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Air New Zealand Launches Smartest Travel Card Yet

It seems Air New Zealand have been working on a brilliant top-secret project for a little while. The new Air NZ OneSmart card integrates not only their Airpoints card and the ePass tag (which enables wireless check-in at their domestic kiosks), they’ve also bundled it with a smart debit card on the other side, with the ability to lock in up to four currencies at a time and fix the exchange rate until the money is spent..

This combination makes OneSmart the ultimate of travel cards and really does combine everything into one.

Tags: air new zealand, debit, nfc, onesmart, travel

HipTweet Brings a Gorgeous Twitter Experience to Symbian

If you’re a Nokia user, you’ll know that there are numerous ways and methods to get your Twitter fix on the go. Whether you prefer the mobile site, applications like Socially, Tweet60 or Gravity, or even the built-in Social client on new Symbian, the choices are many.

And then along comes HipTweet. Created by application developers HipLogic (perhaps best known for their UI replacement *Spark) this client has just been released on the Ovi Store, and my first impression was: wow. As a graphic designer and application developer myself, my motto is that if an application doesn’t look good it doesn’t matter how functional it is — I probably won’t give it the time of day. And while the various other offerings certainly have their share of good looks, HipTweet steps it up a notch and really seperates itself from the competition from square one.

This interface is gorgeous. The motto here clearly is bold and simple. Softkeys are replaced with circular icons which are so sure of their awesomeness that they nonchalantly hang off the side of the screen so as to give you more room to see. The toolbar at the top is just as functional as it is simple, and again it consists of a few circles and drop down boxes on top of a semi-transparent gradient leaving the rest of the window to display your timeline, retweets, mentions, favourites, lists, or whatever … this app supports the lot.

And it doesn’t only look good. This app also does nearly everything a Twitter user could want. You can upload photos using a custom file browser complete with image previews and filenames. You can do true Twitter retweets without the annoying RT tag on the beginning. And if you forget the username of the person you’re trying to tag, no fear! Simply tap the contacts icon when writing a tweet to view a list of the people you follow, complete with profile pictures.

Not to say that this app is perfect … scrolling could be improved, as this is a bit unwieldly. I’d like to see a Back or Cancel button when writing a tweet or message, because I don’t want to have to retrace my steps if I decide not to write that very amusing reply after all. And I’d also like to be able to tap on a tag and do an automatic search without having to remember it and retype it in the search box.

But when you look at the big picture, I think that for a first release this is the nearest to perfection I’ve seen in a Twitter-only client. And it’s free, so how can you complain? Download it now from the Ovi Store on Nokia touch devices.

Tags: HipLogic, HipTweet, nokia, symbian, twitter

Ubuntu + Apache2 + SNI [WORKING]

As you may know, Ubuntu still doesn’t support the Holy Grail of SSL: Server Name Indication – which enables you to run multiple certificates behind the one IP using Virtual hosts – out of the box. It was promised to be included in Karmic Koala but never quite got there. And since you can’t run Lucid Lynx on a production server yet, what are you to do?

Well, you have to compile it yourself. However the tutorials on the net are all about old versions of Apache and patches and such, so I did the research and found the current method of compiling. Enjoy.

1. You need a couple of packages installed before you do any compiling. I will leave the basics of setting up your programming environment (gcc, make, etc) to you, but specifically for this project you need to run:

$ sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev libssl-dev

2. Download the latest stable versions of OpenSSL and Apache2 from their websites. As of writing they were v1.0.0 for OpenSSL and v2.2.15 for Apache2 … much newer than the versions available in the Karmic repository.
3. Extract both into a working directory inside your home directory.
4. cd into the OpenSSL directory and compile it:

$ ./config --prefix=/usr --openssldir=/usr/lib/ssl no-idea no-mdc2  no-rc5
       zlib enable-tlsext no-sslv2
$ make depend
$ make
$ sudo make install

5. cd into your apache directory and configure it:

$ ./configure --enable-layout=Debian -enable-ssl=shared
       --enable-mods-shared=all --enable-deflate
       --with-ssl=/usr/lib/ssl --with-program-name=apache2
$ make
$ sudo make install

6. Restart your Apache Server if you haven’t already:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

7. Done!

Credit for this is due to a chap called Zeepal who wrote the original set of instructions for Apache2 v2.2.11 (this method required a patch). I found that with the newer versions the patch was no longer needed, but a few extra options listed in the Apache SNI manual were. Here we have a working version.

Did it work for you? I’m interested to hear your feedback!

11/04/2010: I’ve just found that Ubuntu may overwite your compiled version of Apache in it’s next update, so follow the instructions here to make sure it leaves it well alone. Follow the procedure twice, once replacing ‘packageName’ with ‘apache2*’, and secondly with ‘openssl*’. Just remember once the Ubuntu versions catch up with the versions you’ve compiled to do the same but change the option back to ‘install’.

Tags: apache, httpd, karmic koala, linux, ssl, ubuntu, virtual hosts, web hosting

Stayfree Sues Apple Over Trademark Infringement, Naming Fail

Stayfree's 'Future of Feminine Hygiene'

McNeil Laboratories, the company behind Bandaid, Clean and Clear, K-Y, Stayfree and the Maxi Pad, have revealed that they have sued Apple over infringement of their own trademarked future product. CEO William C. Weldon claims that the company is putting the finishing touches on their new sanitary pad dubbed the ‘iPad’, which he says will be ‘the future of sanitary pads and feminine hygiene’.

The hook for this new sanitary ‘iPad’ is the functionality for remote monitoring. According to previews of their new marketing campaign, the iPad removes the need for all those ‘manual checks’. All you do is register an account on http://www.monitormypad.com/ (website yet to be made live) and register the unique ID on the pad’s wrapper before use. This will activate the communication between the pad and Stayfree’s monitoring service, meaning you can get automatic email notifications when you are due for a replacement, as well as other features such as a ‘Green Trainer’, encouraging you to create less waste by waiting longer between changes and then recycling to help the environment. The possibility for integration with social networking sites is also in the works, Stayfree said.

‘It is common practice for companies to register a trademark well in advance of a product’s release,’ Weldon stated when confronted about the fact that Apple’s tablet is already released. ‘The simple fact is that Apple didn’t do their research before naming their product, and we can’t be expected to take the fall for that.’

This lawsuit brings to light what consumers have been saying ever since Apple announced their tablet, that of the stupidity of naming any of their products ‘iPad’.

McNeil Laboratories are keeping it tight-lipped in terms of the status of the law-suit, but from history one can expect Apple to be quick on the mark with a counter-suit of their own.