it was necessary to have a large company behind the language to get it in the spotlight (Sun with Java, Microsoft with C#), but nowadays a killer app appears to be sufficient. Viral marketing via the Internet works!

The winners of the last 2 years, PHP and Java, are the losers of this year. Other trends that are observed are the growth of dynamically typed languages and the fact that the difference in popularity between languages is getting less.

Via O’Reilly Network

We have been reading and playing for some time with the new features such us “REST and Resources” as well as “Formats and respond_to”. Since Ruby won’t be multibyte-aware until this time next year, what was really new to me is “Multibyte”:

Imagine the string ‘€2.99’. If we manipulate it at a byte-level, it’s easy to get broken dreams:

‘€2.99’[0,1] # => ”\342”
‘€2.99’[0,2] # => ”?”
‘€2.99’[0,3] # => “€”

The € character takes three bytes. So not only can’t you easily byte-manipulate it, but String#first and TextHelper#truncate used to choke too. In the old days, this would happen:

‘€2.99’.first # => ’\342’
truncate(‘€2.99’, 2) # => ’?’

With Rails 1.2, you of course get:

‘€2.99’.first # => ‘€’
truncate(‘€2.99’, 2) # => ‘€2’