Support for @font-face in CSS has created new possibilities for typography on the web. Like all new technologies there are hurdles, both technical and legal. Typekit aims to solve those problems with a centralized, continuously upgraded font-serving platform and licensing models that make sense for the web.

Ryan Carver of Small Batch, makers of Typekit, gives an intro to Typekit. He describes how to use the fonts and demonstrates advanced client-side tools. He also discusses their internal tools for testing and screen-shotting fonts across browsers and platforms.

See all our talks at http://pivotallabs.com/talks

Making truly awesome stuff is hard. Pivot Carl Coryell-Martin proposes we identify common physiological responses and condense their design solutions into a pattern language. He presents a draft set of patterns in the context of crafting an iPhone app.

See all our talks at http://pivotallabs.com/talks

David Pollak and Martin Odersky discuss the power of Lift, a Rails-like framework for Scala. David is the maintainer of the Lift framework and Martin is the author of Scala. Together they live-code a 30-line, real time, web based chat app in Lift and discuss the Scala constructs that allow for such concise applications.

See all our talks at http://pivotallabs.com/talks

Health Systems 20/20, a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) project, is looking for a partner to help train local programmers in Rwanda on Ruby on Rails and aid in the development of an innovative website to help the Ministry of Health in Rwanda better manage the health system, particularly to improve their budgeting and planning processes. The website will aid donors and NGOs in entering budget, expenditure, and results/outcome indicators, and help policy makers analyze this information for use as a part of their planning process.

Bringing all this information together and using it to inform decision-making will be quite innovative and has great potential to improve the lives of over 9 million Rwandans. If successful, this system could be used as a model in Africa, for bringing useful information together to make better health policy and making this kind of information more publicly available. The system will be fully open source.

USAID is aiming to have the training start sometime in the next 6 weeks and imagine it lasting 1-2 weeks. Work after that can be remote and will be in collaboration with local programmers. A first version of the system will be developed and deployed for data collection for a July-August 2010 timeframe. HS2020's technical architect will work with you as well in country during the training and will assist with development.

Please contact Gregory Nelson (gregory_nelson@abtassoc.com) for more information and provide general cost information if you are interested.

At Pivotal Labs, one of the services we provide our clients is helping them interview and hire. This is an excellent opportunity for you to learn Extreme Programming by working side-by-side with Pivotal's talented and experienced developers while at the same time joining a small and dynamic product team.

Pivotal Labs and our clients place a strong emphasis on Agile development and its many aspects: Pair Programming, Test-Driven Development, rapid iterations, and frequent refactoring. General technical requirements include serious web development experience, and a significant subset of Ruby, Rails, CSS, JavaScript, or MySQL.

A current Fortune 100 client is looking for experienced Rails developers to join their team. The preferred location is San Diego, but candidates from throughout California are encouraged to apply.

Job Description:

• Develop and maintain multiple Ruby on Rails applications for a Fortune 100 company
• Work directly with management to improve the product and the development process
• Test Driven Development with tools like RSpec, Test::Unit, JUnit, Jasmine and Selenium
• Pair Programming
• Aggressive Refactoring

Additional Skills desired:

• Ability to communicate and coordinate with technical and non-technical management
• Extend and improve the Continuous Integration, Build, and Deployment environments
• JavaScript, including experience with Javascript testing frameworks
• SQL

Please email your resume and cover letter to railsgig@gmail.com. Compensation commensurate with experience.