Our team has now landed in Portland, Oregon for RailsConf 2008. In preparation for the conference, E-xact has unveiled our new corporate website and landing page, PaymentsOnRails.

We’re on site right now in the exhibit hall so have a look around and stop by our booth to chat, view a demo, talk shop, and scoop up a USB thumbdrive. Who doesn’t love swag? We look forward to our time at RailsConf and will be reporting back throughout the weekend, leading up to our speaker Emil Marceta’s talk on Sunday afternoon.

With the 2008 RailsConf in Portland, Oregon only a few weeks away, here’s a look at what’s in store for attendees.

E-xact Transactions’ own Emil Marceta will be speaking about our unique ‘Payments on Rails‘ technology.

From the blogs:

• Speaking at RailsConf - “The Great Test Framework Dance-off” - Josh Susser
• Scaling @ Rails - Mark Holton’s picks for “what to see” at RailsConf 2008
• Talk Accepted - “De-Railing: Smashing the Rails Stack” - Aaron Bedra
• Speaking at RailsConf - “Entrepreneurs on Rails” - Dan Benjamin
• The New Rails Machine Speaking at RailsConf - Bradley Taylor and Dan Benjamin

E-xact will have coverage of the event over the next few weeks and our developers will be on hand at our booth. Feel free to stop by anytime during RailsConf for a demo, to ask questions, and to find out more about our payment gateway, powered by Rails.

Not only will Beijing, China be hosting the Olympics this summer it will also be home to the BC Technology Summit that will see several businesses from around the province showcasing their products and services.

E-xact’s President, Peter Fahlman will be in attendance to showcase our company and technologies as well as 28 other companies from BC (hat tip to Sitemasher for this list):

Verrus Mobile Technologies, Contec Innovations, Threewave Software, and Ballard Power Systems.

British Columbia-Canada Pavilion builds on BC’s Asia-Pacific Initiative, introducing the best of BC and Canada to an international audience. British Columbia-Canada Pavilion positions the province as the pre-eminent economic and cultural crossroads between Asia and North America. [BC/Canada Pavilion, Beijing]

The BC Technology Summit will take place May 21-23 and will feature interactive exhibits and displays for the worldwide audience during the 2008 Olympics and Paralympics. E-xact is very proud to be a part of this prestigious crowd, representing not only our company, but our region, industry and country to athletes, dignitaries, business people and the public.

Several E-xact representatives will be attending this year’s Open Web Vancouver, April 14-15 at the Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre.

The Open Web is a movement by organizations and individuals for “open standards, open source, and a web whose major content formats are not controlled by a single vendor” (Brendan Eich)

An Open Web Technology is any technology based on open standards and open source software that is used for web development, including (but not limited to) Linux, MySQL, PHP, Rails, Drupal, jQuery and Firefox.

I hope to report back throughout the day about what our delegates have experienced in terms of sessions and talks, as it should be well worth sharing. Registration is still open for the two-day event that kicks off April 14th @ 9:45am - watch for our liveblogging coverage!

The spring season is a busy one when it comes to conferences and tradeshows. E-xact is proud to get out and about in the various communities its products and services represent and spread the word about our exciting application. This month, Peter Fahlman, Geoff Flamank and Pardeep Farwaha will be in attendance at the Electronic Transaction Association show in Las Vegas:

“From sales reps to CEOs, this event is guaranteed to provide today’s payment professionals with insight into the critical issues shaping the industry and ways to leverage this knowledge to build your business, increase sales, strengthen compliance, and protect customer data.”

“ETA’s Annual Meeting and Expo gives you the networking contacts and access to the latest information to ensure success. You’ll discover exciting products and services, learn about new technology and business practices, and exchange ideas with industry leaders. This premier event is the largest gathering of electronic payments professionals and provides endless opportunities for building new relationships and connecting with experts.”

What: 2008 ETA Annual Meeting & Expo
Where: Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas,
When: April 15-17, 2008

More information can be found on ETA’s website and you can also Registration online

As a company that’s built its main application using Ruby on Rails we’re proud to announce that we’ll have a large part in this year’s RailsConf.

RailsConf, co-presented by Ruby Central, Inc. and O’Reilly Media, Inc., is the largest official conference dedicated to everything Rails. Through keynotes, sessions, tutorials, panels, and events, RailsConf is an interactive meeting ground for the most innovative and successful Rails experts and companies. The conference provides attendees with examples of business models, development paradigms, and design strategies to enable mainstream businesses and new arrivals to the Web and Rails to take advantage of this new generation of services and opportunities.
[RailsConf 2008 - About]

• When: May 29 - June 1, 2008 (registration is still open)
• Where: Oregon Convention Center - Portland, Oregon (venue)

E-xact will have a sponsor booth, giveaways, and our resident expert Emil Marceta will be giving a keynote address. If you are planning to attend, be sure to stop by our booth to say hello, have a quick chat or to talk shop with our Vancouver Ruby enthusiasts and developers.

