THE AGILITYFEAT BLOG
At AgilityFeat, we are more than just designers and coders. We are also thought leaders. Our team has spoken at conferences around the US, Europe, and Latin America. We were early leaders in applying agile methodologies to nearshore software development in Latin America. We shared these lessons in this blog through 2015. These days, we blog mainly about our other passion, WebRTC. Find us at https://webrtc.ventures/blog/.
The best real-time blog posts of 2014
2014 has been a very interesting year in the real time development space. WebRTC has started to take off, with some major announcements confirming that it’s more than hype. The WebRTCHacks team showed that Google Hangouts is based on a...
5 questions to ask before picking a startup idea
Most entrepreneurs know they want to become an entrepreneur before they actually have a specific business idea. They have an inner desire to create, to build a product or a business out of nothing, to control their own destiny, to shape...
Pickasound- Using WebRTC to Build a Music Collaboration Application
In early 2014, we were approached by an entrepreneur who wanted to build a new type of music collaboration application. The application would allow musicians to exchange ideas and build songs together via the web without any type of...
Video: Raspberry Pi’s and Node.js
Javascript is not just for the web! With Node.js you can run it on Raspberry Pi's too. Allan Naranjo, who is a developer at AgilityFeat, has built kiosk applications using Node.js running on a Raspberry Pi. This month Allan gave a talk...
Internet of Things Design doesn’t have to be overwhelming
The Internet of Things, Big Data, real time communications and messaging. It conjures up images of complicated data dashboards with lots of running charts, streaming data, blinking lights, machines that go “ping”, and just for fun maybe a...
3 tips for Onboarding Remote Hires
Building a great remote team has enormous benefits. By expanding one’s talent pool beyond your local area you can dramatically increase your chances for finding people who possess the unique set of skills and talents for your team. As a...
Adding WebRTC video to a 2nd screen application
Earlier this year, as an excuse to combine work with my obsessive viewing of the World Cup, I built a simple 2nd screen application for sharing goal predictions and comments with friends during a game. I did this as an exercise in working...
Announcing: Pi’s, Node, and Real-Time things
We are excited to announce that our resident node.JS guru, Allan Naranjo has been selected to speak at not one but two upcoming conferences in San Francisco. In October, Allan will...
7 Keys to ensure harmony between UX and Development
Software development is by its nature a very creative process. Obviously graphic design is an art form, but there is also an art to the technical architecture of a project, the coding style, the way you test, and the interaction design....
Hiring a Remote Team
Last week Entrepreneur.com featured a great article on hiring remote teams. The article, written by David and Carrie McKeegan has a wonderful list of tips for remote hiring that are relevant for in-house hires as well. Since AgilityFeat...
Awesome team building for distributed teams
At AgilityFeat, we are a very distributed and very agile team. Culture is important for any team, but it's even more important for distributed teams because you need a strong culture to overcome the possible inefficiencies of doing work...
Teachstone looking for an Applications Lead Architect
If you're interested in working in one of the nicest small cities in the US (Charlottesville, Virginia), with a very interesting education business (Teachstone), and you want the side benefit of working with our team at AgilityFeat, then...
Do you really have the time for a startup?
It’s not enough to have a good business idea, you must have the time to execute on that idea. Which makes this story from Wired magazine even more impressive. Dutch programmer and designer Pieter Levels is on a quest to build a new...
Free Agile Training
If you're looking for a couple hours of agile video to watch, a way to help you go to sleep at night, or just from free agile training, then I present to you the following videos. Our development team at AgilityFeat is spread out around...
Web RTC and Designing Realtime Experiences
We are excited to announce that three members of the AgilityFeat Team were recently guests on The Web Platform Podcast. Mariana Lopez, Allan Naranjo and Arin Sime spent some time with the Web Platform Podcast crew discussing a broad range...
Using publish/subscribe to synchronize presentation slides
A common use case for real-time messaging between web clients is to keep something in synch. For example, in the Sensei tool that we built for one of our clients, each remote participant in an agile retrospective should be able to see the...
Design for your customers first so you don’t perish
This week I read a good TechCrunch article about the importance of putting your customers first. While this sounds obvious, author Ron Miller is making a crucial point when he says to put your customer “at the center of everything you do,...
Why I’ve moved to Costa Rica
About three years ago, David Alfaro and I launched on a great adventure together, building AgilityFeat into an international boutique software development firm. I was living in Virginia in the US, and David built up our operations in...
UX lessons learned from a real-time 2nd screen experience
The dust has settled from the World Cup, and I have slowly weaned myself off the TV and back into family and work life. It was a very exciting World Cup to watch this year, and as a fan of underdog teams like the USA and Costa Rica, it...
HTML5DevConf Video: 6 Months with WebRTC
Last May I had the pleasure of presenting at the HTML5DevConf in San Francisco. With me was David Alfaro, AgilityFeat co-founder, and Mariana Lopez, our UX lead. Also joining us remotely was Allan Naranjo, a software engineer at...
Toying with a World Cup second screen experience
This is a very stressful month for me, because I'm trying to balance work, family time, and World Cup viewing time. As a fan of the United States and Costa Rica national teams, it's also been a pretty wild World Cup to watch. Costa Rica...
The 3 phases of MVP development
The other day I was speaking with a potential development customer when I realized two things: 1) He doesn’t need us … yet. 2) He can’t afford us … yet. “Yet” is a key addendum to both realizations. He has some interesting ideas, and a...
Recording in Real Time with the Web Audio API (Part 1)
Building software to manipulate files is always tricky, however when we are talking about audio files and specifically about the Web Audio API in HTML5, this challenge gets significantly more difficult. In this post, we will look at the...
Video: Mariana Lopez on Real-Time Interaction Design
Last week our UX lead Mariana Lopez presented at the ModevUX conference in Washington DC on how to do interaction design for Real-Time applications. Below is the video from her talk - check it out to learn some best practices for your...
2 Quick examples of WebRTC in-context communications
I believe the great promise of WebRTC based video, audio and data applications has nothing to do with browser compatibility or plugins. It all comes down to finding innovative ways that you can use these technologies to add value through...