Digital Technology

It’s easy to forget that the span of time that development of applications exclusively for mobile devices is just over ten years. Throughout this time we’ve witnessed the growth of the mobile app space and the considerable power that is brought to bear in our lives by this new and developing industry. Something that is not often well understood by the app consuming public is how much of a moving target the mobile app development space has been. When the iOS and Android stores opened back in 2008 there were disconnects between them wide enough to spawn entire competing industries. Those industries thrived due to the complexity of taking an app idea from concept to distribution was at least doubled due to the nature of the platforms and marketplaces being fundamentally opposed to homogenization.

When looking to build a new mobile application, there are several important factors to consider which can inform the technologies that will contribute to the way your mobile app will work. Here are seven things to consider while weighing the pros and cons of the technologies that will be leveraged in your new mobile application…

If you’re part of the software development world, you’ve probably heard numerous tips on how to make your development process more efficient. Phrases like “identify project milestones” and “manage project risks” are commonplace in the articles you’ve read on the topic. However, not many pinpoint a specific tool in accomplishing it. So here I’d like to offer the solution that my UX design and development team, Singlemind, uses to create efficiency and transparent communication between our team and clients.

As a professional services company that deals with dozens of clients on a regular basis, we’re no strangers to the pitfalls that can sideline a project. Over the 12+ years we’ve been in business, we’ve worked to develop processes, best practices, and other habits to prevent as many of these issues from ever coming up. We wanted to share some of the bigger risks to customers who are scoping out the landscape when looking for a creative or development firm to work with. We’ve identified what we feel are 5 of the biggest red flags when looking to hire a company to engage with. We hope it helps you find the right partner!

Writing and debugging software can, at times, feel like walking a high-wire while reciting Shakespeare. There are so many moving parts and so much you have to maintain focus on at any given moment. This is where the analytical mind of a software engineer lives and thrives. We have to take measured, sure steps forward, ever mindful of the fall, while keeping our eyes on the destination, and reciting from memory the story we’re telling with code.

As software developers we like to think that we have a strong grasp on language as well as logic. The confidence to believe we understand can just as easily be the hubris which makes us blind. People in general are ingenious pattern recognition engines. We connect dots, see connections, and see the whole of something even when parts are missing. Where this leads us astray is when we try to apply order to randomness instead of simply seeing what’s there in front of us.

In my last article, we looked from a high level at what it takes to build a scalable cloud-based app powered by Microsoft Azure. I talked about three major options for web apps: Azure Web Apps (also known as Azure websites), Azure Cloud Services, and Azure VMs. Today, we’ll dive in and create a simple app to see what’s involved in putting together and deploying an Azure Cloud Service. Though Microsoft has written a helpful article for doing this, some critical details were left out. This guide is similar, but with extra instructions that hopefully will provide that “plug-and-play” experience you’re looking for, especially if you’re building a multi-role Cloud Service and bringing your own code. We’ll also look briefly at how you can run third party executables on your Cloud Service, which is the main reason for choosing a Cloud Service over a Web App. For additional information on managing and configuring cloud services, I recommend looking at Microsoft’s documentation (see sources at end).

We’ve all heard the phrase “highly-scalable” when it comes to web apps. More and more apps are running in the cloud, and as a result scalability is becoming a crucial part of delivering a great experience to your customers, no matter how many there are.

Twitter has become a major traffic circle on the social media thoroughfare. As any organization or social media savvy individual will tell you, if you want to be known and get heard, you should be on Twitter. That level of visibility means that when anything changes, even if it’s small, people will be sure to notice. So, when Twitter decided to release an update to the style of the ubiquitous Twitter timeline widget, a lot of people took notice, and not all in a positive way.

Defensive development is both a philosophy and a collection of techniques that can be used to allow a project to reach the finish line, even if you encounter a few unexpected turns in the road. Defensive development is about checking assumptions and knowing that the only constant is change. It’s about making sure the code written today earns us points on the scoreboard even when the goalposts move.