If web architectures, performance, or scalability are topics you would like to keep on top of (who doesn't!), then chances are, you've heard of Nginx ("engine x"). Originally developed by Igor Sysoev for rambler.ru (second largest Russian web-site), it is
There's a lot of buzz around the Ruby on Rails framework at the moment. Something that doesn't get a lot of attention is it's scalability solution: FastCGI. Partly because it doesn't seem very exciting on first glance and partly because it's so fundamenta