Lately we found this post on the Sonatype Blog titled: The Ulitimate Java Build System. They quote Christopher Judd who writes:

“Now after all these years, I think I found the right solutions for Enterprise Java Builds. The solution involves 5 open source projects: Maven, Subversion, Hudson, Nexus, Sonar.”

And we are happy to say that we think the same! These are the components we use to build our Java applications (timr, BVW, manuality).

The IDE of choice that works best for us with these build system components is: Eclipse + Mylyn + Subversive + m2eclipse

We also have well defined rules on how to use these components together to create the most optimized development workflow. Contact us if you are interested in taking your Java development to the next level.

At the moment we are working on best practices for an equal build system for .NET with C# and C++ (managed/unmanaged) – so stay tuned for updates.

Making backups is a critical thing for everybody who uses a computer, especially if your business is based on it. But how to make sure your data is really safe?

Our optimum backup solution should be:

• able to deal with multiple notebooks and servers running on different operating systems (Windows Vista, Windows 2003 Server, Mac OS, Debian and Ubuntu Linux),
• stored on safe place outside the office,
• secure (not accessible by others without a password)
• and automated.

We decided to use online backup systems. After evaluating some of the available solutions we came up with signing up for:

• Amazon S3 web service in combination with Jungledisk – because the Jungledisk client is available for all our operating systems
• Mozy Pro – because the Mozy Pro client is able to create backups of MS Exchange and MS SQL server while they are running

Both of the systems allowed us to encrypt our data before sending it. With the jungle disk mounted on our Linux systems it was very easy to create cron jobs for backing up SVN repositories, MySQL databases and other stuff.

We are also using this solution to backup the database of our online time tracking solution for BlackBerry and iPhone – timr.

UPDATE: There is even a free 2GB backup from Mozy which is ideal for private users to backup their documents.

UPDATE2: I wrote a how to on my personal blog for using jungle disk on virtual servers.

After more than one year hard development, we are very proud to announce that timr started public open beta today! Take a look at timr and sign up the beta program to earn 3 months of free timr usage.

Today we launched the web site of our company. On this page you’ll find news concerning the troii Software GmbH, our products or other technical news in regular intervals. There are separate pages about the team behind the company, the areas of operation and our products.

Today we launched the web site for timr. It contains the most important information and allows users to sign up for a newsletter. This way every registered user will be informed about the start of the timr open beta period (which will be within the next week).

Currently we are working on improving the experience for users who are new to timr. This means we are making timr ready for new users to sign on and start tracking their time without having to read a manual or getting an introduction to the system as the closed beta users were required to do.

We are also adding an easy-to-use feedback system so that we will be able to get valuable information from our beta users.