Blog

February 15, 2017

Automation Hackathon @ STG 2016/2017

Author: Matt Chiang Learning never exhausts the mind. –Leonardo da Vinci @STG this year, we stayed engaged in learning during the summer by doing a series of automation code challenges. The code challenges were simple at first and gets more difficult. Some concepts were easy to grasp. Others were more difficult. However, in […]

February 9, 2017

There’s Gold in that thar Data

You may have heard the phrase “Data is the new oil” but like oil, data must be refined before it can really be useful. Numeric data is easy to refine – you can add it, sort it, average it, and look for trends. But what about text? How do you add words? This […]

February 8, 2017

Agile User Group Meetup at STG

<table “width=”100%””> WHO: Michael Bode Presenting on “Lean Agile Coffee Meetup.” WHAT: An Agile User Group Meetup WHEN: February 15, 2017 @ 11:30 am WHERE: The STG Office Pizza and drinks will be provided. The group collaboration should last around 90 minutes. Feel free to invite your customers. PLEASE RSVP: Please click here to fill out the form […]

January 25, 2017

Why Website Photography Matters

Author: Geoffrey Sagers When many companies create their first website, often they look to photography to “fill in” appropriate areas of the website, such as the header within the body. There are many quality stock photography websites, but in almost all cases, your images are not unique to your company or even industry. So, […]

January 25, 2017

The Pleasure (and Pain) of Script Upgrades

Author: Geoffrey Sagers If you are anything like me, you want the latest and greatest. In the area of web development, that can definitely be a double-edged sword. Using only the latest technology you shut out many users who either must use older browser due to corporate restrictions, or choose not to upgrade. One of the […]

November 29, 2016

Automation Hackathon @ STG 2016

by Matt Chiang “Learning never exhausts the mind.” -Leonardo da Vinci @STG this year, we stayed engaged in learning during the summer by doing a series of automation code challenges. The code challenges were simple at first and then get more difficult. Some concepts were easy to grasp. Others were more difficult. However, in […]

September 26, 2016

The Case for the Ugly Duckling: Why the World Needs UX Designers

By Neal Jenks Design Consultant and IxD Practice Manager at Software Technology Group In a recent blog post, I referred to UX Designers as ugly ducklings. Just like the infamous bird of fairy tale lore, we aren’t much to look at; however, we’ve already done some growing up, we have tons of potential, and when […]

September 16, 2016

BBQ Day?

Author: Bryan Hansen Some companies like to incentivize their employees by having a BBQ day. At STG, we fully support this, but doing the status quo has never been our motto. At STG we have a Bench. I personally like to call it our Dev Center because it really is more than a “bench”. We […]

August 10, 2016

Style Guides

Author: Daniel Jewel Recently, while working with a client on wrapping up the building of their version 2 UI, it became apparent that not everyone was on the same page on how things should look and behave. The initial re-design of the web app failed when it came to being responsive. There was also a […]

August 1, 2016

What was that developer thinking?!

Author: Dan Woodruff Ever had a developer join a team, suggest a radical solution and be shut down? Or have them suddenly be allowed to develop their ideas? I find it fascinating as to how this happens and may have some insight. Each company’s culture, whether they know it or not, has inherent values. For example, […]

June 14, 2016

Why STG?

Who are we? Software Technology Group (STG) is a software-consulting firm located in Downtown Salt Lake City, Utah. STG is a privately owned and operated company, which enables us to make decisions based on the needs of our employees and our clients, not those of shareholders. Founded 20 years ago, STG has maintained the goal […]

May 10, 2016

Are you Left Brained or Right Brained?

