We’ve decided to try something diferent and create a proof-of-concept remake of the MBNet platform to show how it can be improved and adapted for todays time.

MBNet is a portuguese service where you can create temporary virtual VISA cards with any amount of money you want. Yes, it’s very useful and important but the service isn’t updated since 2005.

So our objectives were:

• KISS!
• Adapt design for todays needs
• Better organization of information
• Make use of stored data about your payments.

We took care in simplifying some steps (like the payments pop-up) and improving the usefulness of the data that exists in the platform.

So now, you should be able to sort, filter and browse your data and use different visualization statistics.

Project is done in Ruby on Rails, Mysql and jQuery. HTML/CSS is done using the 960gs. All in 24 hours. Some things are not completely functional. It’s a proof-of-concept. ;)

You can view the project online at mbnet.heroku.com.

Here’s some screenshots:

More intense and bigger than last year, the event had areas where you could play with machinery, RFID technology, OpenMoko’s, make videos or just invent something for the web and so there was something out there to please anyone.

My project for last year was Bookworms, a small web app where you could add books from Amazon to your personal collection and share them with your peers which appeared on the map (you could give your address which was geocoded) .

One year later and with the support of SAPO, Bookworms was presented live (scary!) at the event as a social book discovering website and now available as a beta version. The presentation went very well I think, complete with nonsense slides and chinese proverbs.

I was overwhelmed by the people’s reception and fantastic feedback received in the last days, I didn’t have the chance to include everything I wanted in the launch version but in the next weeks there’s going to be new improvements.

This was also a opportunity to unveil Think Orange – my very own startup (weee!) – which will be focusing on creating web products that drive social interaction and make you smile. I’ll be sure to give you more news on this soon. :)

Finally, the project for this year’s Codebits was a web application for portuguese freelancers to calculate and help with taxes (Recibos Verdes), you could log individual receipts, calculate how much you expect to pay by the end of the year and to complement there was also a small statistics area, all in about 14 hours I think. Done with Ruby on Rails and MySQL.

We didn’t win but we expect to launch it “soon” as an online service. (we need suggestions for the name!)

And that was it, a great experience once again. I ended the week feeling very very tired but optimistic for the future.

Once again, amazing illustrations by Bauke Schildt.