In 2007, Los Angeles web development shop Bitscribe loved the productivity gains they found by developing using agile methodologies. What they didn’t like was the labor-intensive process necessary to deploy applications. Bitscribe principals James, Adam, and Orion decided to build a company just to solve this problem. They called it "Heroku", a combination of the words "hero" and "haiku".

Hundreds of development shops from small shops like Bitscribe to large GSIs like Accenture now rely on Heroku so they can focus on building apps instead of deploying and running them. Many of these shops are now official partners. Their expertise ranges from web and mobile...

This weekend, join us for a Java Hackathon at the Heroku office in San Francisco.

We've decided to kick things off with a contest. To enter, build a creative and/or useful application that enables or manages interactions with customers or potential customers via social media channels. It can be any social media channel, and your app will be judged on how well it fits the contest criteria as well as the quality of your concept and implementation.

The overall winner will receive a $500 Amazon gift card and a $500 Heroku credit. Two runners up will win a $100 Heroku credit.

Here are the basic rules to enter:

Your app has to be in Java or a Java framework.

You don't have to be at the...

So our good friends at GitHub put together the First Annual Dodgeball Invitational with the intention of pummeling various Bay Area tech companies into submission. Heroku has never shied away from a challenge, especially when there is a giant Octocat trophy at stake. The Dodging Samurai emerged victorious despite facing a pool of 21 teams and one crotchety old man wielding a wrench.

Through brute force, covert strategies and pink tutus, the Herokai were able to persevere through two teams from both GitHub and Engine Yard, a solid team from Code for America, as well a mysterious unnamed lucha libre fighter from Twilio. We commend both the spirit and the dodginess of all our competition...