The worst US cities to work in IT

A few weeks back, I posted a link to an article listing the best places to work if you’re in the IT industry. I recently ran across an article on CIO.com that lists the exact opposite: “The worst U.S. cities to work in IT.”

I don’t think it’s as bad as they (or their depressing picture selection) make it out to be, but I’m curious to hear your thoughts. Do you work in one of these cities, and if so, what do you think of it?

Modernization in a bad economy

Should we modernize or stick with what we’ve got until the economy recovers? I know that question has been asked by many companies these days. What are the advantages and disadvantages of both?

I recently read a study by Aberdeen which examines the modernization methods used by best-in-class organizations. According to the study, companies that take the right approach to modernization see substantial cost savings and performance improvements over companies that stick with the status quo.

What is the best approach to legacy modernization? The study finds that a tools-based approach to modernization combined with well planned processes leads to the greatest success.

Those findings certainly fall in line with what I’ve seen over the years. Take this company for example. Their tools-based approach to modernization resulted in 6-figure savings.

Overview of CSS3

I’ve been following the latest CSS3 developments for a while now, and must say that I’m pretty excited about what it can do for web applications. CSS3 adds much more functionality while including many time-saving features.

In case you haven’t heard about all the great new features of CSS3 yet, I just read an article in smashingmagazine.com that lists and describes 13 of the best features. You can find the entire article here.>>

100 best places to work in IT 2009

In a bad economy, top IT talent is more important than ever. The good news (at least for companies) is that there is plenty of great IT talent available right now. So, if your company has trouble attracting great talent, you need to ask: “Why?”

How do you attract the best talent? Take a lesson from these companies: Computerworld recently published their “100 best places to work in IT 2009.” Not only do they explain why each company made the list, but they list a few ways your company can attract and retain highly skilled IT workers.

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How To: Build better, faster web apps with CSS sprites

Have you ever noticed how images on some websites flicker when you hover over them? It’s like the image disappears for a split second before the hover image is displayed. That happens because the hover state of the image isn’t loaded into the browser cache until you hover over it.

You can fix this problem when you use CSS sprites in place of the typical methods for creating rollover buttons. We’ve written up a brief tutorial on CSS sprites which can be found in our forums.

15 nifty Blackberry apps for IT pros

The good people at CIO.com have posted another list of Blackberry apps, but this time they’re aimed at the IT professional. Unfortunately, not all of the apps in this list are free.

However, there are some pretty useful apps in there, so I’d recommend you check it out if you’re a Blackberry owner and an IT professional. Click here to see the list>>.

It's funny in real life, but not in business

If you asked me and my wife to describe the same event, our descriptions would be so different you might not be able to tell we were even talking about the same thing. It’s not that either of us is dishonest, we just notice different things.

The same thing can happen with business data and reports. If two people are asked to create reports on similar data, the results may be anything but similar. They might emphasize different points, or even use different formats in their reports.

Here’s a company that was dealing with this exact problem, only multiplied by 9. They had 9 separate plants, running on 9 separate databases, with 9 separate managers, who had 9 separate ways of doing things. Comparing business data across the plants was like comparing apples to…mangos.

They managed to fix their problems by creating a web-based executive dashboard, even though no one on staff had experience with web application development. Find out what they did>>.

The future of computing

What is the future of computing? According to Google, it’s web-based applications. At their recent I/O convention, Google showed off a few new features of HTML 5, and explained how web applications will be able to take advantage of these features.

Personally, I think Google is spot on. Web-based apps offer multiple advantages over standalone apps, but I think it all comes down to instant information. Web-based apps can be accessed from anywhere at anytime, allowing businesses to operate faster and more efficiently than ever before.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Companies that operate at anything less than real-time are at an extreme disadvantage in this day and age.

Top 10 industry-changing applications

When you look back at the history of computer applications, what stands out to you? Which applications truly affected the way you worked, or even lived?

Once you’ve thought of a few, check out this article on itnews.com, which lists the top 10 industry-changing computer applications. It’s an interesting read, and I think they did a good job overall—most everything on that list is in fact, industry-changing.

I’m sure many may disagree with the list, and I’m curious to hear why. What would you change about this list, and why?

Failure and what you can learn from it

When it comes to failure, there are two types of people in this world: People who learn from their failures and people who won’t admit they have failed. Everybody fails at one point or another, but only some learn from their mistakes. Here’s a great article in CIO.com details real stories of IT failure, and the lessons learned from them.

This reminds me of a manufacturing company we worked with in the past. They had poured over a million dollars into creating a web-based order entry system, only to find the project half done after 2 years. They realized that they needed to do something different, and soon hired an m-Power consultant. Ten weeks later, the project was finished.

This situation turned out well, but can you imagine what would have happened if they had stubbornly pushed forward on that project? It would’ve been a disaster.

Are you stuck in a project that is taking longer and costing more than expected? Maybe we can help. Let us know a little about the lemons you have on your plate, and we’ll show you how to turn them into lemonade.

Modernization: Which language is best?

Anyone considering modernization must decide which programming language to modernize with. I've heard arguments for nearly every language, but I still believe Java is the most powerful and best suited for enterprise application development.

To learn more, including the advantages of modernizing with Java, I encourage you to check out this short presentation.

6 game-changing features of Google Wave

I’m very intrigued by the announcement of Google Wave. Specifically, I’m intrigued by new applications that can increase productivity and save time (and integrate with m-Power). From the looks of things, Google Wave does all of the above.

If you want to know more, check out this informative article on Mashable.com entitled, “The Top 6 Game-Changing Features of Google Wave.”