At the time Ruby on Rails released to the external developers, it has since then taken the programming world by storm. Its core is the meta programming, enabling developers to learn and code faster as so much of the codes has already been offered to the developers. However, it does not mean that PHP developers are all throwing away PHP language and take up Ruby.

It’s interesting to see PHP community, how they respond to this Web framework. Some of them has released their own designed Web frameworks that based on PHP. A typical example is Akelos, claimed as being a Ruby on Rails port to PHP. To promote this newly born PHP framework, Akelos also created a video “Creating a Blog in 20 Minutes using the Akelos PHP Framework” screencast on their Website.

What is the Perl developers respond to this Ruby on Rails? In the meantime, there is an established company, BBC of UK, a long time Perl user, has announced that they created their own internal-use Perl on Rails. Using this framework they have launched a new project called BBC programmes, as well as the proposed next-generation of iPlayer also built on this framework, according to BBC blog.

PopShops is a new widget and store building service that is newly released in the market. As the service is optimized for bloggers that want to find new ways to monetize their site, we can expect PopShops widgets will be pervasive on the blogs that the bloggers want to make some pretty good money in cover the costs of server fee. If you are one of the regular readers at TagEdge, you’ll noticed that I’m a fan of widget, and I did some reviews on some of the widgets available on the Web, but I’m not intend to make money out of using any type of widgets temporarily. However, the available of this type of widgets really forcing me or other bloggers to think of their traditional ways of earning revenues, i.e. AdSense and Amazon in an entirely new way, and different channel. Of course, there is no answer as to which systems, the AdSense, Amazon, or the affiliate produces the highest income for the bloggers.

Apparently, PopShops is sounds attractive to the bloggers or Website holders in the sense that they have more than 17 million of affiliate catalogs, as reported on their landing page. Easy installation, i.e. 3 steps (pick, click, pop). Easy to use, just copy and paste the code into a blog or Website. Plug-in are available for TypePad and Blogger accounts at the time of writing. The beautiful part is the Affiliates keep 100% of their commissions: basic service is free and then there are two additional subscription levels. PopShops is currently associated with some other well-known affiliate advertisement networks such as Commission Junction, LinkShare, and ShareASale, but I wonder whether they will build their own affiliate network in the near future. But my sense is that, in spite of the huge number of widgets available on the Web, this startup has done the ordinary affiliate system in a totally different way.

PopShops is built on the Ruby on Rails platform and it leverages the latest AJAX technologies with a major focus on usability. Competitors in this field include Tumri, Teracent and Wize Typepad Widget.

Update July 31, 2007: PopShops has over 20 million of affiliate products.

Ruby on Rails has released the version 1.2 on this Thursday. Today, Ruby on Rails is known as one of the most popular web frameworks. The features in this version is REST (Representational State Transfer) for the design of resource-oriented architecture. Some enhancements have been made in respect to the HTTP status codes, and multiple representations of the same resource in this version as well.

The official blog of Ruby on Rails also published a very good article on how to upgrade this version and a detail explanation on some of the new features found in this version.