Finovate, a fast-paced annual showcase of new financial startups, is happening all day today. Although I can’t be there, and wish I could, I’ll be keeping up with attendee (and presenter) coverage and commentary over Twitter using Summize’s #finovate08 stream.

Update (11:30am): Thanks to Caitlin Rosberg’s suggestion, click here for a broader Summize feed, including a search for #finovate08, #finovate, or finovate.

Also, click here to follow the Banktastics’ videos and presenter reviews.

Photo from teehanlax.com

As some of you jump into the minimally-charted waters of iPhone-app design for your credit union, I hope these stencils and user-interface elements come in handy for mocking up and prototyping designs:

• Layered PSD
• Omnigraffle wireframe stencils

On a related note – which credit unions are doing something cool with the iPhone or iTouch? If something’s impressed you, drop a line in the comments. The best find (this is a very subjective contest) gets a $5 Starbucks card and this brilliant pair of sunglasses.

(links via Ilya Vedrashko’s Ad Lab)

Over an IM chat earlier today, Trey Reeme explained to me how he used nearly-free tools to set up a mobile site for his credit union in no time (formatting and links added):

It was cake so far – no mobile banking yet, but that’s on our vendor’s end.

I just:

1. Grabbed a wordpress blog
2. Put a couple pages up of plain html
3. Grabbed the rss feed
4. Plugged into a mofuse site
5. It created an iPhone-optimized .mobi site

Here it is: http://tdecurates.mofuse.mobi

It’s just a test site for now – a proof of concept – but it shows that I can build a separate iPhone site in an hour.

There are limitations – advertising plagues the free version. But for $3 a month, the paid version is not bad.

Awesome tip, Mr. Reeme.

Today Trey posted this message to Twitter (links added):

“Credit Karma friggin rocks. Go to netbanker, grab the code and get your account.”

He’s right, it rocks. Here’s how CK’s free credit score service works (from creditkarma.com):

Credit Karma™ shows personalized offers based on your credit profile. These offers are from partners who share our vision of consumer empowerment. Rest assured, Credit Karma™ will never share your personal information.

The “offers” interface is relevant, clean, and unimposing. Users can comment on an offer, vote it thumbs up/thumbs down, or pass it along to a friend.

Check it out. What do you think?

FinovateStartup is right around the corner, and if it’s anything like last October’s conference tickets will be sold out soon. Finovate and FinovateStartup are financial innovation and technology conferences put on by tech+finance guru Jim Bruene of Netbanker.

Startup companies demoing their products (Jim’s blog says “No PowerPoint slides allowed!”) include: Andera, Boulevard R., Buxfer, Motley Fool CAPS, ClairMail, Credit Karma, First ROI, Jwaala, Lending Club, Mint, Prosper, SmartHippo, Unified Money, and the rockstars from Wesabe (see how big a fan I am of Wesabe here).

It’s a stockpile of some of the coolest things to happen to money since they invented “buying stuff.”

Watch videos from last year’s Finovate here, and sign up to attend here.

Christopher Morris has set up YES Summit social network at yescucommunity.com. He used Ning, a free (for a basic account) tool for building custom social networks, to create it. The YES CU Community allows users to engage in conversation forums, post blogs, join and create groups, “friend” each other, and share photo and video content (Ning automatically converts video files to a flash player…awesome).

In Christopher’s session explaining the network, he said they built it to 1) Facilitate and perpetuate discussion on reacing the 18 – 30 demographic and 2) Provide hands-on education to allow users to play in a social networking space and see how it works.

I like that CUNA is experimenting with this. A conference-specific social network has the potential to add a lot more depth and follow-up opportunity to the experience. Facebook and LinkedIn are both much better ways for me to keep up with new credit union friends than the lunchbox I keep my business cards in. Admittedly, half of this is because I always forget to bring my business cards to conferences.

Ning’s functionality and back-end interface are really impressive. To add features to your network, you simply drag and drop:

Definitely worth checking out if you’re looking for a way to kick off an online community.