mrc's Cup of Joe Blog

4 essential questions to ask before building a mobile business app (Part 1)

In 2012, Gartner estimates that smartphone and tablet sales reached 821 million, accounting for approximately 70% of all devices sold in the last year. In 2013, they expect those sales numbers to reach 1.2 billion.

If it feels like the mobile trend is growing faster than other trends in recent history, you’re right. According to a report published by MIT, mobile computers (smartphones/tablets) are on track to saturate markets in the U.S. and the developing worlds in record time. In other words, smartphones and tablets are spreading faster than any other technology in history.

How are businesses responding? A 2012 Accenture survey found that 78% of CIOs consider mobility a “top 5 priority”. Businesses understand the importance of mobile, and are rushing to take advantage of this trend.

That’s where the problems arise. As businesses rush to build mobile apps, they often dive into the project without proper planning, or without an adequate understanding of their mobile app options.

As you might imagine, this causes problems. First, it produces mobile apps that the company doesn’t really need. Second, without proper guidance, some companies build the wrong type of mobile app–wasting time and money in the process.

To help your company avoid these problems, I’ve created a list of questions you should ask before building a mobile app. Hopefully, these questions will keep you from building an app that fails, or from building the wrong type of mobile app. Before you build your mobile app, here are 4 questions to answer: …

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What happens when you combine machine translation with human translation?

By Joe Stangarone / Translation

If your company operates in multiple countries and currently translates your web sites and/or apps into multiple languages, let me ask you a question: What if you could combine the speed of machine translation with the accuracy of human translation?

If that sounds intriguing, here’s a video you’ll want to watch. It outlines the growing need for translation, and explains a unique translation method that nearly automates web application translation. I hope you find it informative.

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

By Joe Stangarone / Mobile, Strategy

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 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. …

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

4 simple ways to improve developer productivity

By Joe Stangarone / Application Development

Let 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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How to install a navigation bar in your web apps

By Joe Stangarone / Application Development

Here’s a great new feature that will improve your web apps. With the latest m-Power enhancement, developers can now automatically include a custom, drop-down navigation menu in every application.

Here are a few reasons you’ll love this new feature:

1. Maintenance is simple: The m-Power navigation menu is built for simplicity. Once you create your navigation menu file and tell m-Power to include it in your applications, you’re home free. Because the navigation menu is a separate file, maintenance is a breeze. You only have to change one file to update your navigation menu across all applications.

2. User-based security: When you apply the same navigation menu across all apps, you run into user-access problems. What happens if certain applications should only be accessible by a select number of users? Don’t worry, we thought of that. You can set up user-based security on the menu, so users can only see the menu items that pertain to them.

3. We’ve already done the hard work for you: We’ve already created the CSS and HTML necessary for the drop-down menu (though you can alter it if you want). There’s nothing for you to do except tell m-Power that you want the menu added to your applications.

How to add the navigation menu

Want to add the navigation menu to your m-Power applications? It’s simple. We’ve written up a short tutorial in our techblog that explains the whole process. You can find it right here.

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

By Joe Stangarone / Java, Web Development

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 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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Want to cut your development time in half?

By Joe Stangarone / Web Development

Here 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…

By Joe Stangarone / Consumerization, CSS, Web Development

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 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 »

10 most popular posts from 2012

By Joe Stangarone / Happy Holidays

First, I’d like to start off with a sincere “Thank You” to everyone who has taken the time out of their days to read this blog over the past year. I hope you’ve found it useful and informative. If there are any topics you’d like to see covered in the coming year, please feel free to let me know in the comments.

Secondly, as 2012 draws to a close, I thought I’d try something new. Rather than recap what I thought were the most useful articles, I’d like to share the posts that you found most interesting over the past year.

With that goal in mind, I took a look back at the past year and identified the 10 most popular posts of 2012, as determined by the readers of this blog. These are the posts that attracted the most attention (and often the most debate) over the last 12 months. I hope you find them interesting:

1. Hybrid vs. Native vs. Web app comparison chart
Does your company want mobile apps? You must first answer one question: Do we want native, hybrid, or mobile web apps? What’s the difference, or…more importantly, which is better? This post provides an easy-to-read comparison chart for each mobile development method. It compares the main differences, advantages, and disadvantages of each. …