One of the best pieces of advice I got from my father-in-law, a digital switch engineer with the NorTel phone company, back in the day, was to read widely within your field, stay current with the latest developments and know what your competitors are doing. Thus, a significant part of my inbound daily email traffic are newsletters, alerts and teasers about trends and news in the worlds of technology, home entertainment. My Flipbook is populated with updates from TechCrunch, www.blu-ray.com, Home Media Magazine and a list of other technology-focused RSS feeds. My traditional media reading is in Variety, The Wall Street Journal and Wired. This morning my interest was piqued when I received a daily digest from the good folks at TabTimes which included a link to 7 Tips to consider when developing and designing mobile business apps. I clicked over, read the article…but had the feeling that I’d read this, or something very similar to it before. I took a quick look back through the Giant blog archives and found Considering Developing an App? Then Consider These Tips. Very familiar indeed — I wrote it. Let’s be honest — the internet can act like an echo chamber at times. I’ll openly admit that when I wrote that particular post, I undoubtedly used someone’s article elsewhere as the inspiration to help coalesce my thoughts and inspire my wordcraft. I’m not accusing TabTimes of anything unprofessional or unethical. I’m neither upset or irked that they ran an article which focused on many of the same app development tips that I presented, wisdom which was distilled from my company’s own knowledge and experience building our app development practice. Instead, I think there is something bigger and better at work here. I’m gratified that others have uncovered the same truths and insights about app development that we have. My feelings are closer to those you have when you hear somebody else giving voice to the solution to a common problem — “yeah, we got that answer too!” There are plenty of good people working in our industry, designing great apps and advancing the ‘app-o-sphere’ forward, one publication at a time, one update at a time. We’re all encountering similar problems and, clearly, coming up with similar ‘best practices’ which we’re sharing with others. We’ve done just that in other posts like Mickey Mouse Knows App Development (Really?) and The Five P’s of Pitching An App Idea. We’ll continue to do so in the future. It’s nice to encounter a like-minded thinker in this rapidly-changing mediascape. I’m pleased that there’s a way to share that applied knowledge. App design and development for every OS and platform will certainly benefit from such cooperation.