Online identity company miiCard has been handpicked to demonstrate its revolutionary digital passport at FinovateEurope 2011, the high profile banking technology conference, on Tuesday 1 February 2011 in London.

FinovateEurope is designed to showcase the most innovative new financial technology products and ideas from established industry leaders as well as cutting-edge startups like miiCard.

miiCard is a unique digital passport for the consumer that proves “I am who I say I am” in real time, for the first time to Anti-Money Laundering, Know Your Customer Regulations and the Proceeds of Crime Act standards.

Owned and managed by the individual, miiCard allows the consumer to track, monitor and so take control of their online identity for the first time.  miiCard is free to the consumer and charged to the vendor on a transactional basis.

Every day between 70% and 90% of online financial transactions are abandoned when the customer is asked to complete the transaction offline by taking their driving license, passport or utility bill into their local bank branch as James Varga, miiCard’s founder explains:

“The final barrier to selling financial products online is identity – being able to prove ‘I am who I say I am’ in real time online.  Until we crack that nut, the financial services industry will continue to lose out on online business. Our challenge today is to create trust between banks and the consumer without the need for physical offline identity validation.

“I believe miiCard is the answer to the issue of trust, allowing the consumer to buy financial products online for the first time and I am delighted to be bringing that solution to FinovateEurope”.

The selection process to be accepted to FinovateEurope is exceptionally competitive and miiCard will appear alongside some of Europe’s most exciting emerging technologies.   FinovateEurope 2011 provides a powerful platform for financial technology companies to reach new customers and VCs as well as to form strategic partnerships.

miiCard, a patent pending global solution, soft launched to the financial services industry at Sibos in November 2010, and was voted Innotribe’s most promising startup.  miiCard’s aim is to eradicate the final barrier to global trade, the need for offline proof of identity, before a financial product can be purchased.

miiCard meets the challenge created by the concept of online trust for the first time, allowing customers to buy financial products completely online.  This will improve conversion rates, cut operational costs and fight internet fraud.

Eric Mattson, CEO, The Finovate Conference Series comments:  “We are delighted to have miiCard doing a demo at FinovateEurope 2011.  The issue of validating a customer’s identity online is a key challenge for retail banks and miiCard offers an innovation with the potential to solve that huge problem.

For more information contact cat@hottinroof.co.uk

Scottish Government’s commitment to small business and enabling small and medium enterprises (“SMEs”) in Scotland to compete for high value contracts was underlined with CIVIC’s appointment to a three year multi-supplier framework. A move that will allow CIVIC to compete on a level playing field with large multi-national organisations.

CIVIC, a Scottish company headquartered in Edinburgh, has been selected against some fierce competition from major European and International competitors to provide web applications and development for the Scottish Government, Associated Departments and Agencies to the Scottish Government and Non-Departmental Public Bodies (NDPBs) following its appointment to The Scottish Government Multi Supplier Framework for Provision of Applications, Web Development and Associated Services.

This news sees CIVIC taking the initiative and the lead role in bringing together a powerful consortium including leading business and technology service company, Logica, as well as other Scottish businesses User Vision, Rapid Mobile and Company Net. It is this diversity of resource, experience and skills that allows CIVIC to offer value for money and one of the most comprehensive and innovative portfolios of web development services available on the digital landscape today.

Polly Purvis of ScotlandIS, the trade body for software, IT and creative technology businesses in Scotland comments: “We are delighted that a Scottish SME like CIVIC has demonstrated the capability to make it through onto Government frameworks. The SME sector is where real innovation, creativity and ideas lie and it is critical small businesses are given the opportunity to compete for public sector work on the same basis as the industry’s multinationals. This news clearly shows how well respected CIVIC is to have been able to pull together such a powerful consortium and I am really pleased to see this dynamic mix of small businesses working alongside global companies.”

CIVIC is an independent creative digital agency and has been delivering high profile digital and technical projects in the public and private sector since 2001. Few companies in Scotland today have CIVIC’s strength in combining technology and design into a functional solution. This unique ability is also underpinned with the industry standard ISO9001 and ISO27001 accreditations, offering CIVICs’ clients the reassurance they need when delivering complex projects. This unique ability to integrate form and function has helped secure its place on this particular multi supplier framework.

Greig Tosh, CIVIC’s MD explains: “We are a company of creative people; made up of design, usability and technology experts. We understand clearly that websites and web applications not only have to function but have to engage and communicate with an increasingly diverse audience. Our blend of technology and design means we can make great digital ideas work online.”

