SubMate's blog!

Welcome Amokrane!

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 17:57:14 +0200

We are glad to announce that SubMate’s team just welcomed a new member: Amokrane.

Amokrane is a RoR and Android dev. He will help Clement implement new features on SubMate and will start working on an Android version of SubMate!

We have a lot of exciting stuff coming up and Amokrane will help us release them faster!

[FR] SubMate recrute un développeur iPhone

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 18:45:15 +0100

On a longtemps hésité sur le titre (“SubMate recherche son Bûcheron, développeurs iPhone acceptés”, “Steve Jobs Killah, ou pêcheur de Cocoa”, …) mais on fait finalement très simple : SubMate s’agrandit encore et recherche un stagiaire en développement iPhone (H/F).

Pour en savoir plus, vous pouvez consulter l’offre sur RemixJobs : Développpeur iPhone, ou la télécharger en PDF.

Si vous avez des questions, ou si vous êtes impatient de nous communiquer votre CV, envoyez-nous un email à ninja(at)submate.com ou contactez-nous sur twitter (@submate)

Si vous avez un compte GitHub, ou des profils HackerNews et StackOverflow n’oubliez pas de les préciser dans votre réponse !

[French] SubMate recrute un développeur Ruby on Rails

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 12:51:00 +0100

SubMate a décidé de s’agrandir un peu plus et recrute un stagiaire (H/F) Ruby on Rails qui souhaiterait venir apprendre et pratiquer ce joli language au sein de notre équipe de dev!

Si cela vous intéresse, vous pouvez voir l’offre complète sur RemixJobs: “Developpeur Ruby on Rails H/F” ou la télécharger directement en PDF.

Si après avoir lu tout cela il vous reste des questions ou si vous êtes impatient de nous communiquer votre CV: ninja(at)submate.com ou twitter (@submate)

Si vous avez un compte GitHub, ou des profils HackerNews et StackOverflow n’oubliez pas de les préciser dans votre réponse !

SubMate 1.1 hits the App Store !

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 15:50:00 +0200

Finally, the new version of SubMate iPhone app is available in the App Store!!

You can download it for free:

Kevin, our iPhone dev, did a great job and this update contains a lot a new features/improvements:

new signup form using facebook connect
the app is faster and smoother
the design has also been improved
we fixed Bugs and known Issues
and we also changed how the app is interacting with our server so that we can update the database easily.

We are very proud of our new version, and already hard-working on SubMate 2.0 for iPhone :)

Please give us your feedback on that new version!

Some bonus screenshots after the jump:

Special thanks to Hubert Fisselier and “I See U” who helped us for the submission process.

Tell us what you think of that new version!

You have a startup or a media outlet? Become a SubMate launch partner !

Announcing SubMate Launch Partners program

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 17:27:10 +0200

In short…
A few weeks from now, we’ll be releasing the new, improved version of SubMate. The real vision, the real v1.

We would like to share the love with startups or media outlets. So we’re glad to announce the SubMate Launch Partners program.

Become a launch partner, and be a sponsor of SubMate in your city(ies). We’ll get feedback and use cases on our platform. You’ll get some exposure.
It’s free, it’s simple, check it out.

More info
When we launched the prototype of SubMate last May in London, Paris and New York, we got an amazing feedback by the users and press. Not only did we get some coverage in tech media (like TechCrunch and Business Insider), we got an amazing response by mainstream media. And when we say amazing, we mean it: on Saturday following the Thursday launch we made the freaking page 3 of the NY Post, in full page. Page 3 of the NY Post! Talk about mainstream!

We’ve also been covered on the NBC, the BBC radio in the UK, the Daily Telegraph, the Gothamist, the Huff Post, LCI, … We also managed to get in a few conferences as finalists or winners.

All this effort got us some great traffic. In the first few weeks after the opening of the prototype, the app attracted about 30,000 uniques and over 100,000 page views.

Ok - it might just not work as expected, we know it. But we’ll work our asses off to make it happen again, but this time, we aim at making it bigger. We got a brand new website with a cool, sexy design, a great iPhone app coming up, and we got amazing features lined up. We already cover 8 cities, and aim at 30 to 40 new cities before spring.

This time around, we want to partner with great startups or media outlets who would like to get on board. We will win the feedback and use cases on our platform. You will get some (more) visibility and exposure.

Of course, we cannot promise anything, but it’s worth the try, don’t you think? So get on board now, so we won’t have to say (finger crossed): “we told you so!”.

Wanna know more? Check the details out!

Do you want a sneak preview of the new SubMate?

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 12:47:15 +0200

We worked all summer to bring you a new version of SubMate with exciting features and a beautiful new design. The release of that new version is only a couple of weeks away but you can already discover a sneak preview of the new design! How?

By simply going to SubMate.com and click on the blue badge on the bottom right. We would love to have your feedback! We will share other elements of the new version in the coming days. So stay tuned :)

SubMate will be at "TradeDoubler Summit"

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 12:10:00 +0200

Laurent, Co-Founder of SubMate, will be in London this Thursday to talk about Location Based Services and SubMate at the “TradeDoubler Summit”.

