It's not a 101 for coucbapp, but come with a good hands-on

jQuery Evently CouchApps webcast

http://jchrisa.net/drl/_design/sofa/_list/post/post-page?startkey=%5B%22jQuery-Evently-CouchApps-webcast%22%5D#login

First problem I had encountered is I can't change the admin party

when I add a new admin user name: "username" with a password "password" by using curl PUT but get error as follow.
or you get no success to sign in a new user in Futon. (http://localhost:5984/_utils).

$ export HOST=http://localhost:5984

$ sudo curl -X PUT $HOST/_config/admins/username -d '"password"'

{"error":"file_permission_error","reason":"/usr/local/etc/couchdb/local.ini"}

It could be the owner of /usr/local/etc/couchdb/local.ini file is not couchdb. it better be

$ sudo ls -al /usr/local/etc/couchdb/local.ini
-rw-rw-r-- 1 couchdb root 3010 2011-03-28 17:46 /usr/local/etc/couchdb/local.ini

if not

$ sudo chown couchdb /usr/local/etc/couchdb/local.ini
and
$ sudo chmod 664 /usr/local/etc/couchdb/local.ini