Work
Tag Street: QR codes for estate agents
QR codes are becoming a common sight in the UK, used for all sorts of things, from innovative marketing campaigns to museum guides. The codes can be a great way for people to get more information about a topic right there and then.
In my day job at Inteeka we have been looking at ways of using QR codes in the estate agent industry, where it's important for potential customers to be able to get at property information with ease.
By scanning a QR code, potential tenants or buyers can be taken directly to the estate agent's mobile site, giving detailed information about that specific property; they can find out pricing information, photos of the interior and any other important information, as well as letting the customer register their interest while they are still thinking about it.
To let estate agents try out QR codes for their own portfolio of properties, Inteeka is launching a service called Tag Street, allowing agents to order QR code stickers and signage boards they can attach to their existing property marketing signs. Both boards and stickers will be free (with the exception of postage) and estate agents will only pay if their customers are making use of the boards to view property information.
If you're interested, you can find out more over on the Tag Street site. If you have any feedback, please tweet us @tag_st or get in touch.
Drupal developer with an interest in all things geo
After two years of working from home, I've decided it's time to make a move back into an office and look for some contract-based or perhaps permanent work in London.
I have four years of experience using, developing and helping guide the development of Drupal projects as well as a background and interest in all things geographic, from maps to open data (as you've probably seen from the topics I cover in my blog). With these skills I am looking to find some work as a Drupal developer for an organisation based in London, ideally integrating my geographic interest. Alternatively, I'm open to other opportunities that I may be suitable for.
If you have, or know of, any positions coming up from January onwards, I'd love to hear from you to discuss the details. You can find out more information about me in my CV (pdf) or on my LinkedIn profile.
OpenBand Labs has a new look
OpenBand has today unveiled its new OpenBand Labs website to help improve the information around the work we've been doing over recent years as well as hopefully invite some discussion.
We hope to make some improvements to the new site over the coming days as we continue to add some more information and blog about some of our experiences here at DrupalCon. We'll also be adding the slides and some writeups about the XMPP talk Darren gave yesterday and the distributed enterprise talk Ben gave today.
We had a great presentation yesterday with Darren Ferguson talking about the XMPP Framework, and today with Ben Lavender talking getting a chance to demonstrate our collaboration platform.
Freelance Drupal services coming in 2009
From the start of 2009 I am going to be self-employed, and while I will still be working much of my time on the projects I've been working on for the past three years at OpenBand/M.C. Dean, I would also like to start taking on some small Drupal-based projects to go side-by-side with that.
Some of the services I am planning to offer in the New Year include:
- Drupal site creation
If you are looking to get a site set up for your small business or organisation, and you like the power that Drupal can give to your site, then I can set a site up for you to meet your needs. I'm particularly interested in creating sites based around geographic information or related to the tourism industry, but I will happily consider any project. - Drupal site setup support
If you need advice on how best to achieve your requirements with existing Drupal modules, I can help point you in the right direction and get you started with your Drupal site setup. This can either be on a remote basis, or on a face-to-face basis in the London area if needed. - Drupal module development
If there isn't already a module in the Drupal community to do what you need, I can help you by building a module to meet your requirements.
If you're interested in taking advantage of these freelance Drupal services for your project, please contact me to discuss your needs.
OpenBand sponsoring DrupalCon DC 2009
My employer, OpenBand, is going to be a Gold sponsor of DrupalCon DC in March 2009 and a number of our team members will be attending the conference.
We have a few presentations to give, and will be keen to see many of the other sessions that are going to be given.
In the Powering collaboration in a distributed enterprise session we'll be giving an overview of the work that we do, the collaboration platform we've been building (largely on Drupal) for our customers over the past three years or so, and some of the modules that we've contributed back to the Drupal community during that time.
Miglius Alaburda will be presenting a session titled Introducing a new File Framework about a new and powerful way of handling files in Drupal.
Alex Karshakevich will be giving a talk about Data Visualization in a Social Networking Context, taking advantage of some of the social networking capabilities of Drupal.
Darren Ferguson will be talking about Drupal with XMPP Integration and all the functionality that he has built up around the XMPP framework, allowing users of a Drupal site to use instant messaging capabilities.
It's also great to see some of our associates presenting about work which we've sponsored, like Audrey Foo's talk about how to Search private content between multiple drupal sites with Distributed search (and the related Add powerful features and improve performance of your drupal site with Apachesolr Search), Justin Miller's talk titled Beyond The Web: Drupal Meets The Desktop (And Mobile), as well as others in areas we're involved in like OpenID and RDF.
With all the sessions that have been proposed by attendees, this is shaping up to be a great conference!
Updated: Added Darren's XMPP talk
