Since last summer I have been one of our few "remote Pivots" after I moved from San Francisco, CA to Atlanta, GA. Pivotal and I agreed that I'd try working remotely, remote-pair programming full time with fellow developers in our San Francisco and NYC offices. Overall it's worked out wonderfully for me, my teams, and clients. I use the same technologies that fellow remote-Pivot Chad Woolley recommended in 2008 -- a VPN connection, Mac's Screen Sharing.app and Skype video chat, but we're always looking for ways to more seamlessly integrate our remote developers into their teams.
With that in mind I became very excited when the iPad 2 was released, with its front-facing camera and FaceTime app. How perfect! For the last month our team has experimented using an iPad as a "remote presence" device for me.
How did it work out? Keep reading to find out!
TrackerBot, from Vulpine Labs, is a great new app that brings Pivotal Tracker to your iPad and/or iPhone, complete with multi-touch, drag and drop, and off-line support. It's available now in the app store.
Ask for Help
"Any suggestions for analytics on iPad events?"
Questions like, how many times has this video been played or how many times has this object been tapped.
One suggestion was to hit a web server somewhere with some details and use splunk to analyze it.
"Any experience using a flag to indicate an administrator in Devise?"
Some indicated that this is difficult to do with Devise, and recommended against it. Someone else pointed out that the Device site actually includes this as an example.