Visa on Rails and Beyond

17 November, 2011

So I've heard from SimpleGeo, StubHub, Facebook, ESPN.com, and finally Visa who just launched V.me, Visa's new payment gateway. For me personally yesterday crystallized a lot, and in particular the last hour with Visa. Visa, in 18 months, launched their product V.Me, using an Agile development process, and, sitting down ? JRuby on Rails on the front end with Java on the backend. So lets repeat that back to ourselves, one of what must be amongst the largest IT shops in the world, who are probably the most paranoid in the world for security and process etc have started adopting Agile, and using rails. Cue blowing of mind.

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Gorgeous HTML5 app

11 November, 2011

Appreciate the UX

This app is gorgeous. I don't read the Financial Times, and I think my life is probably much better by not observing the stock markets daily. However, what they have built is abso-frigging-lutely gorgeous. I believe the key driver of this as a reaction to not paying Apple a cut of subscription fees, they went the HTML5 app route.

What is produced, is a very slick web app. I've loaded it up on both my iPhone and iPad. The experience is tweaked around based on which device you're on, but the core essence of the app is the same. As someone who's seen the rise of the web from the first of the 'dynamic content' LAMP days, I have a huge appreciation for how polished this bad boy is, and the sheer depth of the content/structure (start going through the menu). Very very impressive.

Is this the future of the publishing ecosystem? If it is, I for one am loving it. Better go hire those front end HTML/JS/CSS ninjas....

Go have a look for yourself here app.ft.com

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