Matt (aka The Mattinator) is a new Web application that let users to post to multiple Twitter accounts without having to log into each one every time. It was developed by a team of Web developers that based in the U.K. As a long-time reader of some Web design magazines printed in the U.K., my first impression on this site is that it was a Web product from the U.K., albeit that I’m having the difficulty in justify their color choices of the elements in their Web design.

Fundamentally, I didn’t see the logic for one Twitter user to open few Twitter accounts, and she desperately need to get a Web application to help her solve the multiple login problems, but the birth of this site has the positive effect on the other end. The way I look at this site, Matt was more of an experiment to see how quickly they could build an entire new site with a programming language, i.e. Python that they’re not familiar with, and a Python Web framework, i.e. Django within four days. And of course, with the Twitter API as well. This will help convince more programmers in using Web frameworks when they’re looking for fast development, and potential users can test out the product in a shorter time frame.

Although Ruby on Rails is gaining momentum in Web development, it’s Python, an object-oriented programming language that enjoyed of being the winner of programming language throughout the year 2007. In fact, the Python programming language has been around since the beginning of 1990s, but only gained popularity among Web developers less than a decade. For me, it’s indeed a bit of surprise that TIOBE declares Python as the programming language of year 2007. To depict this, TIOBE has also prepared a graph that showed the dramatic growth of Python especially after the year 2004.

Meanwhile, a lot of Web developers are fascinated about the Django framework, a pretty clear “killer application” for the Python language and constantly driving people interest in this technology.

Source: available at http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index/Python.html, accessed January 11, 2008

Media Temple has announced the launch of the first phase of their Django GridContainer program. This program is currently in the beta phase, and potential testers can apply and participate in this program by visit the sign-up page and fill-up some common questions about Media Temple and Django. I’ve heard of Django for quite some time and I know it is a powerful Web framework for Python developers. As of present, there are more than 800 Websites that powered by Django, as listed in djangosites. With the introduce of Django GridContainer, it will allow the existing Grid-Service customers including me to have our own dedicated Django server. This is an emerging technology but is not fully understood by all of its potential users, if you want to know more, there is some extra information on the Django GridContainer page.

The Django GridContainer utilizes lighttpd in front of FastCGI processes. Currently, lighttpd powered some popular Web 2.0 sites such as YouTube, Wikipedia, and etc and some argue that lighttpd can perform some complex tasks faster than another popular open source Apache Web server.

Note: Media Temple provides hosting services for TagEdge.com.