March 19, 2011

How Agile Development Has Changed the Way We Work with Our Customers

For her PhD research project, Angela Martin investigated the way that agile development methodologies impacted the working relationships between developers and their customers–“Not how people think it should have worked, as is so often reported, but how it really worked.” She identified two different strategies that helped companies overcome problems

Microsoft Launches LightSwitch Beta 2

Microsoft has announced the availability of the second beta for its Visual Studio LightSwitch application development tool. According to Microsoft’s Dave Mendlen, LightSwitch “extracts away code and allows you to focus on the business problem you want to solve.” The tool features a number of templates and pre-written pieces of

Apple Handcuffs ‘Open’ Web Apps on iPhone Home Screen

In tests conducted by The Register and outside developers, Web apps performed about two and a half times slower when launched from the iPhone or iPad home screen than when launched from Apple’s Safari browser. “It’s unclear whether these are accidental bugs or issues consciously introduced by Apple,” writes The

Mobile App Users are Both Fickle and Loyal: Study

Massachusetts-based application analytics firm Localytics has released a new report which reveals some surprising and somewhat contradictory statistics about mobile app users. The firm found that 26 percent of those who download an app use it only once. However, an equal number will use it eleven or more times and

Getting Noticed in the iTunes App Store

Like all iOS developers, the programmers who created an app for Britain’s The Guardian newspaper faced a challenge: how to get their app noticed in an incredibly crowded marketplace. The Guardian Eyewitness app had the good fortune to be featured as a demo during a Steve Jobs’ keynote. That attracted