Hi All, Are you interested in using your Ruby/Rails knowledge to create a *killer* application and just maybe make some money out of it, too? Noumenaut Studios is looking for a volunteer Ruby developer to help us develop a content management system for Skribe, our forthcoming high-end blogging application (being developed primarily in Flash, with a Ruby on Rails back end). There are three of us and we're looking to add a fourth. If you're interested, you can read about our goals in our project charter below. Please feel free to contact me if you're interested in helping. Thanks! Steve Jovanovic Director of Engineering Noumenaut Studios stevej / noumenaut.com (608) 225-2073 OBJECTIVE The purpose of this project is to create the first release of what is intended to become a revolutionary, market-defining blogging application. The aim of the first release consists of both business and technical objectives. Business 1. Launch Skribe 1.0 no later than 1 Jul 2006. 2. Pilot Release 1 to a community of up to 100 users for six months after launch, providing 95% uptime; 3. Provide free accounts; 4. Minimize dependence on commercial software to reduce expenditures; 5. Grow a loyal user community from which to solicit ideas for subsequent releases. 6. Evaluate the market potential at the end of the pilot period to assess the economic viability of launching a business to generate profit and sustain future development work. Technical 1. Create a front end with the best usability and aesthetics of any blogging application on the market; 2. Create a supporting back end content management system (CMS) to store and deliver content, including audio, video, text, and possibly other formats. ANALYSIS The blogging market is enjoying exponential growth. As the population grows, the market is expected to expand even further. Existing blogging applications are primitive, relying on HTML and the mainstream form-based request-response model for submitting and delivering content. The usability of these products is generally poor. Some work well, but at the expense of a rich feature set and pleasing aesthetics. Others deliver a plethora of unnecessary features, creating confusion and user failure by making setup, administration, and usage difficult. Some try to be all things to all people, combining elements of online dating, music, and social networking sites so that the purpose is lost, which can lead to rapid user attrition. All existing applications suffer from a weakness in allowing users to find the information that they¡Çre looking for, be it a person or particular blog. Many applications are highly insecure, which threatens the integrity of user data and user privacy. There appears to be a market for a high-end blogging application that transcends the traditional form-based model, provides unparalleled usability, unprecedented aesthetics, and offers extensive searching capabilities, security, and anonymity, if desired. No high-end applications exist that don¡Çt belabor users with unnecessary complexity, thus lowering the probability that the users will succeed in creating a blog that they will use. INTENT Our intent is to fill that gap and create a profitable business thereby. -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.