SubMate is available in London since the first day, so we are really happy to have an opportunity to meet some of you.

If you are also planning to attend “TradeDoubler Summit”, please feel free to send us an email he will love to have a coffee with you!

How We Work: Axel's Setup

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 12:08:00 +0200

Axel, one of our great RoR dev, just shared his development environment. I know that a lot of you are pretty curious so I thought that we should share it here:

Brew, Zsh, Git and RVM

This first post purpose is to guide you through my environment setup.

Brew

Brew is a package manager for MacOS X. It will let you install a bunch of UNIX tools that aren’t included in the system.

Packages are installed into their own isolated prefixes and then symlinked into “/usr/local” where binaries are located in “/usr/local/bin”.

MacOS X is POSIX compliant, so you already have a “/usr/local/bin” in your PATH environment variable even though MacOS X doesn’t use this directory.

This working way permits brew to avoid a package management database like fink or macports.

Another advantage of homebrew compared to fink and macports is that it reuses the programs you already have installed in your system rather than taking an isolated system approach preventing you from having yet another version of a library to install when you already have it.

Moreover, it will let you install and manage programs without using the sudo command, preventing your from security issues and messing things up.

Oh and one more thing: it’s written in Ruby!

Go check it at http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew

ZSH

Several months ago, I decided to switch from bash to zsh because of its great features (advanced file globbing, spelling correction, programmable tab completion…), what else?

While I was searching for some documentation on how to customize the shell to fit my own needs (essentially adding git integration), I found an awesome git repository which aim is to centralize some zsh configurations: oh-my-zsh. It will let you tweak your zsh shell with a modular approach by including some extra shell scripts (plugins) to extend your experience (e.g. git integration). oh-my-zsh also offers a bunch of themes out of the box, so you just can use it right away and modify it later on for your own needs.

Here is the installation process:

[To read the rest of the article, check out Axel’s blog.]

SubMate's field trip

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 13:03:00 +0200

Last week, SubMate’s team went on a field trip…

We worked (and are still working) really hard for the last 3 months to bring a new version of SubMate’s iPhone app and website before October. This new version of SubMate is huge for us, and we hope that it will also be huge for you, our users.

So as we tried to be 100% all the time, at the end of August we felt like we needed a change of air. We decided to go on a field trip with all the team to escape Paris and spend some time in the countryside. And there we were leaving for Normandie for 4 days…

To put it simply: it was great!

A nice opportunity to be even more close to the team and to learn more about them (like the fact that Kevin is a great cook). The field trip wasn’t a vacation. It was more an opportunity to work almost harder than normally but in a way nicer environment.

Where we could take nice breaks:

We resisted to make some investments at the Casino:

Old time, good time. We really spent 4 amazing days and we promised ourselves to do that again ASAP (maybe in September?)!

We are lucky at SubMate to have a team passionated about the product and who get on extremely well with each other…

It was our little interlude before a busy September. We hope that you have all had a great summer and that you will stay tuned for the next episode of SubMate’s adventure.

. @clmntlxndr and @episko cooking up the next @submate killer...

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:41:25 +0200

. @clmntlxndr and @episko cooking up the next @submate killer features!!

A Case for Open Data in Transit by StreetFilms

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 19:35:45 +0200

A Case for Open Data in Transit by StreetFilms

... and then they were 5!

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 12:36:00 +0200

What better way to start a week than to welcome a new member in the team. We are pleased to welcome Axel Vergult (@episko on twitter) our second RoR developper and the 5th member of SubMate’s team.

He will work on the website’s frontend/backend and you should quickly see some of his work.

You should also have the opportunity to read him pretty quickly, as he told us that he is wanting to share some of the technical challenges behind SubMate on the blog :)

We are very excited to see the team grow and very happy to be surrounded by such high quality people.

We are slowing down the recruitment but if you think that you are a great fit for SubMate you can always shoot us an email (ninja_at_submate.com)!

465 commits later...

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:40:00 +0200

posted by Clément

Hey!

I’ve been working at SubMate for a month and a half (ouch! time flies!) and proud to announce my first *significant* release. Amongst the numerous small tasks and updates on the web site and the API (private for the moment), here is a big change coming.

Well… you don’t see anything different? Happy to hear it! Indeed, most of the work isn’t visible. I dealt with authentication, security and data integrity.
This current release is still far from being technically perfect, but it’s a much better foundation to work on. As a background, I suggested the use of an agile methodology (eXtreme Programming), with TDD (Test Driven Development) and BDD (Behavior Driven Development).I’ve been encouraged early on to work this way, and it was great news! So, we are now almost ready to adopt continuous integration which will allow you to discover cool new features very frequently.
Here are some technical details:

Your information is stored in a safer manner, all authentication needs are delegated to the Authlogic gem.Indeed, I recommend that library which provides a clear structure for authentication purpose. I tried the Devise gem which seems to be very nice, but for now I’m not very familiar with the deeper abstraction it provides.
100% of the data resources are now restful. This architecture allows a simpler global application design, a simpler code (using conventions). That will allow us to improve speed development and release a rock-solid API.

