Contactless mobile payments

This is a very detailed paper on the evolution of contactless mobile payments by Stephen J. Ezell a senior analyst with the information technology and innovation foundation (itif). It's long but well worth a read, download pdf

New iMac - I sooooo want one :)

What next for the internet

This is a must read presentation for anyone interested in the evolution of the internet and the coming trends for 2010. Download

New Flex-ActionScript3 MDI (Application Multiple Document Interface)

Marcelo Marmoni of ATS has continued the flexlibs & Flexmdi project to build out a very nice 'windows' like environment within Flash under an MIT license so you can do anything you want with it. Nice one Marcelo!

You can find the code or download it here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/appmdi
Or you can see an online example here:
http://www.trueagile.org/examples/amdiBasicExample/amdiBasicExample.html 

WebPageTest : Where web sites go to get fast!!

Matt Cutts mentioned this tool in an interview with Mike McDonald at Pubcon 2009.

A very nice free online tool that allows you to analyse and fix the real word experience of your site visitors

UBank auction USB stick signed by social media expert and pop star MC Hammer

SPDY: An experimental protocol for a faster web

This time a great intiative from Google on speeding up the web. Exec summary below but well worth a read of the full article for those of you who also want greasy fast lighting speed from your web sites.....

Exec Summary
As part of the "Let's make the web faster" initiative, we are experimenting with alternative protocols to help reduce the latency of web pages. One of these experiments is SPDY (pronounced "SPeeDY"), an application-layer protocol for transporting content over the web, designed specifically for minimal latency. In addition to a specification of the protocol, we have developed a SPDY-enabled Google Chrome browser and open-source web server. In lab tests, we have compared the performance of these applications over HTTP and SPDY, and have observed up to 64% reductions in page load times in SPDY. We hope to engage the open source community to contribute ideas, feedback, code, and test results, to make SPDY the next-generation application protocol for a faster web.

Agile vs Waterfall : A visual introduction

A very insightful video by chrisspagnuolo

Traditional Requirement Gathering - Absolutely Brilliant

I stumbled upon this video which The was originally made for a one-time only showing at the 2007 iRise user conference held in Las Vegas. Made me laugh out load!

Who Wants To Build UI's When You Can Build Apps - 280North ATLAS

This is a really great demonstration by Francisco Tolmasky co founder of 280 North of their new development tool for building Cappuccino applications. In addition to managing your project files and editing code, it includes a powerful visual layout tool for designing your interfaces without ever having to touch code. Designers are empowered to interact with their designs instantly, which means programmers get to finished applications faster.

Recomend you sign up for the Beta program here

Introducing Atlas: A Visual Development Tool for creating Web Applications by Francisco Tolmasky from Carsonified on Vimeo.

10 Consumer Trends For 2010

Some good insight into the social trends that could infleunce products and services in 2010 from trendwatching.com/

Official Solar Charging Case for iPhoneTM 3G/3GS

For all those of you who can't make the day on a single charge!

With NOVOTHINK's hybrid solar charger case, you can now power up your iPhone literally anywhere under the sun. Our solar panel technology enables you to be part of the solar energy solution.

Click link to purchase from Bigpond $99.95 + $12.95 P&P

Static Analysis tool for Action Script 3 - Flex PMD

FlexPMD is a tool released by Adobe that helps to improve code quality by auditing any AS3/Flex source directory and detecting common bad practices, such as:

Unused code (functions, variables, constants, etc.)
Inefficient code (misuse of dynamic filters, heavy constructors, etc.)
Over-complex code (nested loops, too many conditionals, etc.)
Over-long code (classes, methods, etc.)
Incorrect use of the Flex component lifecycle (commitProperties, etc.)
A report is produced describing the violations of a given rule set. FlexPMD includes a rule set that is broad ranging and continually growing. It is also straightforward to create new rules and users are encouraged to do so.

An Engineer's Guide to Bandwidth

Anouther great performance article from the guys at Yahoo, this time by Carlos Bueno
Software Engineer, Yahoo! Mail..........

Using the iPhone 3G as your minimum bandwidth devices for web browsing is starting to look like a very sensible thing to do. We are so used to broadband that we have become lazy with web2.0 richness. However as mobile becomes the new device of choice your funky web2 site can be basically unusable. So don't waste time and money creating 'lite' versions put your site on a diet, whilst maintaining all the funk and as a consequence reduce your cost of ownership.

Web graphic optimisation tool Smush.it

Image optimization is an art few have mastered. Useful image editing tools exist that allow images to be edited to reduce their file size while retaining image quality. Using these tools is a good start for optimizing images, but more can be done using advanced tools like Smush.it.

Smush.it uses optimization techniques specific to image format to remove unnecessary bytes from image files. It is a "lossless" tool, which means it optimizes the images without changing their look or visual quality. After Smush.it runs on a web page it reports how many bytes would be saved by optimizing the page's images and provides a downloadable zip file with the minimized image files.

This link gives you the ability to optimize six images at a time, however if you use the same function in YSlow report it will optamize all images on a page in one go. Detials of Firebug and YSlow can be found by seaching this blog.

Microsoft Surface Demo: Barclays Premier Lounge

Barclays new concept branch in Piccadilly

Animator vs Animation

Just click on the link, click on play, then leave the mouse alone, sit back and enjoy a piece of creative brilliance. Copywrite Alan Becker 2006

UBank Moneybox video download links

For all those people who have asked me for files they can use in presentations below are the links you need. The files are .flv so need the flash player plug in but are about a manageable size. As always if you do use any of this content please provide the appropriate aknowledgement to UBank.com.au as they own and retain all the copywrite ©

Specials
Saving Is The New Spending
S1Eps9 Money

Episodes
S1Eps10 All About Savings
S1Eps8 How The Share Market Works
S1Eps7 PaylessTax
S1Eps6 Supperannuation
S1Eps5 Enoughism
S1Eps4 Property vs Stocks
S1Eps3 Aussie Dollar
S1Eps2 Recession
S1Eps1 Credit Crunch

Thomas Cook Corporate FX TVC

Twiggtowers is very excited by the success of Thomas Cook CFX, powered by FXpayport

Agile Demystified

This is a fantastic paper written By Allan Kelly, consultant and author of Changing Software Development: Learning to Be Agile (2008) that encapsulates and answers just about all the questions and concerns I get asked by people about Agile. It is a 10 minute must read for any business or project person, even if you are the most ardent waterfall advocate.

Quickly validate your website against W3C standards

This validator checks the markup validity of Web documents in HTML, XHTML, SMIL, MathML, etc. If you wish to validate specific content such as RSS/Atom feeds or CSS stylesheets, http://validator.w3.org/mobile/, or to find broken links, there are other validators and tools available.

FlexMonkey automated test tool

Gorilla Logic, the firm known for delivering enterprise application development resources with a 10X productivity and quality benefit, today announced their open-source, automated testing tool for Adobe Flex applications.

Very cool....

A bit of UBank halloween fun :)

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

Star cast includes:-

• Paul G
• Twiggy
• Heir Schorkel