Software Development in the Real World» Software Development

Marketing and Technology Take Center Stage

miguelcarrasco — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:27:12 +0000

One interesting thing I’ve seen take place over the last few years is the importance of marketing in technology. It used to be acceptable to write software that compiled, worked, and was bug free. With the consumerization of IT, and the rise of user centered design, it has become critical to not only build software that works, but also software the looks amazing and engages the end user.

A few months ago I started focusing heavily on writing on topics like digital marketing, social media, and the importance of innovation in technology. I wanted to point out to software developers, that while building software well, efficiently, on-time, and on budget was still important, creating software that blows the hats of end users was now a requirement.

Do you see this shift occurring in your place of work? Do you see the importance of user experience? What is your take on this massive shift that has caught software development by storm?

New Digital Marketing and Technology Blog You Have To Check Out

miguelcarrasco — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 16:20:47 +0000

Over the years I have been spending more and more time focusing on digital marketing, and the intersection points between Business Strategy, Technology, and Marketing. While I am still extremely passionate about software development, I needed a separate avenue to express ideas, thoughts, perspectives, and lessons learned over the last 15 years.

I would be honoured if all of you would join me at my new blog: http://www.miguelcarrasco.com

In conjunction with the new blog, I am also launching a Video Cast Series focused on Social Media, Technology, and Digital Marketing in general. I will try and keep it engaging and exciting so make sure you head to the new blog to catch all the latest episodes!

Here is a sneak peak at “Episode 0 – Focus Your Twitter Conversations”

Microsoft Releases Office 2010 SP1

miguelcarrasco — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 13:35:08 +0000

Support for Office 365, Google Chrome

Microsoft released Office 365 yesterday to the world in New York City, however something that went unnoticed was the launch of Office 2010 SP1. So what is included in Office 2010 SP1?

Support for Office 365
Office Web Apps Support for Google Chrome
Chrome Support for SharePoint 2010
Many hot-fixes and performance upgrades

You can download a copy for 32bit Windows, or 64bit Windows today.

Products that have fixes include:

Access
Word
Outlook
OneNote
Visio
Project
PowerPoint
Performance Point Dashboard Designer

You can download a complete list of fixes from the Microsoft site.

Google Chrome Pain for Web Developers

miguelcarrasco — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 14:53:38 +0000

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This is one of my favorite videos that played at Mix 2011. It explains very clearly why web developers and users need to be wary of browsers that release updates every week.

Grab a cup of coffee, sit back, relax, and get ready to laugh.

While this is all fun and games, the reality is with recent announcements like Firefox dropping support for Firefox 4 business customers are headed for times where they are going to have to start dropping open source browsers.

See the reality is for consumers, the latest and greatest browser might be ok. But for corporations like banks, governments, and companies you rely on to keep your information secure, the latest browser that could have a potentially unsecure exploit or bug, is killer. Unless of course you’re ok with your data being broadcast all over the internet.

Make Your Software Development Team Agile

miguelcarrasco — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 05:38:31 +0000

Agile seems to be the most popular set software development methodologies today. But how do you actually implement agile? How do you ensure your software development team is running lean? Is your software being developed iteratively?

TeamPulse is an awesome product that is being released later this month that combines agile and lean best practices enabling your development team to plan software development projects in full detail. To take it a step further, the tool even lets to measure specific results so you can make improvements and enhancements to the project and your team. I personally love the project dashboards that’s give you a really quick snapshot view of your projects at a high level.

I could talk about this tool forever, but Joel Semeniuk, VP Telerik Team Productivity Division will actually be demonstrating the tool on July 27^th, 2010 via live webinar. With over 15 years of experience, Joel specializes in helping organizations around the world realize their potential through maturing their software development and information technology practices. This is going to be an awesome webinar. Make sure your register and send the link to your friends.