No longer is Rumble Labs Kings of the Holding Pages!

We've finally built a whole new website, continuing the rebranding exercise we have been going through; something that Steven will cover in a future post.

A brief catchup

There have been big changes beyond a fresh lick of paint. Late last year we moved into our new office, here in Ormeau Avenue, along with David Rice, Lee Munroe and a few others. At this time, we were working with David on the awesome Digital Circle website and getting our hands dirty with Ruby quite a bit more than usual.

It's all about the apps and the rubies

That really started our shift towards using Ruby and Ruby on Rails as our platform of choice, having been steeped in PHP for (in my own case) about 12 years. Our plan for quite a while has been to focus on web apps, primarily and using Rails along with other Agile tools has massively improved our workflow.

Unfortunately, one of our web developers Mark Leetch decided to head back to the scary world of I.T. But we were really lucky. We found a gem of a Ruby developer to replace him, Phil McClure (@overture8).

The move to Ruby was strategic for several reasons, not least the benefits it brings in itself. There was an opportunity to be had, but we needed someone with experience to lead a growing engineering team; a Ruby 'heavy hitter'. They typically aren't easy to come by in any discipline, but we knew someone ;)

We had some conversations in the background with that very person and after a few rounds in the ring, they agreed to join Rumble Labs.

If you hadn't guessed already, we are extremely happy to now have David Rice on board as the new Technical Director of Rumble Labs.

David J who?

David's reputation for building high quality web apps precedes him, not just in Ireland, but right across the international open source and Ruby communities. He helped build the online video platform Howcast. In 2008 he co-founded Contrast, and as CTO developed and released many apps, including Exceptional and Qwitter. In early 2010 David went out on his own as a freelance developer again, building up his own client base.

What next?

With David's existing business now merging with our own, we will be able to service all of our combined clients and provide an extended range of high quality services going forward.

The team is starting to take shape. We are working on great new client projects and ramping up some new ideas of our own. We will have new apps to roll out soon and new hires are imminent. Onotate hasn't been getting the attention it deserves lately and we intend to change that.

Times are good. We are now a full service Web Software & Experience Design laboratory. Got a web app idea? Lets rumble!