MapReduce is the main batch processing framework from Apache Hadoop project. It was developed by Google and in 2004 they published an article describing the MapReduce concept. In 2006, Dug Cutting succeeded to implement this concept and put it into an Apache project, namely Apache Hadoop. First release happened in 14 Sep, 2007. This was the beginning of the Big Data for everyone, starting from just simple curious people to any kind of company. Soon Apache Hadoop reached a very strong community and big players, as well, such as Yahoo, Facebook, Ebay, IBM, Linkedin and others

Augmented reality has entered the area of interest of consumers and, of course, that of programmers, too, along with the development of processors and graphics cards on mobile devices. However, one of the first devices that used the idea behind this technology was Sensorama, created by Morton Heilig, over 40 years ago. The device worked on similar principles, but with a more "rudimentary" manner or implementation. What made augmented reality famous was the appearance of the well-known Google Glass, and the one that managed to push the barriers further is the device patented by Microsoft, Kinect, together with the virtual headphones. I will not focus on these topics, as they belong to a different category, which I would call "still experimental". Nevertheless, these technological "pushes" made the appearance of Augmented Reality (AR) possible also on the mobile devices. Nowadays, even a novice programmer can build such an application with the help of some powerful SDKs made available to anyone.

Bucharest, March 18, 2015 – 13 promising tech startups with global potential are part of the second batch of MVP Academy, pre-acceleration program that will take place in between March 23rd – May 14th at TechHub Bucharest. The finalists will take their products to the next level and build valuable connections in the industry by attending practical workshops, mentoring sessions and other dedicated activities. The list of teams is available online on the program website. The 13 finalists that are now part of MVP Academy Class of 2015 are building products in fields such as security, mobile commerce, ecommerce, analytics or fashion tech and have differentiated from the other applicants through the experience they already have: most of the startups in the second batch have previously founded other companies or are formed of experienced tech professionals.

Imagine you need a paint job for your beloved collection car, or new house. You hire the best contractors, instruct them to use the best supplies on the market, give them the best tools and pay them a little more than the market average. They finish the job on time, within the budget. Everyone is happy and you may throw in a little party. But, within a month or two, small rust stains become visible or little cracks start to develop. What went wrong? The best team you hired did not allow for the foundation layer to dry properly, according to the supplier instructions, and started to apply the paint after 4 hours, instead of 6.

In a previous Article for Today Software Magazine - 4 Ideas To Apply For Better Software Design, I wrote about the fact that we tend to perceive software design as userless. Whenever we talk about design in other domains than software, we discuss it from a user-centric point of view. Apple's products are renowned because they focus on the experience of a user with their device: how it feels, how it looks, how fast it responds, the sounds it makes etc.

“Waiter, these minced meat rolls have eaten my mustard!” Gogu tried a subtle irony, but it was in vain.
“Would you like more mustard?”
“No, you didn’t get this”, answered Misu, spitefully. “It’s not the mustard, but the meat rolls. Take them back and put them a little bit more on the grill, as they are raw.”
“Coming back to our stuff, Gogu,” said Misu, turning back towards his friend while the waiter was taking the meat rolls away, appologising, “tell me what to do. Should I speak or not? Is it better for me to be honest or to protect myself? ‘Cause, after all, that’s what this whole situation is about.”

While for some of us the concept of internal marketing is something familiar the role of this marketing strategy is still highly underestimated in today's market. We propose a picture view in 5 phases on how the concept evolved and we also state that IM will constantly change as long as the world of business changes.

In the era of cloud we are bombarded with different cloud services. New features of cloud providers are lunched every day and prices are dropping every month. In this moment the most known cloud providers are Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Looking over their services we will see SLAs (Service Level Agreement) that reach 99.9% availability, 99.95% availability or even 99.99% availability. This article will jump into cloud providers SLAs, trying to explain why the SLAs are so important, what are the benefits of them and last but not least how much money we could get back if a service goes down.

In Java 8, you can return an Optional instead of return null; as you might do in Java 7.  This may or may not make a big difference depending on whether you tend to forget to check for null or whether you use static code analysis to check to nullalbe references. However, there is a more compelling case which is to treat Optional like a Stream with 0 or 1 values.

Five percent of the people think; Ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.
- Thomas A. Edison

In November 2014, a local IT company was the host of an event dedicated to Testers: Rapid Software Testing. At the end of this event, for a day, the speaker tackled a rare subject for the IT industry, but important for testers and analysts: Critical Thinking. The trainer of the event was Michael Bolton (not the singer!), a well-known figure in the Testing Industry. Although the event was directed towards Testers, some of the information regarding Critical Thinking applies to Business Analysts as well.