MetaRefresh for geeks and designers
In a world where the frontend technology landscape is constantly shifting, design and engineering professionals have to continuously learn and unlearn skills, tools and paradigms in order to build outstanding yet seamless user interfaces. Meta Refresh, a technology conference on frontend engineering and design, will feature cutting-edge tech solutions and best practices in the field in the past year.
Organised by tech event management firm HasGeek, the annual conference will be held on February 22 and 23 at the MLR Convention Centre, J.P. Nagar. It will feature talks on web standards, frontend tools, mobility and accessibility, HTML5 video and graphics, and responsive design to make websites usable on a variety of form factors from desktop to mobile.
Meta Refresh 2013 also brings together practitioners, who will share their experiences and the processes they follow, while designing and building products for the Internet, a release from HasGeek stated.
Some of the highlights of the conference will be a talk by Vincent Hardy, member of the W3C committee on Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), on the quest for the graphical web; Swiss entrepreneur Zeno Crivelli about how Sublime Video has become a platform for HTML5 video; and talks by experts from Opera, Yandex and PayPal. To learn more, visit http://metarefresh.in/2013 or email info@hasgeek.com
Visa launches mobile managed service
Visa Inc announced the launch of the world’s first bank-grade managed service platform for mobile money, Visa Mobile Managed Service. This platform is designed to enable financial institutions and mobile network operators to quickly deploy mobile money programs across the country.
Mobile network operators and financial institutions that wish to set up a mobile money service need simply to subscribe to Visa Mobile Managed Service, allowing Visa to host and fully manage all aspects of the mobile money program on behalf of its clients; from look and feel, to consumer enrolment, transactions processing, authorisation, clearing and settlement, all on its trusted and reliable platform.
The new service has been launched initially with Aircel and ICICI Bank. Through Visa’s managed platform, Aircel mobile subscribers will have access to a financial account that is linked to their mobile phone number in order to receive services such as cash deposits and cash withdrawals, money transfer to third parties or self-reload of prepaid mobile credit, a release from Visa stated.
Uttam Nayak, Visa’s Group Country Manager, said, in a release: “This service reduces time, complexities and costs for India’s financial institutions and telecom operators to set up mobile financial services. This increases the reach of electronic payments beyond tier I and tier II cities by driving financial inclusion through affordable access and low-cost acceptance.”
Cloud-based GIS platform launched
GIS software solutions provider Esri India has launched a cloud-based GIS platform, ArcGIS Online (AGOL). A joint venture with NIIT Technologies Ltd., this platform offers tools to create and publish maps and applications on demand for visualising and sharing geospatial information.
This platform provides open GIS capabilities to any user, allowing access to any application, anywhere, any time on any device. It facilitates sharing and use of geospatial content within groups of an organisation, as well as between organisations and the public, providing a pervasive platform for services, a release from Esri stated.
Dean Angelides, Corporate Director, International Operations at Esri Inc. said that the company’s aim was to provide greater value to users by enabling them to solve real-world problems more effectively using GIS. “Early adopters of ArcGIS Online have realised immediate benefits from extending their geographic information to reach more people within their organisation and beyond.”
Award for process innovation
IT services firm Atos announced that its latest innovation, ‘Cloud Orchestration Platform’, bagged the 2013 Nasscom Process Innovation Award. This platform has been designed and developed at the Atos Business Technology Innovation Centre in Pune in collaboration with the scientific community, a release from ATOS stated. Atos’ platform is designed to help organisations manage cloud environments in a secure and cost-effective manner.
In a release, Milind Kamat, CEO, Atos India, said: “Adoption of cloud, mobility and social media has become mainstream and organisations are shifting their cloud services usage from simply improving IT operations to delivering business innovation.”
