It seemed so intuitive and natural — why should we be limited to the current narrow viewing angle?

This gave me an idea.

The idea would be to place multiple digital cameras on a stand to cover a 360- or 180-degree view of an area, then with a custom video encoder or player you combine the videos to create a large 360-degree video viewing experience. Combine that with video glasses, and you’d get a fully immersive video experience.

As the video played, you’d move your head left and right to see all possible angles in a movie.

I did some research and found out that all the technology exists and is accessible.

Companies like Immersive Media or YellowBird have 360-degree video cameras and software to create and deliver 360-degree movies. There are examples at entertainment demo and yellow bird blog. There’s a nice flash player that lets you look around as the video is playing.

A startup, Kogeto, is also coming up with a very accessible solution called Dot that lets you do 360-degree videos. It’s an add-on you snap on your iPhone. You can easily play the videos and drag to view all around. (My 4-year-old will love it).

The video glasses I was talking about also exist and are getting more affordable — Zetronics, Vuzix, Ezgear, and the incredible Lumus VR glasses are just a few examples.

If we put those two technologies together with a gyroscope, we can get a true immersive video experience.

It could be great for events where the action happens everywhere: carnivals, concerts, parades, sports ….

Now, we can push this a bit further using Vuzix or Lumus, both of which have see-through technology with special 3-D videos on green screen. If we used those, we could mix a video with reality resulting in some interesting augmented reality applications.

Imagine you like to work out or do yoga at home, but don’t like doing it alone.

You could put the glasses and connect to a virtual yoga class. The teacher and other students would then appear in your own room all around you.

Sounds great, doesn’t it?

We gave an hand to 5thHouse to improve their web site look and the quality and responsiveness of their online videos.

5th House is a multi-award winning production company with international experience. Awards include: Yellow Pencil, A.C.E. Award, First Boards Award, & PDAs.

We did a new design based on simplicity, accessibility and cluter-free user interface, then we re-encoded the video in higher quality and set them up on a Content Delivery Network for faster and smoother streaming.

Internet Trends Presentation

Gettext is great and, once setup, a very efficient solution for translating an application into multiple languages.

http://www.ofuz.com/opensource/wiki/i18n:translating_with_gettext

http://sixrevisions.com/tools/chrome-extensions-developers-designers/

They are very similar to the one we have in Firefox, its nice that we now have the same tools in Chrome

Overview

Recently, we downloaded, installed, and ran Simple Invoices to get a feel for its capabilities.

We found Simple Invoices to be a well-featured invoicing application.  It is an open source, web based solution that supports taxes and has a very user friendly invoice creation form. Although easy to use once installed, installation requires some technical PHP skills, which may keep a lot of less technical people from using the application.

Pros

- Support for taxes
- Itemized or Total-style invoices
- Simple to use invoice creation form
- Invoices can be exported in PDF, Excel and Word
- Custom fields
- Invoice from multiple companies

Cons

- Installation problems
- Confusing initial setup
- Navigation menu counter intuitive
- No currency
- No custom log
- No discounts capability
- No online payments

Give it a try

You can try the demo installation at the Open Source As A Service site:
http://www.osaas.org/simpleinvoices/
Username: demo@osaas.org
Password: demo123

Simple Invoices web site:
http://www.simpleinvoices.org/
Forums:
http://www.simpleinvoices.org/forum/

Screen shots

Invoice View

PDF export

Invoice Edit Form

Invoice List

Report Total per product

Report, year view earnings

Installation

Overall, the installation was not too bad.  We did have to edit some source code files and then upload the site to our host via ftp.
When we first started the application, we had some problems with reports and some other features.  After investigation, we discovered that some required modules where not detected during the installation process, including the XLS module which is a dependancy of phpReports.
If you don’t understand what I just said,  contact the SQLFusion guys for a help with installation and setup.

Using it

Even after installation, Simple Invoices is not yet ready to go.  You can’t just start creating invoices right away.  First, you need to setup a biller, your customers, and the different items you are selling or providing.  All the navigation and user actions are in the menu, it takes a few minutes to get used to it but once you get a handle on it the interface functions pretty smoothly.

When you create an invoice you can choose to have it itemized or just the total. This is an interesting option that I have not seen in other invoicing tools. You can choose to have your invoice list multiple items and short description for each or a single large description and the total.
In the itemized view there is a small (probably too small) button for each item that displays a description field for each item. This is useful as descriptions are often optional.

Adding taxes is very easy, just select the appropriate tax for each item. It is not a complete implementation, however. You can not accumulate multiple taxes or apply a discount to the invoice.
Still, even with these drawbacks, you can probably control 90% of the day-to-day invoicing activity. The invoices list as a menu action that includes edit, delete, send by email, export in PDF, Excel or Word and add a payment.

We found is an enticing list of reports but not all are working in our setup.  This might simple be because we do not yet have enough test data. From the simple invoice blog seems like they are all available in thenext version.

When customizing I couldn’t find where to upload my logo or change the currency. I was able to create custom fields for customers and invoices to store values specific to your business or country.

I’ve notice a user management part that should enable customers to access the invoices, but couldn’t make it work with the default install.

