Chinese manufacturing partnership

I'm glad to announce that iKubu has now officially signed a partnership agreement with HTG (Hope Tech Global).  This will extend iKubu's hardware development capabilities and allow us to perform quality end-to-end product development.

HTG is a hardware development and manufacturing company with its headquarters situated in Beijing, China.  An intimate knowledge of the Chinese electonics supply chain allow them to design and manufacture hardware at very competitive prices.  HTG is very serious about IP protection, and provide various services in this regard.  

They also have offices in Memphis (USA) and Hong-Kong, really extending iKubu's global reach! 

Wilhelm Stoker is the founder of HTG.  Apart from their excellent technical skills, it is their integrity and passion that brought us together.

We're excited about this partnership, and really look forward to strengthening these bonds.

Joe leaves iKubu

Wow! It's been quite a while since we've updated our blog! (Sorry iKubu fans!) As most of you know we've lost one of our fellow iKubeans. Luckily not through death, or any other tragic event, but he has decided to leave iKubu and join a company that will, hopefully in the near future, present him with an opportunity to do work for them in China.

Joe. Wow! Thanks for the hard work! You have proven yourself on numerous occasions to be a superb software developer, dedicated to solving the problems that he encounter. There are really some times when I look at the work you've done, that I sit back and wonder.... "How the heck did he do that?". The quality of your work will always be remember here at iKubu.

We wish you and Ray all the best for the years to come and we hope that you will find true happiness in whatever you wish to persue.

All the best.
iKubu

Creating a win-win

iKubu chooses to be positive about the future of South Africa! Our continent is full of opportunities and untapped potential. It's great to be a part of this revolution that is Africa.

When load shedding started to threaten our economy, we decided to make a difference by developing an SMS service that lets people know when they can expect power cuts in their area.

Congratulations to our development team! They've succeeded in developing a product that works really well within 3 weeks.

It's exciting to move into the product space. We'll take a lot of confidence out of this, and are already planning to roll out another SMS related product.

A special word of thanks to our families and friends - for supporting us through our late nights and hectic weekends. Without your support our achievements would not be possible.

SilverLight

We're really excited about some of the new Microsoft developments. Visual Studio 2008 especially. One of the new frameworks that can be used is called SilverLight. It's worth while to check it out: silverlight.net. It looks like a MS version of Flash (just a little jazzed up).

Popfly is a cool way to demonstrate the some of Silverlight's capabilities. I created a little "Mashup" that can hopefully be seen below. Please note that you might need to download the Silverlight plug-in, that's about 1.4MB big.



Click here to view it in a bigger window. It's basically a carousel control that loads some of my facebook photos.

Here's another Mashup that looks up your IP and displays it on a Virtual Earth map.


Give it a go! Download Silverlight en get yourself a Popfly account, I really enjoyed playing around with this. :-)

On the move

The CSIR was a great working environment, but hey, we want only the best for our staff and our clients. Solution: say hello to Castle Walk!


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Our new offices are really cool! We're starting to customize and refactor our space to suit our needs. Some swanky couches, and a strategically positioned minibar should increase the client experience.

Our "benevolent dictator of coffee", Denho, has also added to the ambiance by throwing his percolator into the mix.

I'm really excited about what's happening at iKubu! We'd like to hear from you, so drop in. Really, don't be shy, visitors will be allowed to stroke our delicious monster...