

Pusher Raises $1M From Heroku Founders And More To Bring Realtime Tech To Apps - dchs
http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/09/pusher-raises-1m-from-passion-capital-heroku-founders-to-bring-realtime-tech-to-your-apps/

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absconditus
I guess that real-time has lost its original meaning in computing.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_computing>

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gte910h
Real-time has always meant the use Pusher has as well, even in computing. I've
definitely been on "real time" simulations. They also satisfy the "real time"
in the other definition you're talking about, as you have to do all the
activity in a relatively fast time span with a low average tick duration and
mostly constant time constraint.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_time_(media)>

>In a real-time computer game or simulation, events in the game occur at the
same rate as the events which are being depicted. For instance, in a real-time
combat game, in one hour of play the game depicts one hour of combat. Prince
of Persia Animal Crossing Nintendogs Dead Space (except for finishing and
beginning a new chapter) Night Trap The Last Express

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colinsidoti
Fantastic. Pusher is an awesome product that eliminates the headaches
associated with building a real-time product. I'll never build a chat with
polling again. I use it for my website and haven't had any problems (well one,
but it was mostly caused by my inexperience with rails)

The best part is the pricing, especially for startups. 20 concurrent users for
free is a big number. Compare it to something like MailGun, and it seems like
$20/month gets you a lot more value.

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dualogy
Quick question: for someone or a team already extremely well versed in
Node.JS, HTML5 and Socket.io, where the core product is already real-time by
design from the ground up (rather than a legacy HTML page-based experience
that needs to be "up-realtime-d quickly") -- should they be looking into
Pusher and how would it help them?

I really mean folks who diligently code their own server sides and client
sides "completely" (utilizing OS libs of course) by themselves and work on a
for-local-installation product that should not require www/online connectivity
(think non-public intranet servers) to run its core real-time functions --
should they be looking at Pusher at all? Or is this "just a quick external JS
lib to add a chat, drawing or puzzle game to your popular HTML 4 website"?

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marknutter
I think you can view pusher as being the quick and easy way to add chat and
realtime. I would look into Juggernaut which is basically a ruby wrapper for
socket.io which runs on node.js and gives you most of the same functionality
that you get with pusher, except that you run the server yourself of course.

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marknutter
I've used Pusher on a couple apps and it was extremely simple and painless.
However, I've found that it's not that much more difficult to roll my own
real-time solution using juggernaut/socket.io/node.js. What I lose is the
support, but what I gain is obviously the cost savings.

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fictorial
Pusher seems very expensive for the number of connections supported per tier.

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aonic
I think the number of connections is more than enough, keep in mind that its
concurrent connections. If you're using so many connections where their price
seems like a sticking point you should probably roll your own.

Check out <http://socket.io> for the front-end libraries

It's not too hard to roll your own, I wrote my own over the course of a week
in 2007 using Flash XMLSockets and Twisted Python as the backend, check here
on hints if you need ideas on implementing your own:
<http://code.google.com/p/aonic/wiki/Examples>

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sjwalter
> Check out <http://socket.io> for the front-end libraries

A note of clarification: socket.io is a front-end AND back-end (node.js)
package.

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mtw
I see the founders are also doing <http://new-bamboo.co.uk/>

if Pusher got funding, does that mean they have to leave new bamboo and panda?

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benreyes
As far as I'm aware (I'm friends with the founders) they have hired someone to
run New Bamboo (Rails Consultancy) and have also merged their other SaaS
product Panda (<http://pandastream.com> \- Video Encoding) with another US
company.

So the founders full focus is on the Pusher product. Most, if not nearly all
investors tend to want you to put in professional management in a service
business and spin off the product to a separate company before investing large
amounts of seed capital.

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mtw
ok, but for external visitors, they are running 3 different companies at the
same time:

<http://www.pandastream.com/about_us> Damien Tanner Co-Founder and CEO of
Panda Max Willians CoFounder

<http://pusher.com/about> Max WIlliams CEO Damien Tanner CMO

<http://new-bamboo.co.uk/people> Max Williams and Damien Tanner. "Founders".
No mention of who is running the company on that page

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maxthelion
Hi, I'm Max Williams.

Damien and I own/founded all 3 companies at the moment. The CEO of New Bamboo
is called Gwyn Morfey, he runs that company full time. Future plans for Panda
are not generally being discussed publicly :)

Pusher is where Damien and I spend 99% of our time.

Max

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intranation
I work in the same office as the Pusher guys: they seem super bright and
highly motivated. Very happy for the team!

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maxthelion
Thanks! I don't think we've met, come over and say hello at some point!

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samstokes
Congratulations to Max, Damien and Martyn! Great team of highly intelligent
people.

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randall
Anyone used both Pusher and NowJS?