“To be accepted onto this multi supplier framework alongside much larger companies is an extraordinary achievement and testament to the consistent standard of work the team at CIVIC delivers. I am extremely proud of CIVIC today and excited about what the future holds for us.”

A rigorous process of selection was conducted by the CGCoPE over a number of months to ensure that all the companies appointed to the multi supplier framework have the skills and experience as well as the resources to be able to deliver value for money projects during this time of budgetary constraints in the public sector.

Aiden Honley, Head of Logica’s Scottish Public Sector says: “Scotland has a proud history of innovation and it is widely recognised that the appropriate use of technology is one of the surest ways of increasing productivity, across all sectors of our economy. Much of Scotland’s most innovative thinking about the application of technology takes place within the SME market and we wanted to use our experience to help innovators deliver real benefits to Scotland. Logica is delighted to have been selected by CIVIC to work with them to deliver services to the Scottish Government through this multi supplier framework.”

www.civicuk.com

miiCard, the online identity company, has been invited by SWIFT to speak at Sibos in the Innotribe Challenge, a startup competition on Thursday 28 October in Amsterdam.

miiCard is a unique digital passport for the consumer that proves “I am who I say I am” in real time, for the first time to Anti-Money Laundering, Know Your Customer Regulations and the Proceeds of Crime Act standards.

Owned and managed by the individual, miiCard allows the consumer to track, monitor and so take control of their online identity for the first time. miiCard is free to the consumer and charged to the vendor on a transactional basis.

miiCard, a patent pending global solution, is soft launching to the financial services industry with Sibos its first public outing. miiCard’s aim is to eradicate the final barrier to global trade, the need for offline proof of identity, before a financial product can be purchased.

Every day between 70% and 90% of online financial transactions are abandoned when the customer is asked to complete the transaction offline by taking their driving license, passport or utility bill into their local bank branch.

James Varga, miiCard’s Founder explains: “The internet world facilitates anonymity not trust. Our challenge today when conducting business, fighting fraud and protecting the customer is to create trust between business and consumer without resorting to physical offline identity validation”.

miiCard introduces the concept of online trust for the first time, allowing customers to buy financial products completely online. This will improve conversion rates, cut operational costs and fight internet fraud.

SWIFT is looking for start-ups with a compelling and radically innovative B2B offering and miiCard will have the opportunity to pitch their solution to the SWIFT incubation team. The best start-ups and ideas are brought together in this “dragon’s den” to share and discover the ideas and dynamics at the cutting edge of financial services today. Sibos is an annual member event for over 8,000 financial services senior professionals and the trade media.

miiCard will deliver demonstrate its product between 10.00 and 10.30, on Tuesday 26 in the Innotribe theatre on the SWIFT stand.

www.miicard.com

FreeAgent Central, has scooped first place in the SME Accounting and Finance category of the Sift Media Software Satisfaction Awards for the second year running.

This year’s SME Accounting Category was billed by Accounting Web as a fight between the ‘leading lights of the accounting software as a service industry’ with FreeAgent being a key player in the small business and freelance market.

Ed Molyneux, FreeAgent Central CEO comments: “This is an amazing result for us and we are delighted to be recognised by our customers and SIFT for a second year. Our aim is to democratise accounting, and this just shows that our customers and our peers in the industry are behind us all the way!”

The Software Satisfaction Awards shortlist was drawn up by customers voting for their favourite company. Voters were asked to consider ease of use; functionality; reliability; and value for money when rating the business software.

An influential panel of judges drawn from the accounting industry then assessed the shortlist, scoring entrants on levels of customer service and satisfaction, both over the past 12 months and the future.

This year’s winners were decided by a combination of user voted (50%) and judged (50%) elements.

FreeAgent online software is easy to use and gives a clear picture of profit and loss, making running a business easier and putting the small business owner in control of their finances. Hosted on the cloud, FreeAgent is accessible around the clock, from any computer, which is ideal for the way many small business owners and freelancers work.

As freelancers themselves, the three founders of FreeAgent Central needed a finance tool that would give them a clear picture of their business accounts. That product did not exist and so FreeAgent was born.

The software has a clean and simple design, highly intuitive and usable. It prepares VAT returns, calculates self assessed income tax and corporation tax and manages PAYE and NI. Users can monitor profit and loss, send and track invoices, track time and expenses, manage projects and payments.

