UK's Biggest Customer-Facing Implementation of Node.js
The Times and the Sunday Times will be launching an exclusive new dining experience, "Eat Out‟ which will provide hundreds of pounds of savings at a huge range of restaurants across the UK.

The innovative new strategy is coupled with bleeding-edge technology to deliver fantastic offers of great value to the brands' loyal customers. The "Eat Out‟ site was designed and built by award-winning digital agency Clock Limited. Following on from the delivery of SunPerks.co.uk, Clock developed the entire site using new technology, Node.js.

Much like LinkedIn's app overhaul, what's on the surface may not be that spectacular to most but what's fuelling the engine underneath is extremely exciting for techies. The site has been built with extremely young technology, barely a year old, and enables far more utilisation of servers and hardware than ever before; cutting server down-time and boosting response rates. This is down to the much fabled Node.js; a Joyent-sponsored, server-side technology which is rapidly accruing attention in the web-development world.

For News International, Clock Limited also built the parent loyalty website mytimesplus.co.uk , which has been received extremely well by its new and existing members. The 'Eat Out' card will be available initially as an exclusive benefit for Times and Sunday Times subscribers and will then be rolled out as a standalone product similar to Taste and Gourmet Society in early 2012. The card will be sold for approximately £50 but remains as a complimentary benefit to Times+ members (subscribers of the two newspapers). And by joining Eat Out, members will be able to take advantage of a range of great dining offers throughout the year at more than 700 top restaurants across the UK.

Andrew Sharland, Clock Limited‟s Business Director, said: “The industry is rapidly evolving and News International are clear market leaders in the monetisation and access of their content. Matching this, we‟ve used cutting-edge technology for the new service so it‟s great to be on-board with such a courageous and innovative approach.”

Jo Coughlin, Head of Partnerships, The Times and Sunday Times, said: “The Eat Out Card is a new and innovative value offering from The Times and The Sunday Times. This is our biggest and best dining offer yet which will see members making huge savings eating out at their favourite restaurants all year round.
“As we value our loyal customers the most, we are offering this exciting new benefit as an ongoing addition to the subscription pack via Times+.”

Paul Serby, CTO of Clock Limited discusses the decision to use Node.js and the team's transition from PHP. “The decision to migrate, particularly on such a big project, was because of previous difficulties with PHP memory allocation, where our developers often found scaling hard as memory is quickly exasperated.”

The critical element about node, which is too often glazed over, is that it harmonises three platforms, allowing one language for browsers, apps and databases all written in JavaScript. So it's no longer a case of PHP for web, JavaScript for apps and SQL for databases. “It's one set of tools, one development process and crucially, one skill for people to learn.” This implementation for Eat Out is one of the most important to date as the developers are monitoring how well Node performs not just on a virtual server but actually out there "in the wild‟. The site's results will be strong indicators of the shape node will begin to take in a commercial industry and how it can be adopted.

Times and Sunday Times subscribers can make the most of this new benefit by going to mytimesplus.co.uk
Restaurants can join the scheme by contacting Iain on eatoutcard@newsint.co.uk

www.clock.co.uk
For Info: sam.fresco@clock.co.uk