Every 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 common mistakes developers make, mobile predictions for 2014, and more. I hope you find them useful:

Why native apps no longer add up
When native mobile apps first broke onto the scene, competition was sparse. Simply placing an app in the app store gave you a good chance of success. Today, that’s no longer the case. The app store now contains over a million apps. Producing an app that even gets noticed is a longshot. Combined with the fact that native apps are more costly and time consuming to create, this further reduces the practical value of the native approach.

9 common mistakes developers make
What’s a web application developer’s worst nightmare? Building a web app that users either don’t need or don’t like. You’ve just spent weeks planning, building, and testing an application…and nobody uses it. How can you avoid this problem? Avoid the common mistakes found in the article above, or the deadly sins of web app development that are outlined here.

How business users compete with IT teams (and how IT can win)
In the past, IT held a seemingly mystic knowledge that kept non-technical people within the company at bay. Ordinary workers had limited awareness of technology and were at the mercy of IT. Now, that’s changing. As end users have access to the same (if not better) technology as the IT department, IT must evolve. As explained in this article, IT must shift from “gatekeeper” to “enabler.” Since they no longer control it, they must shift their focus to helping the business get the most out of technology.

In 2014, the mobile web will die–and other mobile predictions
In the past, businesses created mobile-specific websites, for use with the limited browsers found on mobile devices. They were stripped down, and offered limited capabilities. These days, mobile devices offer the same capabilities found on PCs. The concept of creating a stripped down version of your web site or web app is dying. Instead, you must now create a single app that automatically adapts to varying screen sizes.