GitHub, purveyors of high-quality source control beauty, released Gist just the other day. Gist, in a nutshell, is pasteable texts controlled by git. Every single one has its own repository. So in theory you can download them, fork them, and thanks to the GitHub guys, embed them in your own webpages. This provides a unique opportunity to ensure that the posts you write about edge community stuff — I’m looking at you, Rails and Merb jerks :-) — can remain relevant. Simply write a Gist with your source code and corresponding output, and embed that in your blog. Tag that blog entry somehow with a reminder to check it every four months or something. And, every four months, when something reminds you, you take another look at the source code snippet, and make sure it’s relevant.

What needs fixing with Gist?

• Downloading snippets at all doesn’t seem to work. It makes sense to not have that button when it comes to snippets comprised of a single file, but with being able to specify multiple files for a single snippet, downloading should archive and download them all.
• It should be possible to only embed one part of a snippet, instead of all parts of them, in the case when multiple files are specified.

What would be awesome?

• Being able to specify a certain file of the snippet as an rspec or Test::Unit file for the snippet. This way, we can have auto-testing snippets. This is clearly in a fantastical sort of realm, but who knows what will be possible when Gist becomes more robust?

I’d keep an eye on Hyperspaces, an app currently in private beta that presumes to tackle some of the pressing deficiencies in Leopard’s own Spaces implementation, namely:

• Conspicuous naming of individual spaces.
• Different background images for each space.

The site also mentions hue tinting of backgrounds depending on the space, but the provided screenshot doesn’t look too great yet. So we’ll see. Also of interest is the article on Cocoia detailing the thought process and creative work behind Hyperspaces’ excellent icon.

Also also of interest is the growing trend of naming websites for Mac applications like the actual file extension - Hyperspaces.app => http://hyperspacesapp.com. There are other examples of this, I just can’t think of any at the moment.

Your favorite ruby web microframework, Camping, has some interesting new developments:

OpenID

That’s right, the framework only 4k large now has basic support for authenticating against OpenID servers. This functionality requires the OpenID gem, but other than that, it looks very simple and easy to implement. You can see the mailing list post that started it all here.

Squatting: A Perl Microframework based on Camping

This may not be entirely relevant edge Camping news, but it is interesting nonetheless. Coder beppu has managed to piece together a Perl microframework that takes the basic simplicity espoused in Camping. If you’re a Perlite at heart or were interested in looking into the language, this might be a good jumping off point. You can read the mailing list post announcement and check it out yourself.

I just noticed this now so I’m throwing a link to it: Jeff Key has updated his excellent Snippet Compiler to work with the .NET 3.5 Framework. I use this application all the time for quick sanity tests and the like - it’s the closest thing you’ll get to irb in C#.

EDIT: How embarrassing! That would be Jeff Key, not Jeff Kay.

Just a shout-out: If you like DataMapper and enjoy following its development, they are running a continuous integration server for all of their major modules. Exciting! On the edge!