On Thursday morning, Rich talked about the basics of mod_rewrite syntax, pattern lexicons and common rewrite scenarios. He focused on teaching attendees how mod_rewrite mangles and munges URLs in order to make them easy to work with.

Rich recently joined OmniTI as a web engineer, and is the author of Apache Cookbook and The Definitive Guide to Apache mod_rewrite. His expertise as part of the Apache Software Foundation and his role as a member of the Apache Documentation Project allows OmniTI to harness his experience and expand client service offerings. His appearance also further bolsters OmniTI’s prominent position within the open source community.

I feel very privileged to join OmniTI, as my role lets me use my expertise to help real companies do exciting things, while maintaining my edge with a wide scope of technologies, including Apache, mod_perl, Perl, and PHP.

On Thursday afternoon, Theo hosted a two—hour session entitled “Scalable Internet Architectures.” He dove into traditional web architectures and explored what makes them work, with a particular focus on analyzing weak points and discussing the effects of the intense pressure that can result from prolonged exposure on prominent web properties like Digg and The New York Times. Theo also drew heavily upon his years of experience in systems monitoring, especially the lessons he’s learned that have culminated in the recent development, release and deployment of OmniTI’s open source monitoring and trending system, Reconnoiter.

If you monitor systems and services, today, without monitoring critical business metrics as well, you are placing yourself at a disadvantage that could be fatal,” said Schlossnagle. “In my session, I plan to share the same expertise in the trending of systems, applications and network metrics that has been captured in Reconnoiter, which has made great strides in both fundamental design and usability.

Apachecon attendees walked away from Rich’s talk with a great understanding of how to use mod_rewrite to its full capabilities. From comments on Twitter, it was apparent that his audience appreciated his in—depth knowledge and clear explanations. His insight into upcoming new features in Apache 2.4 also had many attendees excited for the upcoming release.

Theo drew laughs from the crowd when describing how sharding can be painful, as well as great comments on Twitter for the overall presentation, such as

Theo Schlossnagle’s “Scalable Internet Architectures” is so much fun and informative

Theo explained what architecture means for Internet applications, from static content and dynamic applications to databases and networking. Attendees learned that they need to be aware of how the different levels in architecture interact, and that “fixing” a scaling issue should not simply change the problem. Finally, they learned how good performance can make scaling issues much easier to solve.

One of the most commonly misunderstood concepts in the managerial software engineering world today is that of “technical debt.” In his talk, Theo went over the ins and outs of technical debt and drew parallels between technical debt and the more traditional tool that is financial debt. In his address, Theo noted:

"Many practitioners today use the term technical debt as an excuse to over engineer products. At the same time, many product owners insist on schedules and micro-managed deliverables that result in half-baked products that end up being a messy liability. Tomorrow’s software engineers will need to understand technical debt well enough to use it as a tool to maintain competitive advantage.

This year’s DC PHP 2009 conference attendees are better equipped to leverage technical debt as a tool to their advantage and now have a solid set of guidelines to avoid accruing bad technical debt that will plague them later.

Tell me what company you keep and I'll tell you what you are.

~ Miguel de Cervantes

The ACM is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society delivering resources that advance computing as a science and a profession. As one can imagine, this organization and its mission is of vital importance to companies like OmniTI. Theo has been active in the ACM for over eight years, and describes it value: “I think OmniTI has been so successful because we have the experience (and scars) of being present when theory and practice collide. The ACM is the organization in the best position to bring the wisdom born from those collisions to professionals in our industry.”

It is with great honor that Theo Schlossnagle was recently asked to participate in the editorial board of the acmqueue magazine.

acmqueue provides a critical perspective on current and emerging technologies. Its distinguished Editorial Board makes sure that acmqueue's high-quality content dives deep into the technical challenges and critical questions software engineers should be thinking about.

Distinguished indeed! It is with great pride that we recognize Theo as the leader of our team and an esteemed member of theirs!

On July 22nd in sunny San Jose, California we had the privilege of showing off our latest project: Reconnoiter. Reconnoiter is a new Open Source monitoring systems that provides trending and fault-detection on computing infrastructure that is highly distributed and heterogeneous. Reconnoiter’s goal is to provide the feature set of several common products in a simple, consistent and easy-to-manage system that removes the pain and suffering from day-to-day systems management.

For the last twelve years, the operations team at OmniTI has been managing large-scale Internet architectures that support hundreds of millions of users. We rely on integrating business-centric customer data with the data typically observed from their systems. This provides a holistic view of an architecture that enables business success.

