Making software that actually gets used
Design is all about the search for form. For software, this means answering questions like “What should this software look like?” and “What interactions should be allowed?”. At my previous company, the products we developed were all server-side backend type software that talks to machines – of course there is always a human user somewhere […]
Scrum Gathering 2015
The Gautrain stopped at Rosebank station… We walked the last 100m to the Hyatt Regency Hotel where Scrum Gathering 2015 was hosted. Registration went seamlessly and the coffee and snacks awaited. The hospitality at the hotel was exceptional. The theme for the conference was “Unlikely Heroes”. We had it all planned out. Three agile managers […]
The Apple DOES fall far from the Android.
After starting my job at Polymorph as an app designer three years ago, I became a huge Apple enthusiast, I thought NOTHING came close to Apple. Their products, their designs, the company, nothing or no-one could persuade me to think otherwise. I even became interested in developing iOS apps, because I thought Android/Windows/Blackberry didn’t stand […]
MobGrazer: Helping local farmers
Angus is a local farmer who is dedicated to organically raising and feeding his cattle. They graze freely, feeding only on natural substances. To increase growth rates in his cattle and remain competitive, Angus uses an innovative technique called ‘mob grazing’. In short, mob grazing refers to the farming method whereby cattle are kept in […]
Provisioning – Using Chef with Vagrant
Introduction This is the third in a series of four posts. In the first post, the devops tool Vagrant was introduced. Vagrant makes it easy to standardise the environment in which software is developed and deployed. By default, Vagrant uses VirtualBox as its standardisation provider. However, as was shown in the second post, it’s easy […]
Tracks4Africa: Guide App Launched!
Tracks4Africa’s Guide App just launched! Read more about it on their blog: http://blog.tracks4africa.co.za/
Testing Games in the Wild
Ins and outs of turn-based games Recently I had coffee with an indie board game developer who was nearing the release of her very own monster featuring board game. The primary idea in my mind was unfortunately not about how cool the game was, which it definitely was, but rather “how in the world she […]
Using Vagrant with Amazon AWS
In part 1 of this series, we introduced the devops tool Vagrant. Vagrant makes it easy to create standardised environments in which software can be developed and deployed. Vagrant creates these environments using “providers”. Examples of such providers are VirtualBox, KVM and VMWare. These three providers provide locally virtualised environments. Another example is Docker. Although […]
Vagrant – An Introduction
Overview Over the last few years, various tools have become available that try to standardise, in some way, the environment in which software is developed and deployed. In the next few blog posts, we’ll touch on one of these tools, Vagrant, and see how it can be used in conjunction with other devops tools to […]
Why go mobile?
Let us first consider the role of the mobile device, which primarily means mobile phones and tablets, in people’s lives.It used to be that a personal computer, and via that access to the internet, was a tool used grudgingly at work. You had to master complex and ugly software programs that supposedly helped you do […]
