I started viewing Blaugh regularly and I could not resist this piece. Good one for the vacation

Advanced New Year Wishes.

Every time I need to try out some new software, tool or use a website I need to register. Sometimes I get the user ID I regularly use but sometimes I don’t get that id because someone has already taken it (believe me Ramesh is so common name that if you shout the name anywhere in India, I am sure more than one will turn around). Again I sometimes use a common password for lot of the sites that doesn’t have anything to do with my personal stuff but sometimes I do need to pick a different one because the password validation requirement in the site might be that I need to meet. So does any other information like address or phone number. Whenever I enter into a site and I have to login I am stuck for some time to really get back the user id and password I used to get into the site and lot of times I have to make more than 2 attempts to get the correct ID.

That’s when I stumbled upon Sxipper, which is a Firefox extension that saves your time remembering the form information locally on your computer associated with a specific site. As far the security is concerned the information is encrypted and stored. Check it out if you are a guy who struggles like me trying to remember too many ids and passwords. Of course you need to be a Firefox user to make use of Sxipper.

As far as I remember a discussion forum is an internal application that most of the organizations would have tried to implement. Basically a discussion forum allows people in the organization to post a question (could be on any topic of relevance irrespective of the area the person is working) and any one in the organization who knows a solution or can give pointers can reply back.  A public discussion forum specific to a technology was hot few years back and used to be a primary source for developers to find  solutions to their problems.  In many organizations (again my experience working in India and what I have heard of) a discussion forum is one of the projects that is assigned to a group of newbie’s joining the organization and it acts as a training project. Most of the time it never gets implemented. Why it is so is altogether a separate topic. But here is a cool open source application, Vanilla that has packaged the features required for enabling a discussion forum in your organization with rich user interface and the ability to extend the application as well. Vanilla requires any web server, PHP 4.1 or above and MySQL 3.23 or greater.

On a side note, today I complete my 300th post. I started blogging since March 11, 2006 and it is a fantastic feeling to spend some time to think, read and write something everyday. Thank you for taking time to read my blog.

Like Web 2.0 here is this Search 2.0. Search 2.0 is about the new generation of search engines. Traditionally a search engine uses a Boolean query and pre processed analysis information that gets back the result from the database and displays it as result. But Search 2.0 engines are different from traditional search. In that the actual search is done by an engine based on the contents of web sites, with the existing analysis about the site and combining the results from various other search engines. This is a powerful combination and the major advantage being the search operation is performed by one or more engines and aggregated. This article “Search 2.0 vs. Traditional Search” talks about the differences between the two and also lists out the Search 2.0 companies.

Read the experts say on where the technology is headed in 2007 from the Java Developer’s Journal. I see mentions of Ruby, AJAX, enterprise services outside of enterprise. It is going to be an interesting year ahead.

An article in the local newspaper yesterday titled “Needed: more software testers” presents that the current IT industry needs quality software testers (I hope it was not an oxymoron ). It also talks about the roles a tester would have to play and also what to look for in a testing professional. More than quality testers I think what this industry needs are to give the testers the right roles and sufficient authority to stop a release if it feels that the software is not fit enough yet to be released. Moreover the testers need to be given sufficient time and the planning has to be done effectively to accommodate that.

On a funnier note the article starts with a question.

“If you are unsure what software testing is all about, consider this: would Bill Gates have managed to become the richest man in the world without a diligent tester in the background?”

I think yes he still managed to become one.

As the amount of pace in which technology is growing with so many new stuff cropping up every second it is very hard to catch up even for someone who has been in the industry for quite sometime leave out college students and newbie’s. Said that it is very important that a lot of what is required in this industry now is not what is taught in colleges. This is so true for majority of colleges in India except for the top colleges where everybody cannot get into.  It is important that teacher upgrades himself/herself to an extent that they can impart it to the students. Teachers need to use the internet effectively and encourage students to use the internet effectively and learn effectively. A lot of commercial software products come with a free license for educational institutions. The colleges and universities need to make use of that opportunity and need to get a grip on what’s the trend in the industry. That way the IT industry can get students who can easily cope up once they are into their job. Students and teachers need to use technologies and solutions effectively to communicate and collaborate beyond classrooms. For example Chalksite is a web site that a teacher, student and the student’s parents can use as a common platform for assignments, grading and discussions.  Teachers teaching computer science need to grow up and help students shape up their career for the current industry requirement.

Merry Christmas to everyone!

This post is part of the RToon Series

Happy Weekend!