According to Gartner, monitoring large-scale business data in real time can be a costly expense to the tune of $300,000 to $500,000 for software, with an additional 20% cost for maintenance. On top of that, the closer organizations get to real time monitoring, the more they have to upgrade their infrastructure and change business processes in order to use that data effectively. Many organizations can’t afford an implementation of that size.

Theo Schlossnagle, our CEO, says:

The open source community has responded by developing a number of tools doing different network monitoring tasks. However, they fall short in translating their monitoring and trending into business sense and this is where Reconnoiter shines. Not only do we save organizations from paying the painful price of installing and integrating multiple tools on one system, but we’re able help our clients better leverage the Internet to add value to their businesses.

You can watch a video of the OSCON presentation.

As with all open source products, the greatness of the product is built on a platform of empowered users. We encourage everyone to take part in both the use of this product as well as the ongoing development.

This unique event, generating buzz across the engineering and business worlds after only its second year, is Velocity, an O’Reilly conference held in the center of Silicon Valley, June 20-22, 2009.

Conference creators envisioned the “go-to” conference of the year, one that, in their words:

...brings together representatives from industry leaders like Google, Facebook, Microsoft…You’ll meet the people who are doing the best performance and operations work in the world.

OmniTI was happy to play a role in maintaining the momentum of this influential gathering, standing alongside giants such as Amazon, Flickr, Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo. We’re in our element when scalability and improving the user experience through performance are vital. Our deep involvement in the open source movement, development of large enterprise projects, and numerous foundational books authored by OmniTI staff, make us a perfect fit for Velocity.

Our CEO Theo Schlossnagle’s Scalable Internet Architectures (slides: PDF, slides: Slideshare) was the highest-rated workshop and one of the most well-received of all types of sessions.

Speaking to a packed room, Theo, author of Scalable Internet Architectures, analyzed the challenges of designing and operating web sites (both large and small) to cope with sudden and often devastating traffic conditions common on today’s turbulent Internet. He examined vulnerabilities and pinpointed both stop-gap measures and complete solutions.

As one attendee tweeted, “This is the most useful hour I’ve spent in months.” Theo is a veteran in the open source movement who regularly designs and implements scalable solutions for highly trafficked sites and companies in need of sound, scalable architectural engineering.

Over 700 people attended Velocity, including developers, engineers, technical executives, CTOs and CIOs, entrepreneurs, and academics. The conference’s web site is a rich repository of videos, resources, commentary, slides, and links to blog posts.

Significant was the overall desire from companies to intensively share experiences and collaborate in problem-solving and take fresh looks at topics such as the measurable impact of slowness (front-end and back) on user experience and retaining clients. As Theo wrote in his blog,

it focused heavily on operational strategy and and what it takes to execute tactically…The people I met at this conference were both honest and open and provided a fabulous and refreshing perspective on what today’s performance and scalability problems really are.

With such a high concentration of world-class brainpower zeroing in on topics that dramatically affect ROI, Velocity should become the conference of the year for savvy journalists and, more importantly, smart business managers.

Chris Shiflett, our CTO, went intercontinental in February and March 2009 to give well-received talks at two PHP-centric conferences for developers (including the closing keynote in Québec). His focus was a fresh approach to an old topic: web application security. Moving beyond the basics, Chris — who is the author of O’Reilly’s Essential PHP Security — inspired his audiences to consider the bigger picture and learn to develop secure (and superior) user experiences by considering both technical and social aspects of security.

Developers have wrangled with the technical side of security for years, and at this point, the typical security lapse is almost always a case of “pilot error.” At both PHP Québec and PHP UK Conference 2009 Chris widened the aperture to reveal security problems that aren’t simply technical vulnerabilities. By stepping back and acknowledging that working with PHP brings social implications and weaknesses, too, we’ll find there’s much we can do to engage or reassure users.

Businesses are beginning to fully grasp that the user experience is key to the success of a web site or application, and PHP plays a role — particularly in the areas of user behavior, credibility, and the user’s perception of security.

Perception can be as important as reality. Chris linked this to his interest in cognitive psychology, including change “blindness” and ambient signifiers, and used real-life examples that clearly demonstrate the profound impact human behavior can have on an organization’s security. For example, you may give users the perception that their choices on a site are private. If they discover that their private information actually can be accessed — not along obvious user paths but through searches — their perception of the company takes a hit. He also ventured into password anti-patterns, and took the audience on a tour of usability-related security problems at well-known sites.

