Slicehost

The guy behind the Ruby on Rails podcasts (topfunky) has started a unique service called Peepcode. Every month, he releases a video tutorial, usually about an hour long, that costs $9. Honestly, when I first read the announcement, I thought it sounded novel, but couldn’t imagine myself using it. I skipped the first episode on RJS templates. But when the second episode came out, covering Textmate Basics, I bit. I’ve been longing for a quick tutorial exposing me to some of the more advanced Textmate features and hoped this would be it.

All I can say now? What a fantastic idea! I highly recommend this service – excellent quality, quite effective and reasonably priced. I wasn’t sure if a video would help me “learn”, as I tend to be more of the book type, but it was a neat experience. I’m looking forward to future releases. And hats off to Topfunky for a fresh approach. RoR, despite our feelings, is still bleeding edge. A video tutorial is a fast, effective way to keep people abreast of the latest and greatest. And an order of magnitude advantage over dead tree competitors.