mrc's Cup of Joe Blog

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

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. …

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

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: …

3 new realities IT must learn to acceptRead More »

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.
…

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

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: …

5 ways BI will change in the next 5 yearsRead More »

File uploading comes to iOS

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EducationHere’s a piece of good news for all mobile web app developers: Starting in iOS 6 (which was released earlier this year), the default iOS browser now supports file uploading!

Why is this so important? Let me take a step back and explain.

As you may (or may not) know, mobile web apps support file uploading. There’s still quite a bit of confusion surrounding this topic, and the topic of mobile web app features in general. Many people don’t realize that mobile web apps offer nearly every feature found in native apps, like GPS access, gyroscope/accelerometer access, file uploading, and more. …

File uploading comes to iOSRead More »

Weekly recap: 6 tips to break app dev bottlenecks, how to master new skills, 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 development bottlenecks, web standards, and more. I hope you find them useful:

How to master a new skill
Keeping your skills current is one key to success in the IT profession, or just about any field for that matter. But learning a new skill is quite intimidating if you don’t know where to start. This article lays out a great plan of attack for learning new skills. …

Weekly recap: 6 tips to break app dev bottlenecks, how to master new skills, and more…Read More »

Top 6 strategic IT priorities for 2013

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EducationThink back just 10 years ago. Smartphones and tablets (as we know them today) didn’t even exist yet. Social media was a new concept. Mentioning the term “Big Data” would just bring you awkward stares.

My, how the times have changed.

Fast forward to today. Businesses are currently experiencing some of the most rapid technological changes since the rise of the web. Smartphone and tablet adoption have exploded. PC usage is on the decline. Cloud computing is on the rise.

With all of these changes, which areas should your IT department focus on in the next few years?

I’m curious to hear your opinions. What do you think are the biggest strategic issues facing IT departments going into next year? While I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments, I’ve created my own list of 6 issues that every IT strategy must include going into 2013: …

Top 6 strategic IT priorities for 2013Read More »

Partnering Opportunities . . .

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AnnouncementWe are looking for a few good companies who want to help us help them to make this world a better and more productive place through the creative application of m-Power in the business world.

Could you be what we are looking for? There is only one way to find out. Jot me an email describing how we might work together to achieve our common goals.

There is no formula here. You don’t have to be in a particular industry. You can be a consultant, but you don’t have to be. You can be an application software company, but that’s not mandatory. You can be into Business Intelligence, or end user report writing, or web application development, or application modernization, government consulting, or any number of things.

Are you a company that can help us profitably spread the productivity benefits of m-Power throughout the world? This document outlines a few partnership benefits, and there are also lots of good strategy reasons you might be interested.

If you sell an application or wish to develop an application to sell with m-Power, our pricing is as straight forward as it can be. There are no seat licenses, run-times, or distribution fees to worry about.

So, if this is something you might want to explore, send me an email with your thoughts: joestangarone@mrc-productivity.com.

Weekly recap: 4 trends revitalizing BI, useful jQuery snippets, 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 BI trends, useful jQuery snippets, and more. I hope you find them useful:

14 handy jquery code snippets for developers
If you do any web development, here’s a page you’ll want to bookmark. It provides some of the most commonly used jQuery snippets all in one place, for easy copy-and-pasting during web development. …

Weekly recap: 4 trends revitalizing BI, useful jQuery snippets, and more…Read More »