Carsonified

What’s new?

1. Two new Carson Workshops #

   There is an exciting opportunity for developers to come to the Carsonified office and hone their skills in Ruby on Rails and PHP5. We are offering one day workshops on 30th and 31st of July, lead by Adam Cooke of aTech Labs and our own Keir Whitaker. These workshops are limited to 10 seats each so act fast to book a place.
   How to get started with Ruby on Rails. Build a complete blogging app in a day. This course will highlight all the key features and techniques you need to build your own Rails app. It’s a great opportunity to learn all about the framework and get answers to all the questions you have.

   How to build a PHP5 web app in a day. Make your coding life easier, enjoyable and more rewarding. This is a practical and intimate course designed to give you a sound understanding of the programming techniques for PHP5 app development. Take your coding to the next level, you will be put forward ideas and ask questions. This day is a great forum to resolve all the issues you have experienced in your own PHP5 programming.

   Full details are available at carsonworkshops.com

2. SXSW Panel Picker #

   I recently found out that I was lucky enough (Thanks Hugh) to have a panel proposal chosen to go forward to the 2009 South by South West (SXSW) Interactive Panel Picker. My panel is called “Build a better team through web app development”. Here’s some background about the idea.

   In July 2008 we spent four days building a Twitter mash up web app called “The Mattinator” using a web framework we had never used before (Django). We conducted the challenge publicly and blogged about each days progress daily. At the beginning of the week we weren’t sure if we would achieve our goals.

   Ultimately the app did launch and we managed to get a post on TechCrunch talking about our project. We learnt a lot of things, both positive and negative. The aim of this panel is to talk about our experiences openly and explain why we feel building a web app in a short space of time will reap rewards for your company.

   (more…)

3. Facebook platform opens up… #

   Facebook recently announced Facebook Connect which is the next iteration of Facebook Platform that allows users to “connect” their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site.

   This latest development will enable users to log into 3rd party sites using their Facebook log in details and also to see which of their other Facebook friends are already using the site, among many other benefits.

   Dave Morin , Senior Platform Manager, confirmed Digg to be the first partner using Facebook Connect and we’re sure many more will follow suit.

4. Ideas & Team Building #

   Distilled are currently working on a one day team building exercise, inspired by our ideas week.  I chatted earlier with Will about their project and he wrote some of our conversation up here.

   As an update, when I was in Austin I ran into a lady who had Gill’s iPhone cover which is now with Andy Budd… let’s hope he keeps the chain going. The idea is that every month the hugs are passed to someone new and we’ll get them back after a year and see from the journal where they’ve been. That’s the idea anyway…

5. Daniel Burka video on iterative design live #

   Daniel Burka - Digg’s creative director, Pownce.com and Silver Orange co-founder - recently gave an impressive talk on iterative design at the Future of Web Design. You can watch the video here and see the presentation slides here.