Slides from his talk Security-Centered Design are available. Look, too, for his blog post on one case where he underscores that this isn’t an either/or situation, social versus technical. PHP should be technically correct and enhance the user experience.

As one London audience member said of his talk, Security-Centered Design: Exploring the Impact of Human Behavior:

…offered some new and interesting perspectives.…Full of quick-witted humor and obvious intelligence. By far the best talk of the conference.

The response from the PHP Québec audience was equally enthusiastic. Twitter comments on his London talk included “very interesting, mind boggling and entertaining,” “not the usual security talk, which is what made it interesting. It was the highlight of the conference for me,” “very inspiring,” and — especially intriguing for those of us who didn’t attend — “Thanks for the great talk, the cow paths idea will stick with me.”

Credit: Quit Bitchin’ and Get Your Glyph On Sketchnotes by Mike Rohde

Our Creative Director Jon Tan, well-known for his love of typography and its use on the Web and in print, shared his insights at two recent gatherings. As the business world takes note of well-considered design’s influence on a company’s success, demand grows for typographic expertise.

First up was Skillswap Brighton, January 2009, in the U.K. Brighton has more than its share of talented web designers and developers and when people such as Jon speak (along with friend and colleague Richard Rutter), tickets are snapped up quickly. While the history of typography reaches back to dyes or ink on papyrus, typography on the Web is, as Jon says, “a toddler.” Self-taught designers, especially, seek strong foundational information that will move them beyond mere intuitional affinities for the beauty of a typeface to mastering the underlying rules that lead to the most utilitarian, elegant, and effective use of type. As author Jost Hochuli writes, in his book Detail in Typography:

These are the components that graphic designers like to neglect, as they fall outside the area that is normally considered as ‘creative.’

Jon’s talk, 80% Science, 20% Art (slides, audio) was an eye-opening, practical “celebration” of the scientific roots of great typography. Improving our work requires research, more rigorous thought, and following rules that have emerged over centuries. He calls for using typefaces with respect for the care and consideration that went into creating them. The payoff is more than satisfaction with a job well done. Even the nuance, the gentle finesse that the reader may never notice can make a page startlingly more engaging, more true to the message.

Typography is more than the study of letters and symbols. Their layout on a page and their variation in weight, proportion, and other attributes often determine our immediate response to a page. Typography, used well, directs us to the good stuff, and orders information so that we not only can absorb it, but actually want to. Choose a typeface for a company, advertisement, or book and, for better or worse, you’ve given the subject a personality and tone, as subliminal as it may be. Choose the right size, line-height, and background color and visitors’ eyes feel comfortable enough to read on. Good designers learn to choose wisely. With type so critical to the success of a message and with the type itself so often beautifully crafted, typography addiction runs rampant among visual designers. They’re as obsessed as junkies, as persnickety and opinionated as wine connoisseurs. Follow typographers in online forums and you’ll see they’re as ready for a brawl as beery soccer fans.

Speaking of which, Jon’s next stop was the annual massive web geek conference, SXSW Interactive. Mid-March days are brimming with web celebrity-led panel discussions, serious topics, the beating pulse of the latest trends, and rich encounters with colleagues and new friends. The input can be overwhelming but it all funnels into an experience that reignites passion for our work. Nights are reserved for intense talks — or shouting over the bar bands at endless, crowded parties.

Typography enthusiasts filled the seats at the panel discussion Quit Bitchin’ and Get Your Glyph On, at which Jon, joined by four other standout typographers and designers, zeroed in on the imagined and real constraints of web typography. Panels are notorious for uneven results but this one, packed with resources, delivered — described on Twitter as “an incredible presentation” and “one of the best I saw.”

Because SXSW Interactive is spring’s epicenter for people who create web sites, even some of our geekier developers dipped their toes in the water. Chris Shiflett and Theo Schlossnagle braved this front-end cool kids’ conference and escaped relatively intact.

Want to learn more about typography?

• Jon Tan’s blog
• The Elements of Typographic Style (a classic book on typography by Robert Bringhurst)
• Thinking with Type (a solid yet approachable book on typography by Ellen Lupton)
• Detail in Typography (Jon’s review of a little gem of a treatise on microtypography)

Jon Tan’s next presentation:

Jon will be speaking at OSCON, July 2009, in San Jose, presenting Grokkin’ Design. As in the past, you’ll find many of us on the scheduled speaker list, attending sessions, and milling about the halls.

