Posted by Myles Eftos
Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:37:00 GMT
On May 10, 2008 Perth will get to participate in their second BarCamp brought to you by the Australia Web Industry Association. If you haven't heard of BarCamp, it is an ”Unconference“ where there isn't a formal list of speakers — all of the presentations are given by the attendees. It's all very adhoc, and lots of fun.
It promises to be a fantastic day, I will be presenting a Q&A entitled Ask Myles-i the web guy. So if you have any questions about web development — frontend or backend or just want to come along and heckle, then head over to Central Tafe, East Perth and join the fun.
Posted by Myles Eftos
Sun, 27 Apr 2008 03:46:00 GMT
The Beachhouse has had a steady stream of visitors recently, that have been involved with startups. It has been interesting how 88 Miles is considered a “Startup” which hasn't really been sitting well with me — 88 Miles is a product of MadPilot Productions, which isn't really a startup either.
Well, 37 Signals has just run a blog post, that explains why I have been uneasy. I'm not running a startup — I'm running a business. And I agree that people think in terms of startups, not businesses.
So if you are running a startup, make sure you are running a business too.
Posted by Myles Eftos
Wed, 19 Mar 2008 13:26:00 GMT
I have just uploaded a small change that adds a project summary page which allows you to get a quick overview of a project, including the full contact details for the company the project belongs to.
The "Edit" and "Delete" project functions have been moved into this summary page, as well. To access, hit "Options" and then "Project Summary"
Posted by Myles Eftos
Mon, 17 Mar 2008 08:12:00 GMT
On Saturday I posted that 88 Miles was profiled on the Startups Carnival run by VS Consulting. Well, the results are out now, and 88 Miles came a extremely respectable 4th from 28 entries!
A big congratulations to Richard at Scouta for taking out the first prize and to GoodBarry and Suburb View for rounding out the top three.
Also hats off to OurWishingWell, who shared fourth place with 88 Miles.
Posted by Myles Eftos
Fri, 22 Feb 2008 02:37:00 GMT
Last month, 88 Miles added OpenID, allowing you to use a single sign in with out having to give us your password details. That is great unless you wanted to use our webservice API, which required a username and password.
This is no longer the case!
I have just pushed out an OAuth implementation, which allows 88 Miles user to grant access to 3rd party applications without providing a password! There are a number of pre-built libraries for a number of popular languages, which will make interfacing with 88 Miles easy.
If you are a developer, check out the development page for details
Finer grain user access
As part of this roll out, I also pushed a change which will allow you to select what users have access to particular projects and companies, so rather than an all-in (public) or all-out (private) company or project, you can select a subset of your staff members that will have access.
To do this, select the "Let me choose..." option for visibility when adding a Company or Project (You will need to select "More Details" first if you are on the projects page) and you will see all of you staff appear.
Posted by Myles Eftos
Mon, 18 Feb 2008 09:35:00 GMT
I just purchased an ASUS Eee PC and as I was setting up my desktop environment, I realised that after I set up my web browser, I was basically done — because I rely so heavily on SaaS for day-to-day tasks. Not only that, I don't have to worry about whether the tiny 900Mhz processor (under-clocked to 630Mhz) would be up to the task of running my apps. And best all all, because Firefox run in Linux, there is no compatibility issues.
I use (obviously) use 88 Miles for my time tracking, Saasu.com for accounts, Google Apps for office facilities (although, I do admit, I'm still not on Gmail yet). For my RSS, Newsgator has a web version, and I can still get my Twitter feed via their web interface.
This, I think is the best example of why SaaS rocks. In less than 15 minutes, all of the software that I use everyday was ready and waiting for me.
Rachel Cook regaled us with the story of her adventures to Silicon Valley as an angel investor. It would seem that some of the crazy stories that we hear are actually true, and it must have been amazing to be literally rubbing shoulders with the big names of the industry. Although I don't think the current level of VC and Angel investment is healthy for online applications, it is interesting to see how that side of the web works.
Next up was Lisa Herrod who once again gave a thought provoking presentation of what usability and accessibility should really mean and how it should be handled with in an organisation. As developers we often think that standard compliant code is enough to make a site accessible - where in reality, you can't predict how an alternative input user will react until you watch them use your site. If you want to view the slides, they are available on slideshare.
A big thankyou to AWIA for the opportunity to sponsor the night, along with the other sponsors. It was fantastic, and I can't wait for the next one!
PS. Jordan Brock videoed both presentations and has posted them to Vimeo. Which I have also embedded below:
