Archive for the ‘2009’ Category

Legal references database

Monday, March 1st, 2010

Business view: The New Zealand Law and Literature/Law and Visual Media Database aims to explore the nature of legal references in New Zealand fiction. Dr Grant Morris, Senior Lecturer in Law at Victoria University of Wellington, wanted a simple way to enter, maintain and present the information online to academics, students, lawyers, writers and members of the general public.

Technical view: Database and screens built with dbAdmin, our tool for generating presentation and administration screens for SQL Server databases.  Work included assisting with data cleaning.

API for Xero

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Business view: Xero, an online accounting system, asked us to contribute development effort to getting improved bank integration created.

Technical view: API creation (based on Xero’s specification) for producing and validating  financial transaction files across multiple banking systems. Handover for integration.

Winefinder for Vinacom

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Business view: Vinacom came to us with huge wine expertise and a great concept. It required a robust failure-safe architecture and the ablity to scale rapidly once their pilot scheme became a nationwide rollout. Vinacom wanted a way to get useful wine information into the hands of supermarket shoppers – to in-store kiosks built by NV Interactive – and from us, a way to create, collect, synchronise, manage and send that information from one central point.

Technical view: Collaborative systems architecture with NV Interactive. Establishment of a centralised SQL Server database with admin screens built automatically using our custom-built tool. Provision for stock list aggregation, wine information creation and maintenance of synchronized (SQLite) databases on remote Adobe Flex Winefinder kiosks in supermarkets. Web services connect data synchronisation calls.

Rockgas for Contact Energy

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Business view: Contact Energy required a private e-commerce-enabled portal for the use of customers purchasing gas from Rockgas, and for the administration of the orders. We collaborated with 360 Media to support VIS in establishing the functional requirements, developing the information architecture, creating the design, and building the site as designed.

Technical view: Specification, design and information architecture collaboration, with HTML/CSS build from PNG layered compositions.

VIS redesign

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Business view: Very Impressive Software make accounting-related products. They needed a complete overhaul of their website content and design, and a way of maintaining the content easily.

Technical view: Content Management using WordPress + design integration.  Included Information Architecture (with 360), content writing, and pre-design content analysis using Sketch, our own SaaS web application built for that purpose.

NZTA content & branding enhancements

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Business view: As part of its website redesign, NZTA wished to align content between itself and http://importer.fuelsaver.govt.nz, and to align branding across NZTA-related sites.

Technical view: Analysis, design and content modifications to PHP sites.

EECA: “label not available” extension

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Business view: EECA wanted to simplify compliance monitoring by having the labelling engine deliver a “label not available” label when a vehicle itself, or its fuel consumption rating, couldn’t be identified. Dealers would then have proof that they tried.

Technical view: Modification of the PHP engine to create an additional label.

Fuel Labelling Improved Usability

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Business view: Based on field observations, EECA wanted to improve access to core labelling functions, improve the labelling page’s usability, and improve an industry admin section to allow a better view of bulk information on vehicle types.

Technical view: HTML/CSS and javascript changes to enhance public usability, plus changes to our own .NET-based MS SQL database editor which automatically generates admin screens for data editing.

International Meeting Service

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Business view: Victoria International and Victoria Accommodation Services required a solution that would allow then to co-ordinate the arrival of international students in Wellington with a meeting service, shuttle services, and with temporary or permanent accommodation.

Technical view: .NET-based web application to receive information about and manage the student’s accommodation needs (including administration). Consists of a workflow between students and multiple University departments, along with outputs to shuttle providers.

References PDF Formatting

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Business view: Victoria Accommodation Services help students arrange accommodation.  To improve efficiency, they wanted to have reference data submitted about the students turned into a PDF document that was pre-formatted to match the common expectations of Halls of Residence.

Technical view: Design and generation of a formatted PDF version of reference data, collected through an online form on a .NET server.