Amazon Rekognition
Posted on AWS Tour

Amazon Rekognition – Easy Facial Recognition

One of the best things about being a developer is the ability to create cool solutions to problems.  Of course, as technology advances the definition of cool does as well.  For example, the latest buzz-worthy solution out there might be facial recognition.  This feature is the ability to scan images and find a match for a person.  It is CSI and similar TV program technology, but Amazon has made it more accessible.  This latest impressive service from Amazon is called Rekognition. A High-End AWS Service Amazon services are all built in a way that allows hobbyists and low budget companies to ease into some otherwise inaccessible solutions.  We have seen this with typical needs like virtual machines, but it does not... Read more

CodeStar
Posted on AWS Tour

Amazon CodeStar – A Complete Development Environment

During our tour of AWS services, we have touched on several developer tools.  We still have several to go, but the recently announced CodeStar is a better way to dive into these services. CodeStar is an Entire Environment The CodeStar service is a wrapper of sorts.  It guides you through some steps to select the type of development desired and then it builds out an environment.  However, this process does not just build out a development environment.  It builds out the tools needed for everything involved in the process.  This includes version control, build management, a project wiki, links to Jira for task tracking and more.  This service provides you an enterprise development environment quickly and easily. Skip the Details One... Read more

Product Catalog Selenium Appcelerator web services Customizing WordPress Plugins Report
Posted on Become a Better Developer

Creating Use Cases and Gathering Requirements

Starting a Project Right When you look at statistics about how often IT projects fail or come up short it is hard to ignore properly defining the problem.  Two of the most common themes in failed projects are a lack of definition and a lack of usefulness.  In this first step in our video series, we look at finding the “why” for a project.  Then we look at how to build and document use cases. Use Cases Done Right There is no magic to creating use cases.  All that is required is an understanding of how a process should flow.  It is not a technical task or skill, but good use cases do lead to higher success rates in a project.... Read more

amazon database
Posted on AWS Tour

Amazon Aurora – Enterprise Database

We have looked at storage and server options from Amazon.  Thus, now it is time to look at one the database options.  Amazon Aurora is a relational database solution that is an excellent step up from MySQL. Easy To Use Aurora is currently MySQL compatible, and they are working on a PostgreSQL version as well.  This offering means that you can use all of your tools and knowledge with MySQL to administer and develop on Aurora.  There is no need to think of an Aurora solution as anything other than a production MySQL database.  An instance can be brought up in minutes.  The size and power, along with credentials, is all you need to get started. An Enterprise Solution Of course,... Read more

development languages
Posted on General

Learning a New Development Language

Modern developers have to learn more than one or two languages during their career.  Thus, any steps that can improve your ability to ramp to a new language will add value to your resume.  In my time spent learning dozens of languages, I have found a few steps that help.  Everyone learns a little differently.  However, these help add a language as a tool rather than master the syntax. What is The Purpose? Nearly every language has a primary purpose.  For example, HTML and PHP are for building web applications.  Java is for cross-platform development.  There are a few general purpose languages (C, C++, and the like).  However, there tends to be a problem or family of challenges at which... Read more