On September 24 took place in Bucharest, at the elegant JW Marriott Grand Hotel, the first edition of SmartWeb conference 2013, an event dedicated to web-designers in Romania and Eastern Europe, where Software Magazine Today magazine was one of the media partners. The presentations from the conference covered a wide range of subjects like Responsive Web Design, HTML5/CSS3 and best practices or tips and tricks. Since it was an international event, the entire conference was conducted in English.

The idea of this article occurred to me several months ago, while I was preparing a presentation for the conference “Even mammoths can be Agile”, which took place in Cluj-Napoca this spring. It sometimes happens that certain things appear to be very clear and obvious at a given time, but when you begin to study them closely you are surprised to find out the contrary. This also happened when, trying to study the efficiency and benefits of adhering to the good practices in Agile, adopted by certain organizations and project teams, I have reached some conclusions that are far from being considered optimistic.

In 2001, a group of people unpleased about the state of software development gathered in a mountain ski resort from Utah. One thing leading to another, they started discussing about the industrial methods applied at the time for managing programmers and about the so-called lightweight methods many of them used informally. The result of this meeting, as you probably know, was The Agile Manifesto.

I think there is no person or company in the IT area who hasn’t heard at least once about Agile-Scrum. For those who are not yet familiarized with this concept, in short, Agile Scrum can be defined as a methodology of management for IT projects development, which ensures the delivery on time and the meeting of deadlines set by the client, optimizing both team work and the obtained results.

Looking at the last twenty years, we are confronted with what scientists call the Law of Accelerated Returns. Basically, technological transformation and innovation of these past twenty years represent the output of the previous two thousand years combined. Specifically, the tech industry has undergone fundamental shifts in the way software is built, delivered and, at last, experienced by ordinary Joe – the consumer. From batch jobs to applications running on PC’s and then web-based and mobile apps, such disruptions involve significant changes in hardware coupled with new kinds of applications.

A non-profit organization (NPO) requires as much work and dedication as any other business, but with only a fraction of the budget of a business. NPOs who are working with small budgets can certainly use the online medium to promote their campaigns with limited resources. Besides promotion, fundraising is easier and faster also. In this article we presented some ways NPOs can raise funds.

We have met for the third time this year with the HR representatives of well-known IT companies from Cluj in order to continue to analyze the profile community. Our intention was to bring together specialists from the domain in order to offer a “human” perspective on the ideas of stability, success and community of the IT organizations in Cluj – one of the most developed domains of local economy.

OPC (Open Platform Communication) is a standard in the industrial communication which allows universal connectivity and interoperability. It is used in the automation industry and the IT systems of industrial enterprises. The interoperability is ensured by creating and maintaining the standards of open specification.

This article aims to give a high-level plan for automating a large part of the software lifecycle. It will also show, based on a concrete example, how such a plan can be implemented.

I took part this year, for the first time, in the Startup Weekend Cluj. And not just like that, I went there prepared to present my own idea. At the first pitch, this idea was called TaskList, but by the end of the event it had changed into Do It For. I started with the idea of a site on which you could externalize those tasks you don’t know, cannot or don’t want to do yourself. I was thinking about cleaning, laundry washing, cooking, queuing, car washing, etc.

Gogu looked - for the hundredth time – at the watch. It’s not normal, acceptable, or in any way excusable for someone to delay that much, he thought, and this time put his hand on the phone. He’d just dialed the number when he saw Misu entering, relaxed and with a wide spread smile on his face.
- Now… why do you look so glum? He asked Gogu, then quickly added: Wait, I’m being sought-after ... He took the phone, he looked at the screen for a moment, gazed at Gogu, and then looked back at the phone and then again at Gogu. The smile was replaced by astonishment: