Waitr (pronounced Water) is another browser based functional testing tool like Selenium.  Waitr is written in Ruby and is available as a gem. Waitr is available for Internet Explorer and so obviously for Windows.  Functional test automations can save a lot of time when it comes to testing the system for existing functions rather than doing a manual testing. Now that Waitr is there it complements Selenium on Firefox which covers both the key browsers widely used.

I have been writing few posts on troubleshooting. I thought why not a mind map of what I would do when I am stuck with during development. Remember what really means to get stuck is when does not even know what the problem is. Usually when we know a problem we can work on the solutions. But a lot of times during development you know things are not right but you don’t even know what is causing things to go wrong. That’s when someone is really in troubleshooting mode because to fix it one has to find out what the problem is. I quickly drew a mind maps of where I would look for a problem and then document and track the whole process until I find the solution. Hope this mind map helps.

Click this link “Troubleshooting - Mind Map” to view the map. Click on the Original Size link to view the map clear.

Note: - If you are new to Mind Maps look at the series of posts on Mind Maps.

Rajesh Setty was addressing some of us at Compassites on how to create a brand for the organization. One of the points he brought was that the company’s brand can significantly be valued if each one in the company can brand himself/herself. A typical software engineer if asked what he/she does answers that he/she is a developer/software engineer working for such and such company and for a project. The truth is millions of software engineers will say the same, so what difference does it make? He brought up a good analogy to explain this. The best example is a beautifully choreographed Indian movie song where the hero and heroine dance for a song and there are about 30 to 50 group dancers behind them. On the outlook it looks beautiful to have these extras add color to the whole scene but does anyone care if one of those extras is missing in a shot? Probably the audience would not even realize it. The attention is more on the hero and heroine and if they go missing the whole song goes incomplete and meaningless. It is important that a software engineer needs to add more accomplishments around him/her than doing just the job. The accomplishments help him/her to brand not just him/her but also add value to the brand of the organization. You definitely don’t want to be in the extras and be not missed when you are missing.

You can take a look at “Grassroots Brand-building Questions: A Baker’s dozen” for the questions that Rajesh asks for each one of us to answer in building a brand.
Note:- This post is part of the “Foundations” series

Its a Wi-Fi world
Happy Weekend!

Other RToons.

It is easy as a developer get glued on to the projects that the company is putting him/her in.  Particularly if you are in a big multi national company, you would be part of a big project that will run for years (and probably had been running for years) and one might be put into maintaining it or enhancing it. In such situations a developer’s knowledge might get confined to the project and the technology surrounding it.  This is like a slow poison bringing the developer to narrow down his/her knowledge.  It is important to keep widening the knowledge making sure that there is something else to achieve, accomplish and learn in the process. One thing that could help developers to keep themselves updated and to increase their knowledge is to freelance or contribute to open source projects. One could even take up a new technology and could use the open source projects as a means to learn and implement.

This post is part of the “Foundations” series of posts.

Compassites celebrated its first anniversary last Saturday. It was a big occasion for us and it was a fantastic feeling to ponder back the one year roller coaster ride we had. We had the moments captured that turned into a video that made each one of us feel good. We had a talk treat from our board members and what came after was a touching video of COACH which is an employee social responsibility program. COACH represents Compassites On A Cause for Help. We had three programs conducted last year and it was touching and more than anything it gave us a feel of self satisfaction in helping the needy. As my colleague Vivek who is one of the key organizers of COACH said, we feed work for our mind and COACH for our heart and we feel the completeness in what we do at Compassites. Here is the video COACH - Compassites ‘Heal the world’.

I was taken back reading an article in the local newspaper “Man sells his life on eBay”. We know that eBay is an online auction site where one can buy and sell from anything to everything but I never knew the meaning of it until I read this article. Here is the online version of the story “Man sells life on eBay” from Yahoo. On one side we are excited that the internet is revolutionizing lives of people enriching in its own way but on the other hand we do see such things happening making sure that there is a balance. Not sure what more is to come.

For those of you designers looking for some CSS tips and techniques here are “53 CSS Techniques” needed for designing cool web sites.

Refer other useful resources.