January 26, 2008

E-xact’s developers will be participating in Vancouver’s first ever RubyCamp, a day dedicated to all thing Ruby. As E-xact’s secure realtime processing solution, RPM, is built on Ruby technology, it’s the ideal opportunity for our team to share insights, and mingle with the local Ruby community.

RubyCamp is a free one-day gathering for Rubyists and Railers.

When and Where:
WorkSpace in downtown Vancouver, B.C., Canada
January 26th, 2008 from 9:00 am to 5:00pm

Who Should Come:
Anyone who’s interested in Ruby and Rails, whether you’re just interested in learning what this Ruby thing is all about or you know Ruby inside out.

The Conference Track:
A conference-style track with “classic” talks on Ruby or Rails topics. We’re looking for a few more speakers, send in your talk proposal!

The Hackathon Track:
An informal un-conference track focusing on hacking some Ruby code, showing off a cool feature you just added to your Rails application or demonstrating a new addition to Rails 2.0. If you’re interested in working on some code or showing off something, get started by promoting your ideas and get some buzz going.

A Weekend of Ruby:
There are two more reasons to come to Vancouver for those of you who are out of town. On the Friday before RubyCamp, Rails Advance is giving a one day Intermediate Ruby and Rails Workshop. On the Sunday after RubyCamp, Peter Armstrong is giving a one day workshop on Flexible Rails.

For more information visit the Vancouver RubyCamp website.

November 13 - 15, 2007
E-xact Transactions Ltd. will be attending and presenting at the Step Ahead Conference in Grapevine, Texas.

Chase Paymentech Solutions invites you to explore new trends and technologies in payments at Step Ahead Partners. We are stepping ahead with an action packed agenda of payments expertise and best practices. Step Ahead Partners will put you on the inside track for everything from online solutions to emerging payments to the state of the payments industry.

View the conference website for more details and be sure to stop by the E-xact booth to view a demo, find out more about what we do, and to say hello!

Take a look at a special E-xact preview video we’ve created just for this special event.

As previously announced, E-xact is proud to sponsor the Vancouver Ruby/Rails Meetup Group.

This evening the group will convene at E-xact’s headquarters in Yaletown for their October meeting. The speakers’ presentations will be liveblogged below, simply refresh this page throughout the evening to keep up to speed on all the event’s happenings.

Introduction:

There will be two 20-30 minute presentations for the October Meetup

• 1. A Returned Merchandise Authorization System - Dave Dumaresq
• 2. Introduction to JRuby - Teera Kanokkanjanarat

Live Blog Begins at 7:00pm PST on October 9, 2007

WIFI is available via E-xact’s contribution to FreeTheNet.ca. To read more about the Free The Net initiative in downtown Vancouver, visit Vancouver.FreeTheNet.ca or view the Flickr map.

7:05pm: The first presenter is Dave Dumaresq, speaking about an RMA System (Returned Merchandise Authorization System). Here is a bit of background from the Meetup site:

Last year Dave and a friend wrote a Rails application that manages returned merchandise authorization (for tracking products that are returned to manufacturer for repair). The application uses a tabbed layout and work queues to provide a work-flow user interface which allows authorized users to create new RMAs, receive units for repair, log repair work and create packing slips for shipment back to the customer. Work Queues and Wizard work flows are implemented using RJS for snappy Ajaxian views.

7:15pm: Dave’s reporting on the modules of his RMA system, and various features. The room is open to comment and ask questions, in fact it’s encouraged.

7:30pm: The second presentation of the evening is by Teera, speaking about JRuby.

7:40pm: To begin, a brief intro to JRuby. It’s basically a Java implementation of Ruby interpreter with full support from Sun. It provides an alternative implementation, Ruby + JVM. It’s currently in JRuby 1.0.1 release and is compatible with Ruby 1.8.5, most pure Ruby code works (IRB, Gems, Rake).

7:45pm: Why use JRuby? It incorporates Ruby code from the Java side, it has native unicode support, it has excellent performance, and it’s making the way to enterprise. Is it a passing phase/buzz word or something worthwhile and worth introducing to developers?

8:05pm: After a quick demo more questions arise. “Mixing multiple languages in the same piece of source code - just doesn’t seem as evil anymore.” Most do see this as the wave of the future, as a way to simplify and speed up processes for web 2.0. On the other hand, many have rejected JRuby in the past in favour of other code bases and share their own stories about implementations, and performance.

Note the poll at the bottom of the page. If you already have had an introduction to JRuby (or not), how likely are you to use it?

[Poll=2]

For more information about Vancouver Ruby/Rails uses visit the Ruby Central blog, or the Meetup.com account.