Competition

Here are some competitors to compare with Simple Invoice.

Open Source

• www.siwapp.org
• bambooinvoice.org
• www.myclientbase.com
• www.ofuz.com

Commercial
- freshbooks.com
- roninapp.com
- invoicemachine.com
- outright.com
- oe.quickbooks.com
- www.simplifythis.com
- curdbee.com
- lessaccounting.com
- invotrak.com
- blinksale.com
- invoicera.com
- billonsite.com
- getballpark.com
- billingboss.com
- paysimple.com
- invoiceplace.com
- billingorchard.com
- billmyclients.com
- invoicesmadeeasy.com
- simplybill.com
- invoice2go.com
- snapbill.com
- www.zoho.com/invoice

Conclusion

Simple Invoice is a good invoicing application, if a bit rough around the edges.  It is not as usable as some commercial products or Bamboo Invoices, but it is very well featured and has active ongoing development.  Stay tuned for new features.

Those application are for small to medium size businesses that can afford the implementation and configuration cost. But on the long run they have a very low cost of owner ship compare to their commercial counterpart.

Quick summary

The application is 100% complete but you’ll need a web hosting account to get it installed and working for your business.

It’s very simple but supports all the features you’d expect in doing an invoice. The user interface is clean and easy to use. For the most part I found it intuitive — never had to look for too long to find what I needed.
I could create an invoice, generate a PDF, send it by email to a client, and record the payments.
Couple of things were missing or couldn’t be found:  mainly recurrent invoices. I found how to duplicate an existing invoice but couldn’t set invoices to automatically repeat themselves every month.
The online payment support could be a plus, especially since its a paid option on most online systems.

Pros

• Its nice looking and intuitive
• Open source and customizable
• Multi-language

Cons

• No recurring invoices
• No Online Payments
• Requires a web hosting account

Screen shots

Detail of an Invoice

Invoice In PDF

Reports

Online Demo

We installed a demo at Open Source Software As A Service so you can try it your self:
http://www.osaas.org/bambooinvoice/
Demo account is:
Username: demo@osaas.org
Password: demo123
PS: the demo resets itself every hour.

Description

BambooInvoice was built by designer and programmer Derek Allard. He wanted something sexy visually but also the programing code. It uses Ajax and PHP with CodeIgniter framework.

Installing it take a bit of time if you are not familiar with installing PHP / MySQL applications, but its easy to hire Open Source experts to do that for you.

Using BambooInvoice is a nice experience; the user interface is fluid and things move up and down. The use of Ajax make it snappy and responsive.
I could create a few invoices and setup some customers pretty quickly and with ease. I like the PDF generation, as it makes the invoices looks professional and makes them easy to print when sending them by email.
One thing that was not intuitive was the payment terms. I could only set it up globally for all the invoices whereas it would be nice to have it for each customer.

I found a few features missing; nothing critical — especially for a free product — but they would be quite useful: recurrent invoices, online payment, past due visualization, and past due reminders.

Derek the developer answers questions directly in the forums with an active community of users.

Overall, for a free product created by one developer, it’s pretty nice.

Pricing

FREE
If you like it or use it, you can donate something to Derek the developer:
http://www.bambooinvoice.org/index.php/donate

Features

• Ajaxified user interface
• Setup Clients’ accounts with attached contacts
• Set your own currency
• Translated in lot of languages
• Support VAT / Sales Tax
• Multi User
• Customize invoices with your own logo
• Generate invoices in PDF (for friendly email and printing)
• Send invoices by Email

Installation requirements

BambooInvoice is built using PHP 5 and needs a database (MySQL and MySQLi 4.1+ are known to work, and drivers are included for MSSQL, Postgre, OCI8, SQLite, and ODBC). In order to generate PDFs, you’ll need the DOM extension enabled.

Competition

Open Source:
Simple Invoices: http://www.simpleinvoices.org/
Ofuz: http://www.ofuz.com

Not Free:
- http://www.freshbooks.com/
- http://www.roninapp.com
- http://invoicemachine.com/
- http://outright.com/
- http://oe.quickbooks.com/
- http://www.simplifythis.com/
- http://curdbee.com/
- http://lessaccounting.com/
- http://www.freeagentcentral.com/
- http://invotrak.com/
- http://blinksale.com/
- http://www.invoicera.com/
- http://www.billonsite.com/
- http://www.tradeshift.com/
- http://www.getballpark.com/
- http://www.billingboss.com/
- http://www.paysimple.com/
- http://www.invoiceplace.com/invoice/
- http://www.billingorchard.com/
- http://www.billmyclients.com/
- http://www.invoicesmadeeasy.com/
- http://www.simplybill.com/
- http://www.invoice2go.com/

AcroYoga blends the spiritual wisdom of yoga, the loving kindness of Thai massage, and the dynamic power of Acrobatics. These three ancient lineages form the foundation of a unique new practice that cultivates trust, connection and playfulness through partner work.
More at:
http://www.acroyoga.org/la/

Ofuz

LA WebMo

If you are in the area pass by, it should be interesting.

UPDATE: the presentation slides are posted Ofuz blog