I decided to give MongoDB a try on a brand new rails project. It was also a change to get a bit familiar with the upcoming Rails 3 (there’s a release candidate now \o/).

I found two MongoDB adapters for rails: MongoMapper and Mongoid. Here’s an article with a comparison (thanks Tomé Duarte). After trying out the two on a really simple use case, I preferred working with Mongoid for 3 reasons:

• More Rails 3 alike (in validations, queries…)
• Better documentation
• Awesome web page design

I also used MongoHQ to try out their free plan for cloud hosting service. It’s very easy to use, but I’m still waiting for a good MongoDB front-end for inspecting my databases.

Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath, is a book on how to promote your ideas so they “stick” on people’s heads. The authors analyse why some ideas are catchy while others quickly forgotten, and present the key features an idea must have to be “sticky”. Those features, coined under the acronym SUCCESs, are:

Simple
Find the core of your message and focus on transmitting only the really important part.

Unexpected
Break patterns to get attention and use teasers to hold attention.

Concrete
Real examples triumph over abstract concepts, if you want to spread an idea.

Credible
Use life examples. Take advantage of both authorities and anti-authorities.

Emotional
Make people care: switch their brains from the analytical side to the emotional side.

Stories
Stories can inspire, get people to act, and stay much longer in everyones heads.

The best value from the book comes from the concrete suggestions on how to solve specific problems like “Everyone nods their heads when I’m speaking, but I can’t get them to act on it.” An important resource for anyone doing marketing or trying to change to world.

Read this book some months ago. Paul Carr, who is now blogs at TechCrunch, writes about his “not-entirely-successful” adventures as entrepreneur. You can download it for free.

More than anything, it’s an entertaining reading. The author hasn’t what you could call a perfect character, and that adds much to the plot. If after reading it, you get curious about the participants, check out their twitter list.

Close to the same topic, but fiction, I found two interesting books on this Fred Wilson’s post: Grumby by Andy Kessler and Makers by Cory Doctorow (which you can also download for free).