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Made By Many

Rich social media for the next generation web


Jock Kenneir is turning, no SPINNING, in his graveJanuary 6

Jock Kenneir, co-designer of the UK’s road signage will be spinning in his grave. Perhaps the sign was painted by someone on work experience?

Saasy - SaaS for RailsJanuary 5

I’ve been working on an open source SaaS solution for Rails over Christmas called Saasy (pronouced “sarrsy” - using a posh voice).

Saasy provides:

  • Subscription management
  • Recurring billing
  • Credit card management
  • User authentication and SSO
  • Mailers for invoices etc

Saasy follows a componentised design. The idea is that you build your custom site, and then the generic authentication, account management and credit card management is split into a separate Rails app (Saasy) - a reusable component.

None of the credit card information is stored locally - but rather at a payment gateway. This greatly simplifies PCI DSS (formally known as CISP) compliance. However, you still have control over when the card is charged - rather than using some of the gateway specific subscription systems - which means you don’t have to worry about gateway callbacks.

Sassy also deals with authentication (both OpenID and credential based) - your main app can forward users to the Saasy

More nice words about MetrotwinJanuary 2

Stuart noticed a blog called Digital Strategy where Rob Innes aims to review new sites in digital “intended to inspire thinking by showing how brands are communicating with their customers”. 

One of the sites that he’s reviewed is Metrowin - about which he says:

This is a High Design social networking site from British Airways. It links two of the world’s best cities – London and New York and twins establishments from both cities. It’s a gorgeous site with “Huge Design Co Rate Card” written all over it. BA created the environment and then allowed contributors in both cities to take it forward. Despite BA’s obvious interest in the two cities, flying so often between the two (ten flights a day according to the trusty Skyscanner site for a random day in Feb 09), the site does not suffer from commercial over-promotion and the primary content – establishment reviews and city information is very much the focus of the site.

The site does not have an obvious “Christmas” category but it reflects the realities of the contributors, which naturally includes Christmas linked themes – Cozy Holiday Cocktails, for instance. The content is fresh and kept relevant to the community because it comes from the community. Nice job BA.

Thanks, Rob!

Should patients be allowed to review their GPs?January 2

Health minister Ben Bradshaw proposes a system for patients where they can comment on the experiences they have when they see their doctor, to be implemented already next year. Somewhat unfortunate, he likens his vision to the rating system of Amazon and Tripadvisor and this seems to alienate the leaders of the British Medical Association, who sees this as a “meaningless popularity” contest” where patients will “slander and praise irresponsibly”. Says chairman Laurence Buckman:

“I think this has everything to do with consumerism and it has not been thought through well. I am happy for people to praise or criticise their doctor, but this is not the way professionals should interact with their patients. It has a great potential to be misleading.”

While I was struck by his defensive approach, I can understand that no GP would enjoy negative comments from patients on the services they provide. But Buckman is equally concerned abut the GPs ability to stay focused on their job and not see this as a “gaming” opportunity where they encourage their patients to leave positive comments to avoid loosing patients.

There is a huge design challenge here. First of all - after readi

Thoughts on the concepts of popularity, authority and originality on TwitterDecember 30 2008

So the Twittersphere is abuzz again. This time with talks of who the people with authority on Twitter are, or, as these sites prefer to call it, Twitority or Twithority. To start with, let me point you to a few well-written blog posts - which were highlighted by the folks at Made By Many - that provide much of the food for this post: Pete Sabilla on Twitter Combinatorics, Phil Windley on Asymmetric Follow, JP Rangaswami’s experiment on the breadth of information on Twitter, TechCrunch on re-tweeting as a measure of authority, Dan Zarrella on the most re-tweeted people on Twitter and Michael Litman’s thoughts on Twitority.