http://nett.com.au/technology/should-your-business-use-tablet-computers/

Last night I attended a cocktail party in Sydney which featured the compellingly profound Matthew Mengerink, VP & General Manager, and Magento co-founder Roy Rubin from the X.commerce team.

The purpose was to bring a little bit of X.com to Australia and demonstrate to the local e-commerce industry that we have not been forgotten and to give some insight into what we can expect from X.com in Australia – in the coming months. “The Fabric”, which was launched in 2011, offers the opportunity to create a secure API superhighway allowing information to be transferred much more easily and faster than before – to bring new and faster services than ever before.

And Australia certainly is an important part of the e-commerce playing field, as Matthew Mengerink said last night “The opportunity here is mind-numbing, when I see 80% of the merchants not online not engaging in e-commerce that is a phenomenal opportunity for all of us!”.

Indeed there has already been much growth here in Australia in the e-commerce world and still plenty more growth is on the horizon.

Being able to rub shoulders with many of Australia’s e-com leaders was interesting with much “shop talk” (pun intended) which allowed for some interesting benchmarks and opportunities to use some of the new X.com technologies, and even identified the need for some services available in America to be brought to Australia.

From a developers point of view I hope that there are more events like this held in Australia (hopefully in more Capital Cities), as they provide a great forum to allow all ends of the industry to connect and from that comes opportunities on both sides!

Here is the video i captured last night from my tablet…

Startup Bus was created in 2010 by an Australian (Woot Represent!) to help showcase the talents of the chosen “Buspreneurs” which are made up of not only developers but those with the gift of seeing opportunities in innovation where others don’t. The rules are simple, 48 hours to create startups while on a bus using only the resources that are at hand (on the bus).

In 2011 the project gained a lot more momentum with 6 loads of “Buspreneurs” setting out to change the world, this year is set to explode with more of these mobile innovation creations setting out in many many more countries (and its only a matter of time before they make it onto Virgin Galactic).

This post is about just that, i want to get Startup Bus to Australia (it is the home of its creator after all) and to do it i need the help of anyone that can….

So i’m calling on you, yes you reader.. i don’t care if you are a Developer, Project Manager, Theoretical physicist, Train Driver, Diver, Drover, Electrician or even just unemployed, I need every one of you to clap their hands and believe that fairies exist… oh wait wrong franchise…

I need every one to tweet and share from the buttons below to help bring it to Australia to help showcase what we can do to the world!

Click here to Tweet to bring the Startup Bus to Australia

Click here to Like to bring the Startup Bus to Australia

….and click here to share my post with many people….

OK so i am now a Magento convert, before going to the X.Commerce conference this year i really didn’t like it mostly because its a pain to dev in. Well to be fair its still a pain to dev in (the folder structure alone will do your left mouse button in) but once you get used to it its kinda not that bad and it does have a great community supporting it which would be one of the many reasons why eBay/PayPal purchased it.

From a developer point of view (especially the new developer to the Magento Scene) it is very clunky, the theme files for instance can sit in anyone of about 5 different locations depending on module and theme structure. This really is one of the biggest let downs and in comparison to something like Prestashop which uses a smarty based system with .tpl template files Magento really does loose out.

There are however ways to get around that in Magento by switching on some hidden developer settings buried deep with in the admin panel well out of reach of the client who likes to switch things on randomly, from here you can get all sorts of path hints to the location of those elusive theme files and also any number of debugging options.

From the admin user the admin panel is actually quite professional and really doesnt feel like many of the other carts available. Its the difference between picking up an expensive metal pen vs a plastic bank pen (the ones that come on metal chains), both will do the job but only one will do it in style and one wont have you washing your hands later so you dont catch anything.

Then theres the versions which reminds me of the Internet Explorer scenario in that theres so. In the community edition alone theres currently version 1.4 1.5 and 1.6 that are supported, which from what i can tell,  appears to be because there were slight changes made to each that made things like plugins and themes not compatible leaving people unable to upgrade ergo legacy versions had to be supported.

There are many little things that Magento has in it that other carts don’t by default such as watermarked sizing options on images (for full size images, small images and thumbnails!) but then many other things it doesn’t have like a addthis module (you have to manually insert the embed code) and while some of the modules are completely overpriced Magento is one of the few carts that has trusted modules and plugins not to mention a developer certification program.

One of the biggest announcements this year at the X.Commerce conference was the X.Commerce bus which is infact a play on words and uses some of Magnetos hidden talents to a whole new level allowing developers to connect the Magento messaging system to create their own API.

Magento has a built in messaging system that allows different parts of the script to let other parts know if something is happening, this takes that to a whole new level and opens it up at the server level so that external programs (authorised ones) can also add and modify information within the messaging via a API.

All in all if done right Magento is a viable solution especially for anyone wanting to take their e-commerce seriously especially if scalability is going to be an issue.  Its got the grunt and power to be able to deliver to high end traffic (if the server architecture can handle it) but still maintains the flexibility and customisation for low end stores just starting out (if they can afford to have it built of course).

PayPal Community:  Steven Cooper, who came all the way from Sydney to attend Innovate and is always available and willing to help anyone that has questions about PayPal products and how to integrate them.

So excited, this is the biggest tech event of the year and everyone thats everyone will be there. This will be my 3rd year at PayPal Innovate and for anyone thats a developer, designer or involved with the web industry this is the place to be, even if you cant get over everything is live streamed from the event although i will be running live streaming from my ustream.

Theres also been talk of some really big announcements this year (well its really not Innovate without something big being announced) from PayPal/eBay and Facebook to the official launch of X.Commerce platform.

It already seems to be bigger than last year and as it was last year was twice the size of 2009, there is even a number of #preinnovate events springing up for the night before #innovate2011, you can register for one of the Pre-Innovate events here.

Whats even more exciting is that Thinktank Media is coming and we are bringing Social Media Fusion to show off some of the funky things it can do.

You can register or read more about the event here PayPal Innovate

You can follow the event on Twitter via #innovate2011 or by following @x_commerce (everyone should do that anyway!)

you can follow the event on Facebook via XcommerceFans

So if you are coming to Innovate hit me up so we can catch up.

Last week Facebook made what id call one of the most dramatic changes in how it functionally operates by allowing people do change how they display information.

Until recently Facebooks primary high level purpose was to collect and store and display user personal information, with all information being displayed the same way for everyone. For example my employment information could be displayed exactly the same way as another user, in the same formatting, even though the information is different.

Moving forward we now have a different direction where we can style how that information is displayed, It effectively puts the person back into the personal data whilst still maintaining the flatness relationship of the data.

Although proper database is critical to any web design something which in most cases i would consider it a fundamental keystone depending on the project objectives. Without good database design you wont have the functionality needed for the user to be able to interact with the site.

Of course in saying that you mustn’t forget there is a end user that needs to use the website!

Then there is knowing how much you can trust the user not to corrupt the sterile data environment. Stripping out anything that a user could possibly do is the second most fundamental rule of any design in making sure a end user doesn’t functionally break the site. But you would never want to sacrifice the user at the expense of functionality, the end user is the reason why you are building the website in most cases and if you don’t have buy in from them what are you designing for.

From a higher level again this move is something that is not at all surprising and is something that i think has been lacking in the last few years with the emphasis more around protecting data than displaying it.