Software Secrets - The Business Application Myth-busting Blog from Purple Crane...There's an algorithm for that! Ten years ago, when the famous ad campaign for the iPhone 3g featured the tag line "There's An App For That" the phrase became such a popular meme that it ended up as an official Apple trademark granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Although it's probably still true that there's an app for almost anything, the underlying fact is that algorithms are really the ubiquitous beating heart of every modern software solution.…

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Software Secrets - The Business Application Myth-busting Blog from Purple Crane... Made to measure or off the shelf? There's some debate about the language used to describe how software is made. Often, it's done in terms borrowed from the construction industry with words such as 'built', 'architecture' and 'engineer' being commonly used.…

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Software Secrets - The Business Application Myth-busting Blog from Purple Crane The First Date The way we use software has revolutionised day-to-day life in the 21st Century and dating is a perfect example of this in action. Last year the BBC reported that 59% of adults think online dating is a good way to meet people and recent statistics from Infogram claim that 20% of new relationships in the UK now start online. There's no doubt that first impressions now count more than ever before, so when you choose to swipe right on an agency team and want them to make unique business software for you, what can you expect to happen on that all-important 'first date'?…

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If part one was visualising all ways to play a game, this part will illustrate how it is actually played.…

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Fractals by nature are recursive and so is the way computers explore games to find optimal solutions!  Using fractals, I wanted to create a way to illustrate how a computer may 'see' a game, to highlight moves it thinks are better than others. What I ended up with was not only a representation of what a computer sees, but also a visualisation of the game itself.…

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Are we hindering our own creativity and clouding clients’ expectations of software development by using an unhelpful analogy?…

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As a recreational runner, snowboarder and wannabe surfer, I’ve become interested in the concept of ‘flow’ or the ‘flow state’. It’s becoming an increasingly well-known and popular concept in sports, particularly action sports such as snowboarding, skiing, climbing and surfing. It also comes up a lot with runners and is often referred to as ‘being in the zone’. I’ve had occasional glimpses of it in my sporting activities, but not very often!…

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Our Apprentice Software Developer Wilson speaks about his journey into the world of software development and the benefits of his apprenticeship at Purple Crane. It isn’t easy to take your first step in any profession, and when you don’t have any relevant qualifications it can seem impossible. When I left school, I didn’t possess any computing related qualifications. My schools didn’t have any computer science-related GCSEs or A-Levels and as a result of that and other personal influences, I went to university to study psychology with no desire to work in the field.…

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Developing software as an ongoing, collaborative process Software projects are never one-off developments. Well none that we’ve ever worked on. It’s the nature of software that either the system requirements or the technology on which the system runs, or both, change over time. If it’s not requirements that were originally missed, then it’s changes to working practices, scale, operating systems or browser specifications. It could be the addition of new features made possible through technological advances, or new security legislation that demands changes to the software.…

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Do you feel you’ve outgrown the tools you’re using to run your business? Do you think you could be working more efficiently if only you had a better way to get the job done? If so, read on. Following on from our previous blog post on the use (or overuse) of spreadsheets within organisations, we thought about other common scenarios we encounter when completing a task analysis. A common issue is that efficiency can be compromised when tools don’t evolve at the same pace as tasks. Your organisation and the market you operate in might be changing at a quick pace, but to keep up, are your people using work-arounds in their existing tools, rather than thinking about which tool could do the job better?…

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