Data flow and feeds are now super flexible, allowing us to provide you very soon with amazing interactivity and information you are waiting for.

A little word about the platform we use (Heroku): I never saw such a great service. With Heroku, deployment is just one tiny step in the workflow. No disappointment except two downtimes (couple of hours for each) in two months.We may soon use background workers in order to treat long-running tasks (like sending e-mails, storing pics, fetching external API data, …) without blocking your experience on the website.

Received an unpleasant message on SubMate? Check the “report abuse” link soon.

So much to come: stay tuned! It’s time for me to go back working on it!

Getting your tech team pumped up !

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 11:16:00 +0200

Posted by Laurent, Co-Founder of SubMate

At SubMate, we’re blessed with a super cool team of engineers. We got Clément, a killer ruby on rails developer who joined the team last month, and Kevin, a ninja iPhone hacker who joined last week. Both are ultra motivated by our project, and don’t count hours.

Fresh airAs business guys, Jonathan and myself know how frustrating it can be to work on the very same issue for a few days in a row.The same goes for any engineer, working on complex problems to solve. Spending days, weeks, on similar items can be exhausting, and make you loose interest, motivation on the long term.It’s great to get some fresh air, test new technologies, get your hands on that new cool framework everyone is buzzing about. Those might not be adapted to your main project. For instance, Rails3 is not stable yet for mainstream release), but the challenge to master it is super-motivating for a tech guy hacking on rails. MongoDB is hot right now, and we wanna test it before further deployment.

[Click here to continue reading on Laurent’s Blog]

The 4th fantastic !

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 12:42:00 +0200

We are glad to announce that SubMate’s team just welcomed a new member: Kevin!

Kevin will be in charge of SubMate’s iPhone app. We actually have a very cool iPhone app thanks to “I See U“ but SubMate is gonna evolve sooooo awesomely fast in the next months that we wanted to have a dev inside the team so that the app can stay up to speed! That will be Kevin’s mission.

We hope that Kevin will post time to time on that blog his thoughts about the dev of the app, to share his knowledge and the process.

As always it’s awesome for us to see the team grow and we hope to welcome a new RoR dev pretty soon (if you are one and you’re looking for a job in a cool new startup shoot us a mail ninja_at_submate.com)

Stay tuned for our next adventures :)

P.S: If you have an Android or a WebOS phone we’re not forgetting you, and we’re working on it :)

SubMate's iPhone App 1.0.2

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 11:48:55 +0200

A new version of our iPhone App just hit the app store! We fixed some bugs with the help of I SEE U . So download it and tell us what you think of it :)

To have quick updates about SubMate follow us on Twitter or Facebook :)

Behind the scenes

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:08:13 +0200

by occhiovivo

SubMate is in constant evolution, we currently add at least one feature a day. But most of the recents changes didnt impact the frontend of the website, what you see, but the backend.

So yeah, most of the work is done behind the scene. To give you a few examples of what we did during the last week:

improved the authentification process
improved the security of your informations
pushed a new backoffice to manage users
added cool new features to our API (currently private, but a private beta will come soon)
RESTful architecture was implemented
and of course fixed some bugs
…

We also improved some things on the frontend, like the fact that you can now reset your password and the pagination in user’s home page so that now you can discover even more people in your areas !!

Long story short : WE ARE WORKING OUR ASSES OFF to deliver you the best product possible !

The work done behind the scene is as important as (and sometime more than) the work done on the user end it allow us to deliver a stable and secure product.

If you are interested in the “behind the scene work” I invite you if you live in Paris to come this saturday at La Cantine to hear Clement, our super dev, talk about Heroku/Submate at WebWorkerCamps

Welcome Clément !

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:33:00 +0200

We have a new team member at SubMate: Clément ! He is (for the moment) our intern, he will work on the tech site of SubMate. Basically, every new feature that you gonna see popup in the next few days/months on Submate will have his touch !

I recommand you to follow Clément on twitter ! He will blog here from time to time, to talk about some technical issues and challenges that he will solve but also what he has learned !

So once again, welcome Clément!

We just won Startup 2.0 @ Nonick!

Sat, 15 May 2010 15:42:34 +0200

Great great day for SubMate ! After an amazing presentation by Laurent, SubMate has been designated the winner of Startup 2.0 :)

Oh and by the way, we launched SubMate in Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao and Valencia for the occasion !

We told you to stay tuned ;)

(if you are a journalist or a blogger and you are looking for info about SubMate you can find the PR of our launch here: http://submate.pressdoc.com/1901-submate-launches-its-public-beta-at-the-next-web)

SubMate is one of the finalists of Startup 2.0 Competition

Thu, 13 May 2010 15:09:00 +0200

Startup2.0 is a competition of European social networking sites whose objectives are to promote and reward the European startups (either created or willing to do so in the future) that work in the field.

The competition is happening in Bilbao during the Nonick Conference ! And we are proud to announce that SubMate has been selected as one of the finalists !!!

Laurent is actually in Bilbao to present SubMate at Startup 2.0 in front of a great audience.

We are gonna use that tremendous opportunity to announce exciting news for SubMate during our presentation! So stay tuned, follow us on twitter to know everything about this !!