At the magazine industry’s fifth digital conference, “Magazine 24/7: Navigating the New Reality,” in New York City on March 3rd, the winners of the third annual Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) Digital Awards were announced. National Geographic was even more successful than they were at The Webbys last year.

The MPA awards honor the excellence and innovation in digital publishing of magazine brands across twelve categories. National Geographic was awarded third place for MyShot in the Best Web-only Tools category, and two second prizes:

1. Best Online Community for MyShot
2. Web Site of the Year: News, Business & Finance for NGM.com

National Geographic also won first place in two categories!

1. Best Online Video - Standalone for “Searching for the Snow Leopard”
2. Best Online Video - Series for “Fast Lane to the Future”

We at OmniTI were lucky enough to work with National Geographic on NGM.com and MyShot, so we’re especially pleased to see their success with both of those projects. Congratulations to everyone involved!

The results of our third annual chili cook-off are in! When Message Systems was spun off as a separate company the contest continued with the added spice of brand honor at stake. The day arrived and our shared kitchen was full of firing crock pots and the aroma of gourmet chili.

In OmniTI’s corner we had our own Miguel Montanez, interface designer, with his “El Chupacabra” chili — a unique southwestern style chicken chili topped with queso fresco. Also representing OmniTI, was chief operating officer, Sherry Schlossnagle, with her own “More Meat Chili,” a spicy, beefy chili, perfect for any meat-lover. Sating appetites before the main event was the famous Mexican taco salad of our administrative assistant extraordinaire, DeAnna Mullen. In the Message Systems corner was Joal Barbehenn, Laurie Ann Mathison, Steve Morgan and Zhi Wang who provided some fierce competition for our own culinary heroes.

Finally, the cooking was done. Tasting began in earnest. Many went back for seconds. Some for thirds; all in the interest of a fair and balanced competition, of course. Votes were cast and counted. By popular acclaim, our own Sherry Schlossnagle was crowned “Chili Cook-Off Champion!”

Congratulations to Sherry and all the contestants for their hard work. The excitement was intense. The chili even more so. After we recover, we’ll start looking forward to next year.

The Webby Awards have been referred to as “the Internet’s highest honor” by the New York Times, and as “the index of success in the global new media scene” by The Guardian. With roughly 10,000 entries submitted this year, simply being nominated is quite an honor, but actually winning a Webby is a rare privilege indeed.

National Geographic received two Webby Awards! Belated but hearty congratulations to everyone involved!

The first Webby Award was in the “Magazine” category for National Geographic Magazine Online. They also won the People’s Voice Award in the same category! We’re very pleased to have helped National Geographic with their success. The ngm.com site has been our baby for the past year. After the launch of the new site, the number of unique people visiting the site went up by 500%. As well as a huge rise in regular visitor numbers, the content management system and caching we built for them also withstood massive traffic spikes from multiple features on Digg, MSN, and the New York Times.

We also helped to create Your Shot, which won National Geographic their second Webby Award for the best use of photography. Your Shot enables people to upload and store hi-res images, and create puzzles and wallpaper from the photos. Best of all, they can submit photos for possible publication in the National Geographic Magazine!

All of National Geographic’s success would not be possible without their brilliant team who worked with us at every stage. This is what they had to say about the work we did:

OmniTI has been fundamental to our success. Their depth of experience and unwavering commitment to quality, combined with a refreshing blend of innovative thinking and stellar support, have repeatedly provided us with rock-solid and scalable solutions, contributing substantially to the growth of our business.

~ Dave E. Smith, National Geographic.

We can’t thank Dave enough for his support and kind words. It was great working with him and his colleagues. On our side, we’d also like to give a special mention to Leon Fayer, Chris Schammel, Clinton Wolfe and Greg Chiasson who did exceptional work throughout.

We’re very proud to have National Geographic as one of our clients. More fantastic projects are coming to fruition in 2009. We’d love to share some of them with you, but you’ll have to wait until later in the year when all will be revealed!

Like National Geographic, more and more publications are concentrating on the Web. The Pulitzer Prize Board are supporting the trend. They recently announced that they will accept entries from online-only publications. We’d like to congratulate them on their decision — the evolution in traditional print media and online publishing is something we’re excited to be involved with. Here’s to more great work with National Geographic and other publishing clients in 2009!