The Fubra Blog
Travel Money – Best methods for spending abroad
Foreign exchange can be a very complicated world to understand and one which most people don’t want to spend too much time looking into, but still want to get the best deal on their travel money. There are a lot of hidden charges involved and often foreign currency providers will use marketing techniques to make you think you are getting a great deal, when in truth you could do much better!
We have a number of Airport Guides and as foreign exchange is so closely associated with holidays and airports we decided to look really closely into the currency market and unravel the secrets of getting the best deal on FX. We have now started to publish our results with a whole set of pages on each Airport Guide to help you when purchasing your holiday cash.
There are now many different methods of spending abroad, and long gone are the times that you could just use foreign currency and travellers cheques. One of the big changes has been that currency providers are now offering pre-paid currency cards, which work in a similar way to a debit card, you pre load them with currency and spend or withdraw cash using them abroad. We have researched the best of the best currency cards and compared them to save you time and money.
Compare the best pre-paid currency cards.
Most people also still want to have cash on them which can be used for smaller purchases, or in places which don’t take cards, so we have covered the bureau de change available at the airports and the FX branches on the high street too!
One other method of spending abroad is to use a credit or debit card. There are as many charges and fees associated with these methods as any, but it could actually work out to be one of the cheapest or most expensive ways of getting your holiday money, depending on the card you have, so we have provided information to help you make the decision to spend, or not to spend!
Another thing we have done is to strip back the jargon used by the foreign currency exchange providers to it’s most basic form and explain what each charge, fee and added extra means, helping you understand the way to get the most from your money without being baffled by the language used by the travel industry. This page also contains our Top Ten Travel Money Tips
VAT recognition
We are pleased to be able to announce that the first commercial product using php-govtalk with the HMRC VAT extension has achieved recognition from HMRC. This is a major step in development of php-govtalk: it means that the UK Government have recognised php-govtalk as able to produce the fully valid XML that is required to interface with their electronic VAT returns system.
While this recognition is for the Clear Books product as a whole and not the php-govtalk library, Clear Books itself uses only the php-govtalk libraries to manage the interface between its own internal database and HMRC’s systems and gives a good indication that other products choosing to use the library would also easily achieve recognised status.
For more information on how to use the library to achieve recognition please get in touch with any member of the php-govtalk team.
NHS Patient Survey Service – PatientPulse
A new patient satisfaction survey system from Niggle Limited
Niggle is a business focused on feedback. Back at the beginning of 2009, when Fubra took an early stage investment in Niggle, we were working exclusively with independent restaurants. Through a process of product evolution, this week sees the launch of PatientPulse, a complete feedback system designed to continuously monitor patient satisfaction in GP surgeries, clinics, health centres and hospital departments.
The NHS has put patient satisfaction centre stage in recent years. In May 2009 the Department of Heath issued guidelines encouraging GP practices and Primary Care Trusts to use their own methods to measure patient satisfaction and capture real time feedback. More recently, the government has signaled that patient satisfaction will become a key metric in determining funding across the NHS.
PatientPulse uses web and mobile technology to track patient opinions across key areas of heath care provision. Using our trademark MicroSurvey format – which breaks traditional surveys down into bite sized chunks – we can increase both the number and the demographic of patients participating. And unlike traditional surveys, results are analysed and available immediately – ready for action to be taken without unnecessary delays.
The system is currently operating in 8 NHS heath centres across the UK , with more to follow in the next few weeks. To read more about our new service, and patient satisfaction in the heath care sector, visit our website at PatientPulse.co.uk
Fubra announces SixCrayons
Over the last few weeks I have been working on a new front end web design site called SixCrayons. SixCrayons consists of six individual blogs bringing together Design, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, Illustration, and Apps/Widgets.
I wanted to create a site that designers around the world would find interesting and want to contribute to. So far we have had about six guest articles on the site, with many more currently in progress.
The design was inspired from the idea that all designers start out as children using crayons for their first illustrations and progress from there. I wanted the website to appear fun and recognisable, so with each crayon or category I chose to use a separate colour to differentiate every one.
I arranged an interview with one of Australia’s top Illustrators Patrick Brown which went really well, check it out to see some some of his work. Guest Blogger Paul Seys interviewed Rob Farrow from chi.mp. While web developer Steve Whiteley wrote a great JavaScript article. If you are a web designer/developer and would like to write for SixCrayons please submit your details and we will contact you straight back.
I hope you enjoy the site and if you know any web designers or developers please get them to contact us at SixCrayons to get them involved.
php-govtalk in the wild
The first live implementation of the php-govtalk library was made public last week.
Clear Books is a feature-rich online account package. Its creators were looking for a way of adding electronic VAT returns to the system to allow its clients to file their VAT 100 declarations without having to use HMRC’s paper forms. php-govtalk’s HMRC extensions were perfect for the task. Their implementation currently uses the VAT1 extension but is designed to be easily upgradeable to the VAT extension when HMRC roll out the next generation of their API.
Clear Books is currently going through HMRC’s recognition process for its VAT100 online submission product. As the XML used by the Clear Books is generated purly by the php-govtalk library and VAT extension this will be a significant milestone in the project’s development.
Once recognition is granted we plan to release a set of sample scripts which can be used to generate the XML logs required by HMRC as part of their recognition process.