Newsletter - October 2010
Tracey Berman
Oct. 6, 2010
We are heading into winter again already - where has the time gone? We are all too often so busy with the day to day that we don’t find time to touch base with friends and colleagues of projects past (and hopefully projects future). So here is a little snippet of what we have been up to along with interesting news about what other ambitious web application businesses are doing amongst other stuff.
Of course, we would love to also hear what you have been up to, so drop us a line at enquiries@unboxedconsulting.com
Web Dev News
This worldwide leader in 18-35 year old holidays has just released its new online tour comparison tool and facebook application which allows friends to vote on their favourite tour before booking.
Director of Global Web Services, Alexis Sitaropoulos said “We wanted to create a way of sharing a short-list of tours in a way they can be compared and voted on by friends, and that is exactly what our facebook app does. It couldn’t be easier.”
Unboxed Consulting together with existing Contiki technology partners PlanetArgon and Domain 7 developed the comparison tool.
Take a look at the results here: www.contiki.com
Mindapples is a non-profit organisation promoting mentally healthy living through daily activities to exercise our minds, creatively called ‘Mindapples’. The growing needs of this online community required a new web platform to allow members to share ideas and socialise web content. The organisation has harvested over 1200 ideas from the community to inspire people to exercise their minds.
Unboxed Consulting worked on the new platform with founder Andy Gibson who said “It has been a fun and flexible partnership with lots of creativity. The designers put a lot of their own ideas into the brand, and the whole team gave input on the functionality. It’s been one of the most efficient projects I have ever worked on and I don’t believe we have wasted a penny”.
The Unboxed team recommends a mind-workout to everyone www.mindapples.org !
Heading South
Following ‘The World Cup’, Unboxed Consulting taking South Africa by storm
Budgets everywhere are still feeling the pinch following a trying economic time and the recent elections. However, businesses are still pressed to increase their output without adding expense to the bottom line or compromising on quality of delivery. One way that businesses have cut costs is by out-sourcing work to foreign countries. It cuts cost – of course, but at what cost? So if out-sourcing can be fraught with problems, is off-shoring a better solution?
Unboxed Consulting seized hold of the momentum that has gripped South Africa in the run up to and following the world cup and opened a Cape Town office. This office will provide the same Agile Ruby development that many of you have experienced firsthand here in the UK for South African companies but it also provides an alternative for some UK clients who have budget restrictions that would make it impossible to get the job done in the UK.
By making the most of exchange rates, reasonable property prices and lower salaries, our Cape Town office provides clients with all the quality of Unboxed Consulting at a saving and our staff with the opportunity to mentor others and develop projects in the fairest of Capes – needless to say, they are queuing up!
Agile Process Improvements
Unboxed Consulting are assisting a blue chip company to improve the development delivery process, from the commencement of coding, through development completion, deployment into test environments and onto production release
The solutions range from the immediate and pragmatic (e.g. manage potential disruptions to the development teams during iterations), to the more medium term (e.g. reduce build time), and more long term actions, including selection and implementation of superior deployment tools, and new test environments.
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