Author: Shanaz Lavasanie I’ve heard a lot of personality-related labels: introverted, optimistic, strong but silent, drama queen, etc. But left-brain or right-brain? These labels may not be well-known. Defining Behavior Whether it is our left hemisphere that is more dominant or our right one, the distinction can impact our personality and the decisions we make. […]

March 28, 2016

Interview Tips & Tricks (for the newbie to the expert)

Author: Chris Lake One of the ways that STG likes to partner with its clients is to sit in as an observer when we have a candidate interview. We don’t interfere with anything said, but being in the room helps us observe and see both how the candidate does and what needs our client has […]

March 14, 2016

RootsTech Innovator Showdown

Author: Geoffrey Sagers I recently had the opportunity to attend the RootsTech Genealogy conference held in Salt Lake City, Utah. One of the sessions I attended was the Innovator Showdown. It was the final six of numerous of entries to “show off” how technology can improve family history — the world’s largest org chart. Most people […]

February 15, 2016

Testimony of Ryan Parrish

Author: Ryan Parrish As a consultant, often when diving into a large online retailer environment you can expect there to be many pieces of proprietary company knowledge to pick up. Between learning a new API, using Foreign CRM tools, and adapting to the conventions of their business operations and hierarchy expectations, it can be a […]

February 8, 2016

Coding HTML Emails

Author: Patricia Johnson Part 1: The Code That Time Forgot Like me, you probably expect that html code is going to display virtually the same in every browser, with a few known exceptions. There are small foibles in rendering between the assorted web browsers, but with every update, those differences become fewer and fewer, and […]

February 2, 2016

Our Favorite UI/UX Designs of 2015: A Thoroughly Informal and Awesome List

Author: Neal Jenks Design Consultant | IxD Practice Manager Ah, end-of-year: The time when a young man/woman’s fancy turns to lists. I asked Software Technology Group’s illustrious IxD Practice members to share some of their favorite UX/UI discoveries from the past year. What followed was an entertaining and instructive mixed-bag of websites, apps, and more. […]

January 26, 2016

2016 IxD Trends

Author: Neal Jenks Allow me to wax prophetic. A vibrant, waning year tends to open our imaginations to the unexplored horizons yet to come, and this is especially true of the Interaction Design (IxD) world. If the past year has taught us anything, it is that we have absolutely no clue what to expect. But […]

January 18, 2016

The 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective Software Engineers

By Quinn Heiner In this article (which has no relation to Covey’s famous book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, except maybe the number seven), we will take a different approach in our discussion of good habits by first pointing out the bad ones. By going from ineffective to effective, we will essentially discover […]

January 11, 2016

Why Everything I Need to Know about Software Engineering I Learned from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir

Author: Quinn Heiner Imagine if your software company had an 18-month hiring process for all of its techs, and that your chances of actually getting hired were slim at best (really slim, as in maybe 5%). But no problem, let’s say you get the job! Great–now for your first project. You’ll be working with an all-volunteer […]

January 4, 2016

Shout out for Automation

Author: Matt Chiang What is automation: In the most simplistic term, automation is some type of script that controls an application to do some type of action. However, there are flaws to this ideology. The background to automation probably started years ago w/ someone in QA or development when they were doing the same thing […]

December 14, 2015

Passing Knowledge with Code

Author: Brett Child As a programmer, sometime or another you will be needed to dig into a legacy system. Whether you’re making changes or maybe trying to rewrite it, you’ll need to understand what’s going on. One of the biggest problems with legacy systems is that there are few to no people who truly […]

December 8, 2015

Working for the Man vs. Being the Man: The Pros and Cons of Independent Contracting, Full-Time Employment, and Everything in Between

Author: Quinn Heiner We’ve all heard the well-rehearsed arguments of being a full-time employee for a company versus independent contracting. With technology careers, this debate becomes even more relevant given the large number of both contracting and full-time positions available. There simply aren’t enough people to fill the demands of the industry, which for most software […]

December 1, 2015

Simple NSURLConnection vs NSURLSession example – using Swift

Author: Eduardo Flores This is a simple example of how to achieve the same simple GET call with (the “old”) NSURLConnection and the new NSURLSession. This project is now on Swift! (so 50% less code, and 200% more “Why??”s) This blog post is almost identical to the previous one I made on objective-c (link) but […]