Software : QuickBooks joins Tradeshift platform

QuickBooks joins Tradeshift platform
Firefox Ouya browser being tested by Mozilla developer
Companies House threatens to 'strike off' Twitter-owned TweetDeck

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Cloud platform provider Tradeshift has announced a partnership with Intuit under which the latter's QuickBooks software will become available through the channel.

Tradeshift's chief executive officer Christian Lanng said this would immediately open it up for about 5 million users of QuickBooks, and provide a boost for usage of the platform. It currently claims that about 150,000 businesses use the service, of which tens of thousands are in the UK.

"The millions of companies who choose QuickBooks to give them confidence, insight and new opportunities from financial data will now enjoy the same experience around external business interactions using Tradeshift," he said. "They'll be able to get paid faster via Tradeshift Instant Payment and add new business processes using Tradeshift Apps.

"At such a scale (and with our commitment to open standards) Tradeshift becomes an even more appealing environment for developers and partners to create and sell apps. And that opens the door to running any business process on the platform and, in time, feeding more data back into Quickbooks too."

Tradeshift was set up in 2010 as a platform for business interactions built on open standards. A spokesperson for the company told TRBC it has been used by some accounting software and ERP systems providers, and that it is working with a number of developers on specialised business apps.

He said that the partnership with Intuit reflects a trend in which an increasing number of accounting systems are becoming available on the cloud.

Firefox Ouya browser being tested by Mozilla developer

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Firefox, the open source browser, is being tested on Ouya, the open source game console, according to a software developer at Mozilla.

"We're investigating what we need to do to make Firefox usable on Ouya," confirmed Mozilla mobile platform engineer Chris Lord to OuyaForum.com administrator Ed Krassenstein.

"It already works and we have some preliminary patches for gamepad support, but there's still quite a bit of work to be done to make it really usable," said the Firefox developer.

Lord, in finer detail, said that this includes making sure WebGL and Canvas support performs well enough on Ouya, and that relevant APIs like Gamepad API are also supported.

Firefox Ouya or Ouyno?

Don't shout "Ouya!" in thinking that Mozilla is guaranteed to bring the Firefox browser to this US$99 Android-based game console.

A company representative told TechRadar that "Mozilla is an open source organization and all projects and experiments at Mozilla are developed in the open to gather ideas and feedback."

"Firefox was ported to Ouya by one of our developers as an experimental project. We'll keep you posted on any news or developments related to Firefox on OUYA."

Lord, that one exploratory developer, further backed up the experimental status of Firefox on Ouya on Twitter.

"#Firefox on #Ouya - kinda unusable atm," he tweeted along with a photo of the console sitting in front of a screen projecting the Firefox browser.

Ouya tech specs

The Kickstarter-backed Ouya is being toyed with by developers like the ones at Mozilla right now, as the diminitive console prepares to release to general Kickstarter backers in March.

The Ouya release date for retail stores is currently pegged for April, with the official website still accepting Ouya pre-orders.

The latest Ouya tech specs confirm that it will run a custom TV UI version of Android Jelly Bean, come with a much-needed-for-mobile gamepad, and pack a Tegra 3 system-on-a-chip.

With a 1.7 GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of onboard flash memory, Ouya will have enough power to support Android games, all of which are free-to-play in some capacity.

Raising more than USD$8.5 million (around £5.4 million, AUD$8.045) from Kickstarter, the second-highest crowd-funded project on the site, there are a lot of people betting big on this tiny console.

Companies House threatens to 'strike off' Twitter-owned TweetDeck

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British-born social networking client TweetDeck will continue to run, despite a letter from business regulators threatening to dissolve the company.

The free, multi-column app, created by Brit Ian Dodsworth, was purchased by Twitter in May 2011 for an estimated £25m. The new owners continue to develop it for 'power users.'

Since the acquisition, TweetDeck has fallen under the Twitter umbrella and ceased to operate as an independent company. Due to that, TweetDeck has not filed any UK accounts since March 2011.

Now, in a letter acquired by Sky News, Companies House has informed Twitter that TweetDeck Ltd will be "disolved" unless the missing accounts are filed.

Struck off

The brief letter reads: "The Registrar of Companies gives notice that, unless cause is shown to the contrary, at the expiration of 3 months from the above date the name of TweetDeck Ltd will be struck off the register and the company will be dissolved."

Those accounts will likely never be filed, but for all intents and purposes, the impending dissolving will have absolutely no effect on TweetDeck and how it is being run by the social networking big boy.

It will mean that it will cease to exist as an independent company, which effectively is what happened when Twitter forked over the cash in the first place.

It's still a bit of a shame that TweetDeck, one of the most popular and successful UK start-ups in recent years, is disappearing as a company, but unfortunately that ship sailed nearly two years ago.

Yahuui Blog

Wednesday, January 23, 2013