Archives For Other Stuff

Thoughts on Auckland Startup Weekend 2013

May 17, 2013 — 4 Comments

This past weekend I entered the Auckland Startup Weekend. It was an excellent experience and I wanted to share it here, because if you have an opportunity to do a start-up weekend, in Auckland or anywhere else, you should – you will not regret it.

The whole event would make an interesting social experiment, as complete strangers are thrust together around a half-baked idea and given 50-something hours to turn it into a pitch-able, feasible business. I’m going to share my experience of the weekend here, so if you’re interested in what a Startup Weekend is like, and what happens, read on…

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What if money were no object?

December 18, 2012 — 4 Comments

I saw this really thoughtful YouTube clip a while back, and wanted to record it here, so I can refer people to it in the future. If you haven’t seen it yet, take 3 minutes and watch it. It makes me feel very fortunate, I love writing software.

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We won the Deloitte Fast 50 Rising Star!

October 24, 2012 — Leave a comment

In non-software-development news, I’m very proud of our recent Deloitte Fast 50 Rising Star award and wanted to share the video with you all. Paul does a much much better job of explaining what exactly it is we do, than I do. So if you’ve ever been a bit baffled, now’s a chance to get a 2 minute overview.

You get to see OrderPipe on the iPad in the video, chuffed to see software I’ve written getting some attention.

Normal (geeky) service will resume now – I’ve been trying out the Nexcess Turpentine extension for Magento Varnish, and will report on results soon. Initial impression is positive.

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An Open Twitter-like Network, Powered by Email.

July 27, 2012 — 6 Comments

There’s been a few articles lately about what an open twitter-like network would be. A while back I was thinking about the same problem and how it could be implemented, so I wanted to throw my 2 cents in on the subject. My solution is super simple, does not require any new technology to be deployed, all it would take is a clear message standard, and clients to be created for a few popular platforms.

So here’s my rambling thoughts on what I’ll codename OpenTweet. I wanted to put these down on paper so they stop rattling about in my head, and maybe someone would like to point out some issues with what I’m proposing too or add their own thoughts. Feedback invited.

Firstly though, let me just say, what Twitter have created, the idea of a short, timely, but ultimately throw-away, 1-to-many unidirectional message is a powerful invention. The problem is that invention is held entirely by them and with the closing of API’s lately it’s becoming apparent that they intend to tightly control the access to it. That makes me uneasy.
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Magento Imagine 2012: Making the most of APIs

April 24, 2012 — 1 Comment

Just finished up with my API presentation at Magento Imagine 2012, thanks to those who came along, and for the interesting questions and discussions afterwards. Great conference so far and looking forward to more interesting tech topics.

As promised here are the PDF slides, links to code examples and the blog post I mentioned that runs through the new Magento 1.7 REST API and oAuth. If any one has some comments or questions please do not hesitate to ask.

Update: Videos of all the tech talks are up on the Imagine site, here’s mine.

Also, if you’re a merchant, or an agency with merchants on board who might be interested, please check out our mobile sales dashboard, OrderPipe.com

Thanks to everyone who twittered and took pictures during the talk, given the temporal nature of twitter, I’ll post a few tweets below for the archive.






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