I finally gave in and got a GMail account last night. After all, Google is meeting so many of my various needs already, I figured why not this last one?

Consider the tools I use on a daily basis which are produced by Google:

• Google Reader
• Google Groups
• Blogger
• Docs & Spreadsheets
• Browser Sync

Frankly, I love these tools - having the ability to peruse my data from different computers. My only complain concerning any of these tools is that Docs is a bit light on outline formating , tracking changes, comments and other specialized tools such as word count which I tend to use a lot, and need in my word processor.

But, I'm a programmer, and this is a blog mainly about programming. So what does my little ecstatic escapade concerning online tools have to do with anything?

Gyre.

This is a very early (their website describes it as pre-pre-pre-alpha) web-based IDE for Rails.

I've yet to actually use Rails (though I use Ruby and WATIR for test driving websites) but this is a strong benefit to a web language such as Rails, especially for folks like me who more and more find that everything I'm doing ends up online.