Web Development Live

The risks of an economic downturn in China are growing and protectionist sentiment abroad could hurt global growth, the country’s central bank said Tuesday.

“The impact of the international financial crisis is intensifying, and the uncertainty of the domestic economy is increasing. The risk of an economic slowdown is expanding,” the People’s Bank of China said in a quarterly report.

The central bank said it would make sure adequate credit is available to support the stimulus.

Growth in exports and industrial output have slipped as global demand for Chinese exports weakens. That has alarmed the country’s communist leaders because of the rising threat of layoffs and possible unrest.

The central bank warned of protectionist sentiment in reaction to the slowdown and said it might hurt global growth.

“With the slowdown of the world economy and rising unemployment, anti-globalization, represented by trade protectionism, is likely to exist for a long time,” the bank said. “It will cause a negative impact on the sustainable, healthy development of the world economy.”

In new signs of a slowdown, reports Tuesday said demand for electricity, a key indicator of industrial activity, and consumer demand for fuel have weakened.

Power consumption in October fell 0.46 percent from a year earlier, the first drop in several years, the official newspaper Economic Information Daily said, citing State Grid Corp., which runs most of China’s power-distribution network.

Fuel demand has weakened sharply since September due to the global financial crisis, the president of state-owned China National Petroleum Corp., China’s biggest oil company, said on its Web site.

Related posts

• No related posts.

This agreement is designed to add mutual value for their current clients and to increase targeted exposure and reputation for both companies.

“Designing rich, engaging interactive experience developed on top of a rock solid enterprise class foundation is how leading software companies are changing markets today, and that’s what we do best here at Cynergy. The final mile is deploying those applications out to users, and that’s where we look to Rackspace,” said Dave Wolf, Cynergy Vice President. “Rackspace provides our customers with a solid and reliable infrastructure on which to grow their business. Their unparalleled hosting expertise backed by Fanatical Support(R) provides our clients the best solution to succeed, ultimately increasing our customer loyalty through a mutually beneficial relationship.”

Cynergy’s design and development of rich internet applications move far beyond traditional Internet applications, featuring highly immersive online experiences that promote user interaction with immediate feedback, fewer screen refreshes, less clicks and processes, and faster page loads. RIAs front-load the experience, expanding web functionality and increasing productivity.

Under the terms of the Select Partnership, Cynergy will have access to a Rackspace portal for its network partners and Rackspace marketing materials.

Related posts

• No related posts.

The winners of The 2008 Davey Awards have been announced by the International Academy of the Visual Arts, and Amalgamated Pixels of Atlanta, GA was awarded the Silver Award for the David E. Talbert and Sony Pictures Screen Gems “First Sunday” motion picture web site. With over 4,000 entries from across the US and around the world, the Davey Awards honors the finest creative work from the best small firms, agencies and companies worldwide.

The engaging interactive panorama showcases a cityscape in a compellingly playful way, depicting hilarious scenes from the movie with artistic imagery and sound bites. According to Amalgamated Pixels CEO and owner, Christopher Hayes, “The design theme of the virtual city and bobble-head characters was an instant success and was adopted in future ad and promotional campaigns, creating a successful and cohesive brand for the film.”

The Davey Awards is judged and overseen by the International Academy of the Visual Arts (IAVA), a 200+ member organization of leading professionals from various disciplines of the visual arts dedicated to embracing progress and the evolving nature of traditional and interactive media.

Related posts

• No related posts.

Exalead, a global leader of search software for business and the web, and TERMINALFOUR, Europe’s fastest growing content management company, recently announced a new strategic partnership which reflects both companies’ commitment to development and expansion and will also allow both companies to drive new growth opportunities.

Based on a shared vision for enterprise content management and search solutions, Exalead’s CloudView product line will immediately be made available alongside TERMINALFOUR’s Site Manager to help businesses manage their web, intranet and extranet content and provide a powerful enterprise search facility. The selling of the software by TERMINALFOUR will open up new sales opportunities for Exalead in the market and will ultimately help reduce costs for customers.

“Exalead is pleased to announce this new partnership and we are very confident that TERMINALFOUR’s extensive knowledge and experience in this market will open up new opportunities for both companies,” said Exalead Managing Director, Raymond Bentinck. “This partnership will benefit new customers as it will provide them with an opportunity to purchase a highly sophisticated enterprise search platform to compliment TERMINALFOUR’s enterprise web content management solution.”

Piero Tintori, CEO and founder of TERMINALFOUR, said, “Exalead proved to be a perfect addition to the TERMINALFOUR community. Like TERMINALFOUR, they understand the importance of aligning their customers’ IT requirements with their business needs. With search being crucial to so many companies today, Exalead’s best of breed search capabilities will play a vital role in securing new customers for TERMINALFOUR as we continue to gain market share throughout Europe, the US and the middle-east.”

The partnership will be officially announced via a joint marketing event at TERMINALFOUR’s 2008 User Open Day, t44u, at the O’Callaghan Alexander Hotel in Dublin on Thursday 20th and Friday 21st November. The user day will be showcasing exciting ways Site Manager has been used in current and forthcoming implementations including Web 2.0 modules, personalisation and integration with third party systems. TERMINALFOUR will also be holding a series of workshops whereby customers can find out new and innovative ways of using Site Manager.

Exalead’s CloudView product line is a flexible and scalable enterprise platform designed specifically to overcome the new challenges facing the evolving complex search requirements of enterprises and high traffic consumer facing web sites. CloudView automatically collects, structures and contextualises high volumes of unstructured and structured content scattered across the enterprise information cloud, helping customers around the globe improve information search, discovery, management, security and storage.

