mrc's Cup of Joe Blog

Join us in exploring the world of modern development, evolving technologies, and the art of future-proof software

Weekly recap: How IT can keep its strategic role in 2013, Ubuntu on smartphones, and more…

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EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on how IT can keep its strategic role in 2013, linux on smartphones, and more. I hope you find them useful:

Ubuntu on smartphones: What you need to know
The popular Linux distribution, Ubuntu, recently announced that they’re creating a smartphone OS, which should be released this year. Mozilla also recently made news with the announcement that they are also working on a smartphone OS. What does this mean for business? If your company has built mobile web apps, you’re in the clear. Mobile web apps work across all operating systems, both now and in the future. …

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4 simple ways to improve developer productivity

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ProductivityLet me tell you a quick story about two similar development projects at two very different companies. Both companies were building extranets/portals–applications that let their customers log in, view their data, and place orders online.

Both had similar requirements. Both were nearly equally complex. The big differences between the two projects: One required 3 years, while the other required 3 months.

What caused this huge disparity?

As it turns out, the first company made a number of mistakes that killed their developer’s productivity. What were they? I’ve pulled out the most important lessons to learn from this story, and listed them below. With that in mind, if you want to maximize your developer’s productivity… …

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Weekly recap: Best IT resolutions for 2013, design tips for developers, and more…

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EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on IT resolutions for 2013, design tips for developers, and more. I hope you find them useful:

2012: The year in application development
In 2012, application development experienced some notable shifts. HTML5 became even more popular, mobile app development finally went mainstream in the business world, and much more. …

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Top 8 tech stories of 2012 for IT pros and developers

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EducationWhen you look back at 2012, what stands out in your mind? As an IT professional, what are you going to remember the most about the past year? As I think back on 2012, several stories and events really stand out as shaping the year (and possibly beyond) from a business technology perspective.

While there are too many stories to list, I looked back over the past year and pulled out the news, stories, and events that were of significant importance to IT pros and developers in 2012. Feel free to add anything I missed in the comments, but here’s my list of the top IT stories of 2012: …

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Want to cut your development time in half?

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ProductivityHere are a few questions for you as we head into 2013: Do you want to cut your development time in half? Do you want to automate mobile development? Do you want a way to quickly build new features into your current software?

If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, here’s a video you’ll want to watch. This short, 2-minute video explains how m-Power answers each one of the questions above, and even walks you through a sample build process. I hope you enjoy it.

HTML5 is finished: What would you like to see?

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EducationBig news this week: The Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) announced that the specifications for HTML5 are finally complete! While it doesn’t technically become the standard until 2014, all of the HTML5 features are finalized.

Wait…what is HTML5?

Let me quickly explain HTML5 for those unclear on the topic. HTML5 is the next iteration of HTML, the markup language used for structuring web pages. While it does bring some new features, HTML5 is simply an improved version of the HTML standard that we already know and love.

What do we need to know about HTML5?

HTML5 brings a bunch of new features, like offline storage, native audio and video, improved semantic markup, and more. If you’d like to learn more about HTML5, here’s a great resource for you. We’ve also written up some tutorials over on the techblog.

Your turn: What would you like to see in m-Power?

While we’ve already added some HTML5 features into m-Power (and plan on adding more), I’d like to get your thoughts. What HTML5 features and capabilities would you like to see added to m-Power in the next year? Which new features would most improve your web (or mobile web) applications?

I’d really love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to add your suggestions in the comments section on this post.

Weekly recap: 6 ways IT still fails the business, HTML5, and more…

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EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on HTML5, monetizing data, and more. I hope you find them useful:

Monetizing data to drive a competitive advantage
As companies gather more and more data, they must answer one big question: What are we doing with this data? If your company isn’t using your customer data as a competitive advantage, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity. …

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3 new realities IT must learn to accept

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EducationHow would you describe your IT department? Are they innovators, laggards, or somewhere in between? In case you’re unfamiliar with those terms, they come from the technology adoption lifecycle concept–a sociological model developed in the 50’s that describes the adoption or acceptance to new products or innovations.

While that concept is generally applied to consumers, I believe it just as easily applies to IT departments.

Every major technological shift comes with varying levels of acceptance among IT departments. Some drive new trends (innovators). Some welcome new trends with open arms (early adopters). Others sit back and wait to see what everyone else is going to do (majority). Still others are reluctant to change, with some even actively fighting it (laggards).

That being said, some trends are out of your control. These trends are driven by consumers. It doesn’t matter which category your IT department falls under–you must adapt. In fact, you could refer to these as more than just trends. They’re realities. In other words, they’re not up for debate. You can’t sit back and wait to see what others will do. You can’t refuse to change.

What are these realities? While I’m sure there are more, I’ve put together a short list of 3 realities that your IT department must learn to accept: …

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Weekly recap: 9 ways to improve user experience in mobile design, mobile BI, and more…

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EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on mobile app user experience, CSS3 transitions, and more. I hope you find them useful:

9 ways to improve user experience in mobile design
Developing applications for use on mobile devices is a whole new world for traditional web developers. You must build applications for a touch-based interface on a small screen, and that isn’t easy. This article gives some great tips for developers who want to create better mobile interfaces.
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5 ways BI will change in the next 5 years

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EducationThe world of Business Intelligence (BI) is undergoing some pretty fascinating changes. Whether or not you buy into the “Big Data” hype, you can’t deny the fact that we’re generating crazy amounts of data–more so than ever before.

What are we doing with all of this data? Or, more specifically, do we fully understand the potential? I’m not so sure that many companies know the answer to those questions.

While these changes create many questions, here’s one thing you can count on: Data analytics is changing, and will play an increasingly important role in the business world. When you combine this deluge of data with recent tech trends, we get a few very important changes to the world of Business Intelligence. What are they? Here are 5 key ways that BI will change in the near future: …

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