Like many other things that we use, develop or innovate, I started the NFC journey by searching a solution for a simple problem: remembering to do things before I leave the house, more specifically, remembering to turn off the central heating system or even finding something that could do it for me. Of course then I realised that I had multiple other ideas that would ease my life or make it cool and fun. For example I wanted a way to unlock my phone without any interactions or open my car just by getting closer to the driver’s seat and many other wishes. And then NFC appeared, just like Santa, and made some of them happen.

S is not missing! Nevertheless s, I’m not here to give out ideas to managers on how to reduce recreational office time by cutting down the number of missiles; neither am I here to introduce a single-chance Russian-style version of the well-known game. This is something from our other big brother, namely Don’t-be-evil Google. Thanks to his prominent expertise around web technologies, in October 2011, Aarhus, the city of Bjarne Stroustrup and Lars Bak could witness the birth of another potential revolutionary of the IT industry, as being the place where Dart was first officially unveiled.

It all starts with the passion to succeed… Becoming a good tester does not mean reaching a destination, but rather being on a constant journey into new territories. It is important to build the right skills that will provide us with the understanding of how to approach software testing. These skills help us build credibility and gain the respect of other professionals involved in software development. With a strong foundation of skills we have a better chance of succeeding in what we do: we will be able to provide better quality which leads to better products and in the end, to happier customers and users.

Every once in a while, I have conversations with people about what really is TDD. Since I built a certain knowledge on the topic in time not only by using it but also by explaining it to others, I decided to write this article that details my definite view on what TDD is. I hope you’ll find it useful. As this may be a long article, I will write for Today Software Magazine a series of shorter articles on this matter. Here’s the first one.

As we all know we are more or less logs-dependent. The scope of this article is not to present a logging-framework within Java, but superior level of abstraction for collecting, storing and analyzing, also the way good logs can help us to have a better overview over what our software application does and how good it does that. But what are those logs and why we need them? I personally consider a log as a small point, but keep in mind that multiple points can draw a line and multiple lines a form or a direction that should be understood.

Just like people, organizations become constructive through the principles, values, beliefs and the commands transmitted through education. In the professional context we call this educational package Organizational Culture. Let’s have a look at a few of the elements that influence a healthy organizational growth. What makes an employee hide the mistakes when he makes them? To blame someone else or to blame faith? What drives him to say yes, when he wants to say no? How does he get to hide behind, or to justify his actions through procedures? Why does he get into a situation where he prefers to find guilty parties instead of aiming for results?

The application is the result of the ambition of a former student of Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, who one day was looking for a rent in the Zorilor neighborhood. Visiting an apartment that he had found in an online newspaper and which was below his expectation, he decided not to waste any more time and visit other apartments nearby. Since he had just a smartphone at his disposal he looked on the Play Store for a real estate rental application, but no results. Then the idea came to him: “I will build an app that will help anyone who has a smartphone to look for rents near them or in any desired location”.

By definition, a self-employed individual is a business entity authorised to carry out any business activity permissible under the law, using mainly its own labour. The business activities can cover all the fields, trades, occupations or professions which are not expressly forbidden under the law for self-employment. The business activities in which a self-employed person can engage as PFA are those listed in the NACE Code and not exclusively regulated by a specific law. Any business activity conducted on a permanent, occasional or temporary basis in Romania by PFAs should be registered and licensed, according to the provisions of the Government Emergency Ordinance no. 44/2008. The operating licence does not exempt PFAs from the obligation to secure, prior to commencement of the activity, all the authorisations, permits, licenses, etc. stipulated by special laws for certain business activities.

I believe great programmers can create unique software in a way it has never been done before. This is a story about me joining a team and how we came a long way from a traditional development process to an agile one. We will contemplate on the events and decisions that led from chaos to order and from strict rules to a happy workplace. A place where a complete enterprise storage solution is made with almost no bugs found in production, thanks to a team ever open to change and continuous learning.

At the first edition, Ignite managed to bring together over 23.000 IT pros and business people for a full week during which Microsoft gave details related to what they did lately and what they planned for the future, for most of its range of product and services. But if you expected some big announcement to be made, then you missed out the place as not even the HoloLens were exposed. Satya’s opening keynote was not as fresh and vibrant as I expected compared to what I heard happened last year at the Partner Conference in DC, but maybe the speech was diluted also due to the fragmentation of audience and multitude of topics.

The seed accelerator phenomenon is growing worldwide, with an ever-increasing number of active programs primarily in the United States but also in other parts of the world. Prominent seed accelerators such as Y Combinator have received significant attention in the entrepreneurial community and are continuously exploring potential startup ventures.” This trend was observed by L. Barrehag in 2012 in a study about accelerators and three years later the seed programs have been developing further than ever before.

The faculty of Electric Engineering within the Technical University in Cluj-Napoca, in collaboration with the students’ organization BEST Cluj-Napoca, organized on the 9th of May 2015 the fifth edition of the BattleLab Robotica competition. The competition consisted in the implementation of autonomous sumo robots, capable to identify and eliminate from the playground the opponent robot in “1 to 1” type competitions.

Bucharest, May 19th, 2015 – The MVP Academy Class of 2015 officially graduated the pre-acceleration program on Friday, May 15, during Demo Day. 12 startups took the stage to pitch their products and showcase the results of 2 months of work, while also getting the chance to start discussions with potential investors and strategic partners. Organized in partnership with Telekom Romania and Bitdefender, with the support of CyberGhost, Raiffeisen Bank, hub:raum, Microsoft, and SendGrid, the second edition of the pre-accelerator took place in between March 23rd – May 14th at TechHub Bucharest and helped the finalists better define their products and businesses, and preparing them for the next steps: scaling, raising money and closing deals.

After a few meetings, a lot of written mails, and even more phone calls - it finally happened and it was over in just 3 days, but it was definitely worth it. In the last weekend of last month, the 24-26 of April, Exclusiv Catering has hosted our 2015 Startup Weekend Cluj event. The three working days have started with the presentations of two speakers, Philipp Kandal and Salim Virani, after that, our host Adrian Pica has shared some of his experience at these kind of events. In the same evening, there was the pitching session. 30 ideas were pitched, 12 of them were selected by participants through maximum votes as being the most interesting.

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A new initiative was launched in Cluj this spring: Seed For Tech is a product development fund, with go-to-market support and seed investment. Through Seed For Tech, we want to help good ideas and talented people reach the next level while contributing to the development of the regional ecosystem of startups and tech products.

The events of the IT domain also brought their contribution to the roaring of cultural and educational events that have enveloped Cluj in the month of May. One of them, the Romanian Testing Camp, reunited a great part of the testers from Cluj in a surprising location, four cinema rooms in a local mall, distinguishing itself especially through the prestige of its guests and the interesting approaches. Another event, IT Camp, invited us to travel inside the fascinating Microsoft world, maintaining in the organization, the unfolding of the event and the selection of guests, the same high standards we were accustomed to during the previous years. For the beginning of the month of June, the TSM recommendation is Techsylania, a conference dedicated to entrepreneurs.