mrc's Cup of Joe Blog

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Web Development

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.

Weekly recap: 9 app dev projects you should cancel in 2013, CSS3 pseudo-classes, 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 app dev projects to cancel, consumerization of IT, and more. I hope you find them useful:

Getting to know CSS3: Structural Pseudo Classes
CSS3 introduces a number of new pseudo-classes, including structural pseudo-classes that target elements based on position or based on relation to other elements. This article gives a great introduction to these pseudo-classes, and is a must-read for any web developer. …

Weekly recap: 9 app dev projects you should cancel in 2013, CSS3 pseudo-classes, and more…Read More »

Weekly recap: 5 ways to prepare IT to drive productivity, BYOD risks, 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 productivity, things you need to know about javascript, and more. I hope you find them useful:

10 things you need to know about Javascript
If you do any type of web development, you’ll likely need to understand Javascript. This article lists some of the most important aspects of Javascript that any developer must understand. …

Weekly recap: 5 ways to prepare IT to drive productivity, BYOD risks, and more…Read More »

5 most common IT money-wasters

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Save MoneyTell me, is your IT department wasting your company’s money? That’s a tricky question to answer. Nobody wants to waste money, yet despite best efforts to the contrary, many IT departments unwittingly waste money every day.

How so? While I couldn’t possibly cover every way in one blog post, I’ve put together a list of some of the most common ways that IT departments waste money. If you’re looking for ways your company can save money, start by investigating these 5 areas: …

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5 new skills necessary for modern development

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EducationThe rapid rate at which technology evolves is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, new tech trends give companies new opportunities to improve their business. For instance, the rise of mobile apps is already helping all types of companies in many different ways.

On the other hand, keeping up with new tech trends is no easy task, as new tech trends require a new set of skills. For example, take a look at the ever-changing world of application development. Business application development is becoming more complex, driven in part by recent trends like the web, mobile, and the cloud. While these new trends expand business opportunities, they also require an ever-expanding skill-set.

How exactly have these new tech trends changed application development? What new skills are required for modern application development? To help you understand how development has evolved, I’ve created a list of 5 new skills that are essential for modern application development. …

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How to add a Twitter feed to your web applications

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EducationI know what many of you are thinking: “Why would I want to add a Twitter feed to our web applications? How can it help our business?” Those are very valid questions.

The answer: When used correctly, Twitter can actually provide real business value. How so? Here are just a couple of ways that Twitter could improve your web applications:

1. Let you know what others are saying about your brand: Placing a Twitter feed on an executive dashboard can provide valuable information about what customers and prospects think of your products or services.

2. Improve customer service: Taking the first point a step further, you could place a feed on your customer care applications and let your employees monitor customer complaints. Your customer service team could even reach out to disgruntled customers on Twitter and try to resolve their problems.

While there are many different ways to use Twitter for business, the ideas listed above are just couple of common ways Twitter is used to help business. If you would like to add a Twitter feed to your web applications, it’s really simple. We’ve written up a short tutorial, which you can find right here. …

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Here’s a new way to save time on development (and more)

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Save TimeWhat if you could save time on development, gain more control over your applications, and make your users happier…all at the same time? Sound interesting? Let’s learn how you can make this happen.

I’m going to tell you about a relatively new feature called “user rights and privileges”. It might sound technical (and a little boring), but it’s insanely useful. What is it? Here’s a basic definition: It lets you assign custom variables to any user, and then use those variables in any application.

Does that sound too technical? Here’s another way to look at it: Think of it like a data table or a spreadsheet that contains a list of user names. You can create and assign any variable to any user, and then access those variables anywhere. For example, take a look at the image below: …

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How one IT department completed a 1,000-hour project in 300 hours

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Save TimeHere’s an inspirational story for any IT department facing impossible project deadlines. It’s about an IT department that had a huge web development project with an immovable deadline…but faced one big problem.

They weren’t sure how they were going to do it.

They estimated that it would take 1,000 hours, but with only one web developer on staff, completing the project on time seemed impossible.

What did they do? They found a way to let the rest of their staff develop web applications, and managed to complete the project in just 300 hours. To learn how, you can read the whole story right here.