Related posts

• No related posts.

Research carried out by Massey University’s Mark Hendrickson on the impact of the internet on life for lesbian, gay and bisexual Kiwis shows that the internet’s accessibility and anonymity make it an important resource for people coming out, seeking safe sex information and building communities, particularly for young people or those in rural areas.

The NZAF is interested in forming a long-term on-going relationship with a reliable, innovative, and flexible web design and development supplier that will extend beyond the life of these specific projects, says its request for proposals.

“Our sites need to be interactive and integrated with the wider web, need better design and navigation, and need to be a place where people can find information that is up-to-date,” explains the NZAF’s Nathan Brown, who will oversee the new website developments.

‘Flash’ design elements, richer content including more photos and video, and links to existing popular websites including YouTube, Facebook, Bebo and GayNZ.com are being considered in the revamps.

Related posts

• No related posts.

Yieldex, the world’s most advanced inventory management and forecasting platform for addressable media, today announced that Larry Allen, formerly the SVP for Network Development at AOL’s Platform A, has joined the company as its President. He will be based in the company’s New York office.

“Larry has all of the right experience and relationships to take Yieldex to the logical next step,” says Tom Shields, Yieldex’s CEO. “His mission will be to help build Yieldex as the market leader in inventory management and create a world class sales and marketing organization.”

“One of the biggest challenges that online publishers face is how to effectively manage and sell their most precious inventory,” Mr. Allen says. “Yieldex combines inventory management for increased visibility into highly targeted and overlapping products and yield optimization with its Yield Index to deliver measurable results for publishers. It is a solution that is very timely for every major media company serious about digital advertising.”

Yieldex technology has garnered the attention of the top-50 web publisher community due to its forecasting provisions and fast-scalable platform. The company was recently named one of seven finalists in the Amazon Web Services Start-up Challenge for their unique use of cloud computing to provide robust inventory analytics and forecasting.

Related posts

• No related posts.

Ribbit Monday released for general availability its Web telephony platform, designed to extend telephony development to the world’s Web developers through the use of its APIs.

Telephony development has been the province of specialized programmers working on closed platforms. But Ribbit, which telecommunications giant BT bought earlier this year, is aiming the platform at any developer, integrator or carrier that wishes to create, troubleshoot and deploy voice-enabled applications.

At the heart of Ribbit’s platform lies the company’s SmartSwitch software, which enables voice transmissions to move across hard-wired and cell phones, as well as integrate with services like Skype and Google Talk.

Developers get access to a community site, support and monitoring and management capabilities, and will be able to sell their applications through the Ribbit Store.

The company believes there is great potential in merging voice with applications. Ribbit previously created an integration with the on-demand CRM application Salesforce. Users can push voicemail messages into Salesforce, attaching them to leads and contacts and transcribing them if desired. Users can also make and receive calls from within Salesforce.

A company called eMobileCat is using Ribbit to add voice features to online product catalogs. And a San Francisco design firm is working with games developer Electronic Arts to create a voice-powered community portal for a racing game, Ribbit said.

Developers have also created a number of flashy software phones, including one that looks like a chalkboard.

In addition, there are scores of proposed applications listed on the Ribbit developer site’s “Idea Wall.” Top-ranked ideas include “Inspector Pal.” This application would take voice notes and photos taken by a building inspector with a phone, convert the voice notes to text and send them along with the photos to a database.

Coders will compete in a number of categories, including social networking and collaboration; business and productivity; carrier, network or ISP integration; and “Wildcard,” where the voice-enabled application must “improve the usability of any device or interface, from vending machines to ticket kiosks.”

Related posts

• No related posts.

Leading developer and innovator of advanced wireless technologies and data solutions, today announced the availability of the software development kit (SDK) for the Company’s new Brew(R) Mobile Platform (Brew MP). Brew MP is a mobile operating system platform that supports handsets and mobile devices across virtually all market tiers and across all 3G technologies. The Brew MP SDK is a more open and flexible development environment that enables developers and designers to easily create innovative new applications, widgets and custom user interfaces for mass-market handsets and mobile devices.

In addition to greatly enhanced support for native application development, the SDK provides a full suite of tools and features including highly integrated Adobe(R) Flash(R) technology. This integration allows developers using Adobe’s industry-leading content and web creation tools to seamlessly author applications for Brew MP devices. The Brew Mobile Platform SDK is open to developers worldwide and is made available at no incremental cost.

“Adobe has an extensive developer community creating rich content with Adobe Flash technology,” said Gary Kovacs, general manager and vice president, Mobile and Devices at Adobe. “Brew MP enables Flash developers to create applications that integrate the functionality of a wide variety of devices with Web content and services. The release of the Brew MP SDK is an important milestone in achieving the vision of the Open Screen Project, of which Qualcomm is a member. It helps put us on a solid path to deliver our shared long term vision to deliver consistent, rich experiences across all screens.”

“The Brew Mobile Platform SDK bridges the gap between the mobile application and Web development communities,” said Steve Sprigg, senior vice president of engineering for Qualcomm CDMA Technologies. “With the Brew MP SDK, Flash developers can use familiar and powerful Adobe tools to publish compelling mobile applications quickly and easily for mass-market handsets used by mobile consumers worldwide.”

Brew MP also delivers high-end features across all tiers of devices. In addition to its integral support for Adobe Flash, the platform offers advanced capabilities such as touch screen, rich multimedia, window management, open platform extensibility, and expanded support for native application development.

Related posts

• No related posts.