my blog. for you.

Let’s talk digital.

I’m an independent IT consultant and entrepreneur in the Internet and software business. I’m interested in design, enterprise applications, web apps and SaaS products. I design and develop business solutions and applications. I help companies in terms of software quality and knowledge transfer, e.g. with Angular and Spring Boot.

Toby Shapshak: You don’t need an app for that

In a 2013 TED talk South African writer Toby Shapshak talks about innovation out of necessity and how entrepreneurs in Africa are solving real-world problems for both their own continent and the world as a whole:

Open-sourcing some of my project code: Freshcard and MemoEasy

Modern web development and software development in general for that matter wouldn't be possible without FOSS: free open source software. Whether it's web frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, frontend frameworks like AngularJS or enterprise toolkits as for instance Spring, open source software is the solid foundation most modern software is built upon. It's quite likely the technology-fuelled growth we've seen for the last decades wouldn't have been possible if it hadn't been for open source software. So, while saying that open ...

Sunday October 4th, 2015 by Bjoern in Enterprise Software, Entrepreneurship, Front End Development, Software, Web Applications

Jeremy Keith – Enhance!

Much in line with the talk about advancing the web without breaking it in his talk at beyond tellerrand this year Jeremy Keith argues for the benefits of starting with simple solutions to the problem at hand and building upon a solid foundation instead of giving in to the temptation starting out with ever more complex layers upon layers of complex tools and frameworks. Jeremy advocates progressive enhancement, that is making content accessible to every platform and browser while still using the ...

Sunday September 27th, 2015 by Bjoern in Design, Web, Web Applications

Christian Heilmann – Advancing the web without breaking it?

Web development today is characterized by a constant, rapid flow of new frameworks, CSS preprocessors, task runners, package managers, asset pipelines ... Angular, Ember.js, Backbone, React, Flux, Grunt, Gulp. Every week or so it seems there's a new JavaScript framework that does everything better than everything else before. We need to jump ship ever more frequently if we want to keep up and stay on the bleeding edge. There's constant bickering about which framework is better and which framework du jour ...

Sunday September 20th, 2015 by Bjoern in Design, Mobile Applications, Web, Web Applications

PPK – The Plural of Chromium is Chromia

He's the ultimate browser nerd. Peter-Paul Koch - commonly referred to as PPK - tests browsers and browser compatibilities so we don't have to. On his website QuirksMode he publishes articles and browser compatibility tables for each and every HTML5, CSS and JavaScript feature in the West. In his recent talk at beyond tellerrand he talked specifically about the mobile web and mobile web browsers in particular. Although the most dominant mobile platforms Android and iOS by and large both use WebKit-based ...

Sunday September 13th, 2015 by Bjoern in Design, Front End Development, Web, Web Applications

Dave Shea: A Brief History of Web Design

At beyond tellerrand Düsseldorf 2015 David Shea, creator of the seminal website CSS Zen Garden gave a talk about the history of web design. David Shea takes us back on a - somewhat nostalgic - journey 25 years back to remind us about nigh forgotten websites and services (does anybody still remember Hotmail and GeoCities?). There are lessons to be learned from those early incarnations of web design and mistakes to be avoided. Moreover, and quite interestingly many concepts and techniques we ...

Sunday August 23rd, 2015 by Bjoern in Design, Front End Development, Web

Petro Salema – Designing Interfaces That Think @ beyond tellerrand Düssedorf 2015

Earlier this year at beyond tellerrand Düsseldorf 2015 I had the privilege to attend a talk by Petro Salema. Petro shared his insights about today's limits in human computer interaction, attention span, mental bandwidth and how to address these issues. While the subject matter itself is interesting enough already I've never personally witnessed such rivetting storytelling before. He started his talk with a captivating story from his home country Tanzania about Bwakila, a machete-wielding madmen. This story nicely set the ground for the ...

Sunday August 16th, 2015 by Bjoern in Design, Entrepreneurship, Mobile Applications, Software, Web, Web Applications

ng-admin: Create admin panels from REST APIs

ng-admin is a helpful AngularJS UI component that automatically creates an admin user interface for RESTful APIs. Such a component is particularly useful for instance with back end applications in enterprise contexts because it allows you to quickly implement and iterate basic user interfaces based on your current model and its API.

Sunday July 5th, 2015 by Bjoern in Enterprise Software, Front End Development, Web Applications

Modern SQL (with PostgreSQL)

SQL expert Markus Winand some time ago posted an insightful presentation on Modern SQL (mostly PostgreSQL-focussed) at SlideShare. The 116 slides contain plenty of modern SQL idioms you likely haven't used before. Even if you're an experienced SQL developer the presentation is still worth checking out.

Sunday June 28th, 2015 by Bjoern in Enterprise Software, Software, Web Applications

Everything you ever want to know about enterprise sales

This title sounds a bit like dirty secrets, doesn't it? When thinking of enterprise software sales most people think about arcane, lengthy, sometimes sleazy bureaucratic processes entailing: Vendors who are very secretive about pricing: If you have to ask for a price our product isn't for you! Lots of pointless meetings Obnoxious PowerPoint presentations A plethora of stakeholders A decision maker who won't be using the software product being bought and - of course - a user who doesn't have a say but has to use this ...

Sunday June 14th, 2015 by Bjoern in Enterprise Software, Entrepreneurship

Björn Wilmsmann

my blog. for you.

Let’s talk digital.