The software was recently updated to allow customers to file their VAT returns electronically within the system directly to HMRC, saving many hours of paperwork.

FreeAgent also encourages collaboration between accountant and client by allowing accountants to login to the system, so they can offer the most up-to-date advice. Accountants can easily export trial balance data to generate end-of-year accounts.

An active online community of FreeAgent customers has grown up where users openly discuss ideas, questions and problems about accounts. Additionally there is a live advice helpline where users can ‘Ask an Expert’ about financial issues they may be having.

FreeAgent is subscription based with costs starting at £15 per month for a sole trader, £20 for a partnership and £25 for a limited company.

www.freeagentcentral.com

User Vision, one of Europe’s leading independent user experience consultancies, is one of only five events world-wide to be appointed to World Usability Day’s inaugural Partner Programme.

The aim of World Usability Day (WUD) is to increase the public’s awareness of the need to design services and products for human life that are simple and accessible. More than 150 events across 43 countries took part in last year’s World Usability Day.

User Vision was there for the very first WUD in 2005 and has welcomed over 500 visitors from a range of public and private sector organisations through its doors every year since then.

This year’s theme is communication and on 11 November, in User Vision’s Edinburgh Head Office, companies from all over the UK will take part in a series of interactive demonstrations, live usability and accessibility tests and workshops, highlighting key user experience issues many of us face daily.

New technology has fuelled great advances in the field of communication over the past few years and User Vision will help visitors explore the usability issues associated with social networking sites, collaboration tools and modern communication devices.

The latest technologies will be available to try out with a rare chance to test one of the first smart tables to arrive in Scotland.  User Vision will also be will road testing the latest eye tracking glasses from Tobii, taking them out on the street to understand how department stores and advertisers influence our buying decisions.

Chris Rourke, User Vision’s MD explains:  “To be chosen as one of only five usability events worldwide is a great accolade and recognition of the popularity and success of the World Usability Day events we have run for the last six years.  Once again this is our chance to really shine a spotlight on usability and accessibility and to make everyone aware of its importance to every day life.”

www.uservision.co.uk

The last couple of months have been great for Hot Tin Roof so we’ve decided to pay our good fortune forward. We can now proudly announce that we’ll be donating our PR services to Wish For Rwanda, a new charity set up by Edinburgh’s very own Jackie Calder.

Jackie visited Rwanda in March on a study tour and she was struck by the hope and potential of a country in recovery. On her return to Scotland, Jackie founded Wish For Rwanda with the aim of raising £1million to deliver projects that will bring comfort and aid to the widows, widowers and orphans of the genocide.

The first project will raise money to build a Health Centre in the district of Gasabo, near the capital city of Kigali. Sessions will also be introduced to educate the community about hygiene, child welfare, nutrition, and family-planning. Hopefully, this will be the first of many such projects over the coming years.

Jackie is an events organiser by trade so she’ll be putting her skills to good use at Wish for Rwanda’s first fundraiser in November. Watch this space for more details or visit www.wishforrwanda.co.uk.

Despite rumours of non-stop parties, running with the press pack and having a phone glued permanently to your ear, PR can be quite lonely.  You’re constantly selling yourself, your clients, your story and your contacts.  You put yourself on the line all the time.  You’ve got to stay positive and keep bouncing back.  And skin like the hide of a rhino is a must.

So we thought ‘sod it’: let’s get together for a ‘social’.   The Social is for people working in PR who like a drink, like a blether and want to find out more about what is happening in PR today.

Working with the media has always been adrenalin charged but this is a massively exciting time to be working in PR.  There’s loads of new stuff happening every day as the world changes faster than you can ‘tweet’.

The Social will also be a place to share PR horror stories when your story gets bumped or your client decides to insult the editor.  That long walk home from the newspaper shop scanning every column inch, surely the story is in, surely…

You have to have a huge sense of humour to work in this industry for any length of time.  The social will be a chance to meet like-minded people, have a laugh, unwind and maybe even learn something new.

The first meeting of The Social will be at The Dogs on Hanover Street from 6pm on Thursday 19 February.  Hope to see you there!

We’ve created a Facebook group to keep you all up to date with The Social. Log on and see it here: www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=50783708229

Also made a Twitter group using the hashtag, #thesocial.

