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The Latest from Our Team
Lab Reaction: Lessons from Apple and Nissan
I have been thinking a lot lately about people’s reactions to the recent Apple announcements. The most common feedback I hear is the “OMG $1000 phone?!?!?”, but let’s save my thoughts on that for another day. When I read this Forbes article about Apple and Nissan, I reflected on why I appreciate these types of…
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A Website Without Servers – Using Azure Functions: Part 2, Source Control
In Part 1 of this blog series, we set up some basic pieces for our engineer fashion application. In Part 2, we are going to add some source control to the process. Why source control? If step 1 of software development is having a plan, then step 2 is implementing some kind of source control…
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DPL Reading List – September 22, 2017
Here are some of the articles we’ve been reading around this office this week. What Your Innovation Process Should Look Like – “By now, most organizations have concluded that they face the threat of disruption. Some have even started to realize that because technological advantage degrades every year, standing still means falling behind. Hence the…
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A Website Without Servers – Using Azure Functions: Part 1, Introduction
Why Azure Functions? Azure Functions provide a quick spot to drop some simple service code. Think of them as services without the hassle. No VS projects. No builds. Just go. Azure Functions are not a great technology for everything, but for services that contain simple logic they are probably okay. The biggest drawback to Azure…
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Customizing Your VSTS Task Board
The VSTS task board is a great way for developers and project managers to see development tasks in the current iteration. But we like to also see which tasks have been submitted and are awaiting a pull request. Here is how we customize our task board to add an additional step for work items. Creating…
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DPL Reading List – September 15, 2017
Here are some of the articles we’ve been reading around this office this week. In manufacturing, software jobs outpace production jobs for first time – “The increased demand for software developers is particularly concerning for manufacturers who are discovering how difficult it is to find qualified candidates to fill these jobs. Automakers and other manufacturers tend…
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Legacy Application Wrangler
/* This post is part of a series about what we cover in our Software Design and Development Clinics, a 1-week series of classes where we dive into various aspects of software design and development principles. Legacy application migration is a core focus of this class. Learn more at http://dontpaniclabs.com/education/. */ We have never done any…
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DPL Reading List – September 8, 2017
Here are some of the articles we’ve been reading around this office this week. Designing IoT Products for Consumers – “Rather than trying to breathe life into inert objects, designers should focus on designing IoT products that are mute and functional.” 4 Examples of How AR & VR Will Improve Customer Service – “The internet made…
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Getting Started with Azure Cosmos DB, Part 4 – Partition Keys
We have gone through quite a bit of Azure Cosmos-related posts the last few weeks, but we have skipped over the concept of partition keys in almost of the queries we have covered. Ignoring the partition key is probably fine for these small data sets, but for real workloads we should probably think this through….
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Generating Print Graphics on the Web Using SVG
While redesigning our tradeshow booth, I needed an image of outer space. Google image search to the rescue, at least for a placeholder. After a few rounds of revisions, the design was nearly complete. But I was still using the placeholder star field. I could have bought a stock image, found a free one to…
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