Pluralsight just got better down under!

Posted on May 16, 2012 by

Since we started our video training library, we’ve always used Amazon’s cloud infrastructure (S3 and CloudFront) to handle the heavy lifting of serving video content around the world. And we’ve had very few complaints…

…until about three months ago when we started hearing that some of our Australian customers were suffering with long buffering times. The problem with Amazon CloudFront in Oceania is that they have no edge locations there, and many customers end up being routed to far away edge locations. And there’s no indication that Amazon has any plans on building edge locations in Oceania anytime soon. Continue reading →

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Meet the Author: John Sonmez on Enterprise Library Data Access Application Block

Posted on May 16, 2012 by

In the latest installment in our Meet the Author podcast, Fritz Onion sits down with John Sonmez to talk about his course Enterprise Library Data Access Application Block.  In the interview John explains why developers today would still be using the Data Access Application Block as well as how it compares to modern ORMS like Entitry Framework.

Listen to the Audio (MP3)

Meet the Author:  John Sonmez on Enterprise Library Data Access Application Block

Transcript

[Fritz] Hi. This is a Fritz Onion here. Today I’m speaking with John Sonmez about his new course Data Access Application Block. John is a long time C# and .NET developer with roots in C++. He’s recently been developing applications for Android and iPhone as well. And he’s started to put a focus on mobile application development. John has spent many years working as a consultant for a number of projects and has deep ties to the agile community. He’s also very interested in automated testing tools, like WatiN or Selenium. On any given day, John could be programming in C$, Java, Objective-C, VB.NET or all of the above. Hey, John, it’s good to talk with you today.

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Video: What Elevators Can Teach Us About User Experience Design

Posted on May 16, 2012 by

User Experience design doesn’t just exist in software, nor does bad user experience design.  In this video excerpt from Billy Hollis’ new course Creating User Experiences: Fundamental Design Principles you’ll watch as Billy takes a picture of a poorly designed elevator panel and uses it to highlight a number of user experience issues as well as introduce the concept of archetypes.  In the full course, Billy goes on to cover topics such as stages of visual processing, natural preference, and managing cognitive load.

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100% Resource Utilization Does Not Equal 100% Productivity

Posted on May 15, 2012 by

If you’re development staff is being fully utilized, are you really getting 100% productivity?  Not according to a recent article in the Harvard Business Review.  In that article they seek to dispell six myths about product development including the idea that high utilization of resources will improve performance.  One of the reasons that high utilization can be detremental to productivity is the impact of highly variable tasks which are not easily predicted.

Processes with high variability behave very differently. As utilization increases, delays lengthen dramatically. (See the exhibit “High Utilization Leads to Delays.”) Add 5% more work, and completing it may take 100% longer. But few people understand this effect.  — Harvard Business Review

One of the key reasons that these myths exist is the desire by companies to treat product development the same as manufacturing.  Manufacturing management and productivity controls do not lend themselves well to product development.

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Video: Put Your Data On The Straight and Narrow with JsRender Data Paths

Posted on May 15, 2012 by

jQuery isn’t the only game in town when it comes to JavaScript frameworks.  JsRender is a new pre-beta framework for rendering data without jQuery or DOM based dependencies.  In this video excerpt from John Papa’s new course JsRender Fundamentals you’ll see how to use JsRender to create simple custom templates for rendering data using data paths.  In the full course John goes on to cover topics like JsRender core tokens, view paths, nesting, and advanced JsRender topics.

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Pluralsight “New Releases” Newsletter – May 15, 2012

Posted on May 15, 2012 by

In this week’s newsletter check out our new courses, JsRender Fundamentals by John Papa, Google+ for Business by Jesse Stay, and SharePoint 2010 Security Part 2 by Sahil Malik.

You can also learn about NDC and “That Conference”, both great upcoming events that we are sponsoring and participating in.

Read this week’s newsletter today!

You can subscribe to our weekly newsletter to receive future updates like this right in your inbox.

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Comparison of Mobile Framework Solutions – Spring 2012

Posted on May 14, 2012 by

As mentioned, I have been fortunate to involve in Mobility technology since PocketPC, through WindowsMobile, now Windows Phone.  Also ever since everyone was caught in buzz of iPhone v1, through a few forethinker of the time (year 2009), I had my hand dirty implementing “cross-plaform” solution when Android was still #3 in the lineup.  YES, I was “into” cross-platform in year 2009!  Alas, many years have passed and I feel that enterprise world has finally caught the attention of mobility technology as consumer space did.

Now, I get many questions about “best practices” in mobility project.  Or direct question such as ”what is the best way to build mobile app?”

Well… as mentioned in my rather old blogs, there are many ways… (I wish I could really have time to keep up the blogs…but with my life in MCS… :)  Anyway…. There are options as “developer” to choose from from getgo.  However, nowadays, many “business” people is looking for answers to address the cross-platform issues now people FINALLY began to realize or just to seek a best practice in approach mobility strategy.  Me being in this neck of wood for years, I decided to compile what “options” there are for not only “devleopers” but “enterprise strategy” perspective.

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Posted in Users Helping Users | Tagged | 3 Comments