Weary eyes this morning at Hot Tin Roof after an epic night at the Edinburgh Twestival.

We were delighted to be involved in such an exciting and worthy concept and are happy to report the evening was a great success.

In the end our wee event attracted around 250 of the McTwitterati and a brilliant £3,500 was raised for charity: water, with more to come for extra auctions due in the coming days.

The press were out in force with cameras, microphones and pads at every turn and we’re looking forward to seeing all the great coverage the event is sure to get.

Congratulations to our wonderful organisers @tanepiper – @andrewburnett – @bureauista – @davelaw00 – @jimwolffman and a hearty applause for Peter Gregson for a tremendous performance.

What the Scottish twitter community showed last night is while we embrace more technical communication, we are a very social bunch. Rather than loads of bowed heads cooing over iPhones there was great banter and plenty of mingling.

A fond hello to all the new folk we were lucky enough to meet and a hopeful ‘meet you soon’ to those we avidly follow and still have not spoken to in the flesh.

Twitter has shown its awesome power over the last few weeks and last night was a fitting culmination. Proving its worth as communities demonstrated they are ready and willing at short notice to come together and raise money for worthy charities.

If you want to relive all the connections made last night, check out the amazing graphical display at the Twestival by Blonde. http://edtwestival.blonde.net/replay/

You can still donate in many capacities at the Edinburgh Twestival website: http://edinburgh.twestival.com

Digital marketing agency Ambergreen is conducting a social media experiment with Scottish Twitter followers at the inaugural Edinburgh Twestival.

Embraced not only by entrepreneurs and workers, Twitter is becoming increasingly important for big brands, such as with Dell, who recently announced they have generated over $1m in sales through the service.

On 12 February 2009 hundreds of cities around the world will be hosting Twestivals, bringing together Twitter communities for an evening of fun, all to raise money and awareness for Charity: Water.
Ambergreen will be on hand to interview participants as they enter the Twestival for a special video that will be produced for distribution after the event.

By engaging with the very people who have embraced this rapidly growing micro-blogging service, Ambergreen aims to capture authentic insights into Twitter as well as producing facts and figures about the event.

Arranged in a matter of weeks by supporters of Twitter, the event is the first major offline gathering of the Scottish faithful, many of who have already engaged with each other on the social networking tool, but have never met in person.

Eliza Dashwood, Director of Sales and Marketing at Ambergreen said: “We are delighted to be sponsoring our local Twestival and know with the McTwitterati being so active it is sure to be a very special event.”

“All of us are great fans of Twitter, and we know how important it is for engaging with your peers and spreading information.”

Ambergreen has pioneered the use of social media by business and recognises how important Twitter is for any brand wanting to succeed online.

“From a marketing perspective Twitter is a fantastic way to engage directly with your customers with a transparency you just don’t get from other social media. You can choose who you want to follow and who is allowed to follow you, allowing for a very personal experience.”

“Big brands need to use Twitter and use it properly. If they just create a profile publishing links to new press releases the likelihood is people are going to switch off from it.

“But Twitter does have so much to offer and we believe there are five factors associated with social media like Twitter that will determine who will win in the digital landscape. Community, trust, permission, transparency and value.”

The Edinburgh Twestival takes place on February 12 from 7pm at the Hawke and Hunter. Go to http://www.amiando.com/twestivaledinburgh.html for tickets and follow @EdTwestival for updates.

Follow Ambergreen on Twitter: @ambergreenim

Everybody is talking about it. It’s the ‘in’ social media tool…it’s Twitter.

Early adopters were counting down to the return of Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, but for very different reasons. Will Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross talk about twitter? And, much like the countdown to the millennium (albeit with very little hint of panic)…what’s going to happen once Twitter enters the mainstream?

Well celebrity endorsement may have contributed to the surge in UK Twitter popularity but to be honest it couldn’t come at a better time.

This February 12 sees the inaugural Twestival with events across the globe bringing together Twitter communities for fun filled occasions, all in the aid of Charity : Water.

The Edinburgh Twestival, to be held at the newly refurbished Hawke and Hunter, sold out like hot cakes. Tickets flew off the e-shelf as the Scottish twitter community swooped to ensure their part in such an exciting event.

We here at Hot Tin Roof are happy to be attending and are keen to spread the good word.

If you were also lucky enough to get tickets we look forward to a night of live music, auctions and prizes…oh and twitter.

Our Chris Welton can be found on twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/cwelton